As a journalist, both homelessness and mental illness are uniquely challenging topics to report on. When combined, the reporting challenges double, but so do the potential insights. Claudia Boyd-Barrett shares lessons from her experience reporting on the issue in California's Ventura County.
Older approaches to homelessness required people to achieve sobriety or enter treatment before being moved into permanent housing. Under Housing First, people receive support to stay in their homes and are later paired with services such as health care, substance abuse treatment, and job counseling.
Many homeless people have severe mental disorders yet remain on the streets for months or even years. The challenge for social service providers and authorities is that these vulnerable and sometimes volatile people often refuse help.
Among Ventura County’s chronically homeless, 37 percent reported a mental illness in the 2015 count. Some officials believe the real percentage is likely higher because the annual survey relies on homeless people self-reporting mental illness, and some may not realize it or don’t want to admit it.
Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families is struggling to cope with an influx of neglect and abuse cases and has run into financial trouble. Reporter Kristin Gourlay explores how a national "home visiting" program aims to keep families from entering the system in the first place.
Rhode Island doesn’t have enough foster families to meet a growing need. That’s one reason the state's child welfare agency places a higher percentage of kids in group homes than almost any other state. Officials acknowledge the problem, but recruiting new foster families has been tough.
Social workers at Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families say they have too many cases to really make a difference in children’s lives. The agency is already facing criticism for other problems, including one of the nation’s highest percentages of foster children in group homes.
Children who experience abuse or neglect–or even the stress of poverty—can have serious health problems later in life. That’s one of many challenges for children in Rhode Island’s child welfare system.
The Denver Post's Jennifer Brown knew there were compelling stories to be told behind Colorado's soaring numbers of homeless children. But finding and following the right families would take her on a six-month journey deep into two families' difficult daily lives.
A documentary premiering on PBS on Monday tracks the lives of Chicago teens struggling to regain their footing and stay in school after their home lives have fallen apart. The film's three heart-wrenching human stories give deeper meaning to the abstractions of statistics.
