Children & Families

This reporting is supported by the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism National Fellowship.

Michigan has made successful family reunification a priority. The program is separate from the state’s child welfare and foster care system, and is considered a national leader.

"If newsrooms want coverage to be diverse, newsrooms must back up that aim with an investment of time," writes The Oregonian's Bethany Barnes. Here's how she invested her reporting time.

Pharmacy deserts are a growing problem in Chicago. Tribune reporter Eseosa Olumhense discusses how she reported on the worrying trend.

In one immigrant community along Central California's coast, a crisis response team stands ready to coordinate services for families who’ve been hit by an arrest or deportation.

Fewer Arizona children are being removed from their families and the backlog of uninvestigated child abuse reports is down dramatically. But advocates warn that recent progress to overhaul Arizona’s child welfare system could easily be reversed.

“This is just such a powerful but elegantly simple intervention,” said the lead researcher behind a recent study that used parent mentors to enroll families in Medicaid and CHIP coverage.

Since the Great Recession started more than a decade ago, many Arizona families have languished as the state, facing budget shortfalls, cut services again and again. Foster care placements have swelled.

Diapering a child now takes about $1,000 a year on average. For families on the cusp of poverty, it’s a serious burden that can have lasting consequences on both children and parents.

Social advantages are tied more sleep and better quality sleep, says Lauren Hale, who has found differences in sleep patterns among disadvantaged kids as young as 3.