Friday Wrap Up: Drugging Kids, Health Reform, the LAPD and More

AMERICAN JUVENILE FACILITIES NEEDLESSLY DRUGGING LOCKED-UP KIDS, INVESTIGATION SAYS

In a year-long investigation that has unpleasant resonances of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Youth Today has uncovered a pile of evidence that kids incarcerated in American juvenile facilities are getting anti-psychotic drugs intended for bipolar or schizophrenic patients— when they have not been diagnosed with either disorder (or anything close).

Only 16 out of the 50 states responded to YT’s requests for information. California was one of those that did not, although there is much anecdotal indication that LA County’s juvenile probation facilities are using anti-psychotics on kids simply as a way to make them easier to handle.

“Fifty years ago, we were tying kids up with leather straps, but now that offends people, so instead we drug them,” says Robert Jacobs, a former Florida psychologist and lawyer who now practices psychology in Australia. “We cover it up with some justification that there is some medical reason, which there is not.”

Find the rest of the report here.

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ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER SIGNS AB 12, EXTENDING FOSTER CARE ‘TIL AGE 21

Here’s a clip from the story in the Wall Street Journal:

…The new benefits “will ensure our foster youth have access to important resources as they transition into adulthood,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. Previously, benefits ended at age 18 or 19.

Because a federal law enacted two years ago helps pay for such an extension and other foster-care services previously borne by the state, California—which faces a $19.1 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year ending in June—doesn’t expect to incur any additional costs.

California now will provide housing to young adults or allow them to stay with foster parents. They would need to meet certain conditions to qualify, such as attending college or working. Generally, a foster family gets a monthly payment from the state for food, clothing and other costs for each child in its care.

Emily Villas, a 20-year-old college student in Oakland, Calif., was in foster care for four years as a teenager. After she “aged out” of the system, she became homeless. “I was just not ready to be let go of,” she said. The extension of foster care “definitely would have helped me to be better equipped.”

New York and Illinois have enacted similar foster-care laws, but child-welfare advocates have closely eyed California because it has the most foster children. About one seventh of the nearly 424,000 U.S. foster children were in California as of last year.

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GOVERNOR ALSO SIGNS TWO KEY HEALTH CARE BILLS

Although the big biz interests pressured Arnold mightily to veto SB 900 and AB 1602, to his great credit, he stood tough and signed two bills that will greatly enhance how the nation’s new national health care reform act is applied in California..

The Sacramento Bee has the story:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed two key health bills that make California the first in the nation to begin establishing its own health insurance exchange – a key component of the federal health overhaul law intended to widen access to health coverage among the country’s millions of uninsured.

“For national reform to succeed, it will be up to the states to make it work, and California is moving forward on reforms that will provide affordable and quality health care insurance,” the governor said in a statement.

Well done, Arnold, on all three.

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JOE DOMANICK FIGURES OUT THE LESSONS IN THE WESTLAKE SHOOTING FOR THE LAPD

In The Crime Report, Joe Domanick wrote a thoughtful and informed analysis of the shooting of Manuel Jamines, which he calls “he first crisis faced by the city’s new police chief,” and “a hard challenge to the reformed LAPD’s community policing strategies.”

Here’s how it opens:

Not that long ago, I joked with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck about his success in keeping the department out of the headlines—always an accomplishment for a big-city chief. Then came the September 5, officer-involved shooting death of Manuel Jamines, in Westlake, just west of downtown Los Angeles.

Read the rest.

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LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO DO THIS WEEKEND? GO SEE WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Some are likening it to an An Inconvenient Truth, except that this documentary is about the U.S. education system and packs a very different kind of emotional punch.

Here’s how the Washington Post review opens:

Many documentaries make you cry. They often present seemingly insolvable problems. But “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” filmmaker Davis Guggenheim’s scathing, moving critique of American public education, makes you actually want to do something after you dry your eyes….