For the second time in as many months, a survey of Californians has found they are more aware than ever of the potential need for long-term health care in the future. But, paradoxically, fewer are taking steps to prepare for that costly possibility.
Month: September 2011
During National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, the Salinas Y gets local kids up and running and teaches them to eat smart – habits they can take home to their families.
Prison reform tossed responsibility for low-level offenders to the county. Kern County says it will do a better job than the state in dealing with people who have broken the law – because it has no choice. But like other counties, they would have liked more money and ideas for managing people convicted of crimes.
Shelter has always been a problem for people leaving prisons – felons typically aren’t welcome in public housing. That might change soon in Los Angeles County, which is bracing for an influx of low-level offenders they are newly responsible for managing, as are counties throughout the state. So how are other jurisdictions responding to their housing crisis?
As the U.S. population ages in the coming decades, the need for some sort of insurance to cover long-term health care expenses – such as in-home support services – will also rise. With this in mind, Congress and the Obama Administration last year included in the controversial health care reform act a little-discussed provision to implement a government-run long-term health care insurance program known as CLASS in October 2012.
Merced County sees the October realignment of state prisoners into county supervision as a chance to try something different in their approach to crime prevention. “Evidence-based practices show the more you do with lower-risk offenders the more damage you do,” said Scott Ball, chief probation officer and chair of the committee overseeing AB 109, the legislation mandating a historic shift in managing people convicted of non-violent crimes.
Despite a mandatory vaccination law that followed a pertussis outbreak last year, some California students are returning to class this fall without their TDAP booster shots. The immunization law, passed last September, required that junior high and high schoolers show proof of a TDAP booster, the vaccination that prevents pertussis, also known as whooping cough, by the first day of school. Another bill passed this summer gave students an additional 30 days to get vaccinated.
“All of us are in frantic mode,” said Contra Costa County’s Chief Probation Officer Phil Kader. He spoke as he passed out a tentative budget to the 14 criminal justice and social service professionals who attended a recent budget meeting of the Public Safety Realignment Executive Committee for Contra Costa County.
On an overcast morning recently, the New Roots Community Farm in City Heights was awake with the spicy-sweet smell of mint. Noeuth Ith, a Cambodian refugee who usually harvests the herb in small bunches to make spring rolls at home, was quickly hacking bouquets of green leaves from their bases and dunking them in water. With the help of other New Roots farmers, she boxed more than 30 pounds of the fragrant leaves to sell. A first for the International Rescue Committee farm, the large-scale harvest was commissioned by Earnest Eats, a granola company based in Solana Beach.
For years, Santa Ana residents were scared away from their parks by high crime rates. Mattresses, drugs and other indications of illicit activities littered the park grounds. Public trails and walking areas were gradually being converted to dumping grounds and destinations for crime, residents told Gerardo Mouet, executive director of the city’s Parks and Recreation department.