After serving time in jail, a three-step program helps men in Santa Cruz county make a new life after a felony conviction.
Month: May 2013
Gov. Jerry Brown and his fellow Democrats in the state Legislature are headed for a showdown over the way California pays for its public schools. Brown is proposing a revolutionary plan to give extra state aid to schools that teach large numbers of poor and immigrant children. But he is getting pushback from some in the Legislature who think his plan goes too far – at the expense of the general-purpose money that every school district receives.
More than one million people in California suffer from mental illness – the largest number of any state. When the final phase of the new health care law starts in January of next year, more California residents than ever before will be able to seek help for problems ranging from depression, anxiety, and addiction to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But mental health providers in the state’s Central Valley are unprepared for an influx of thousands of patients.
When Charles Garcia looks at a garden, he doesn’t see plants. He sees medicine, heritage, art and magic. A curandero, Garcia practices traditional folk healing – curanderismo – the way his mother, grandmother and grandfather did. “It’s a combination of what the Spanish padres, the ranchers and the natives practiced,” Garcia said. “That was the beginning of California curanderismo.” Curanderismo is still widely used in Mexico, Central and South America, and is making a comeback here in California and across the Southwest, especially as immigrant populations grow.
California’s sweeping criminal justice reform plan, in place since October 2011, was meant to sharply reduce the state’s prison population. But the changes may have also had the unintended consequence of passing along the biggest problem associated with overcrowding – poor health care – to county jails.
Under the Affordable Care Act, health care providers are required to offer domestic-violence screening and counseling to all women, and health insurance companies are required pay for those services. Health care providers statewide have been working to implement the new requirements since they took effect in Aug. 2012. But activists and those who work with domestic violence victims say the provisions are but still not enough to solve the problem.
A revolution in the oil industry that’s been taking place in Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Dakota is poised to sweep through California’s oil patch, with the potential to produce hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenue for the state.
But there’s a big catch.
Older adults facing age discrimination or squeezed out by employers looking to cut costs are increasingly finding entrepreneurship a surprisingly realistic option in a rugged new economy.
In 2000, California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 36, a ballot measure that offers non-violent drug offenders treatment instead of jail. But now the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act is on life support, if not altogether dead, despite data that shows it has saved taxpayers money and tamped down recidivism among its participants.
Right now, young people are generally benefitting from protective changes ushered in by Obama care. But many advocates and experts wonder if the Affordable Care Act will actually make care more affordable for young people – or if the young will simply end up paying the price of lowering costs for everyone else.