As school students settle into the start of a new year, some low-income kids in districts around the state are getting free supplies to set them up for success. In September, members of the Oakland-based nonprofit K to College partnered with student volunteers from the University of California, Los Angeles to give out $45,000 in school supplies and dental kits.
School lunches are a lot more colorful this year as cafeterias across the state have started the first of several nationwide changes to the federal lunch and breakfast programs that provide free and reduced-lunches to low-income children.
Even as a Senate bill was signed into law in August requiring the California Department of Veteran Affairs to have a more comprehensive strategic plan on meeting the needs of homeless veterans, those service officers working on the ground know how hard it can be to work with a population that is often transitory.
Michael Flowers, 12, remembers well what it was like when he was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Flowers was 8 when his mother first suspected he might have the illness because he had started drinking a lot of water and urinating frequently.
For the low-income and unemployed, food insecurity is a lingering reminder of the Great Recession.
While there are many agencies that provide in-home help for adults with temporary, chronic and terminal illnesses, too few offer these services for children. That’s where Coastal Kids Home Care comes in.
A cancer diagnosis in the central Valley may mean traveling to specialized care for some patients. Events like the relay for life, held last month in Salinas, raise funds to make treatment possible.
As Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System’s board of directors looks for a financial partner to pull it out of a bind that threatens future service in the community, a state politician is taking aim at one of the policies that put the Salinas hospital in a precarious state.
Lisa Krieger soon learned how difficult end-of-life decisions can be. She was an only child, and deciding how far to go to try to extend her father’s life fell to her. “It is like being on a freeway of technology where you can’t find the exit ramps,” she says. “I learned the system is built to save people. It is easy to get care and very hard to say no.
A series of short plays, created with Latino families in mind, aims to create fun and educational fare about healthy eating.