Twenty-seven years ago, Devon Gaster was in jail, but had started down a path that would change his life forever.
Devon’s experience healing himself and his family through restorative justice has taught him that being accountable taking responsibility makes it possible to heal and change. With the right tools and support, Gaster writes, men can learn about intimate partner violence and stop their abuse.
Mental health care workers are in high demand across California, especially in the rural pockets of the state. In the Eastern Sierra, providers are working to expand their in-person services while fighting insurance companies to be included in their networks. But the challenges are immense, especially when it comes to psychiatric care. Here’s what some providers are doing to increase access.
The Affordable Care Act has saved countless families with medically complex children, including columnist Jennifer McLelland’s. Her son was born without a functional airway and quickly racked up more than $1 million in medical bills. The ACA protected her family– but these protections are not guaranteed.
Two years ago, California voters overwhelmingly decided to enshrine the right to abortion services in the state constitution. And it wasn’t just coastal liberals: voters in the rural north, Central Valley, and Sierra Nevada all voted in favor of the proposition, despite also voting largely for Republican offices.
But many of these residents still lack access and have yet to implement effective solutions.
For Lisbet Pérez, the restorative justice framework helped her family heal after leaving an abusive relationship. She was skeptical at first, but soon found a way to reconnected with her children’s father.
Through the process, she learned that her family could grow and heal through their own resilience, and that leaning on the support of her community would create the safe environment her children needed.
When it comes to marginalized communities, there’s a historically justified suspicion of formal organizations.
But there are solutions that all groups using restorative justice approaches can implement to be more inclusive.
Today, there are 77 health care districts across California, providing care for tens of millions of people, mostly in rural areas. Inyo County, where Bishop is located, now has two.
But few community members know these districts exist or that they may be governing health care in their region.
With the help of a faith-based restorative justice program in Los Angeles I was able to choose forgiveness and find healing for myself and my son.
I made a decision that I was not going to raise my son with hatred. I was going to show him grace in an empowering way. It became my goal to bring about restoration.
Trixie is a young woman in her mid-20s who recently left an abusive relationship with a boyfriend. She came to my workplace, Walnut Avenue Family & Women’s Center, in Santa Cruz, seeking help from our restorative justice program.
What she was looking for wasn’t an accountability process for her abusive ex-boyfriend, but a means of addressing the trust broken by her friends who didn’t believe that the abuse was real.
California and Canada have about the same number of people – 39 million in California, 35 million in Canada. Both jurisdictions legalized medical aid in dying in 2016. Both have similar medical systems.
Yet in 2022, 13,241 Canadians took advantage of medical aid in dying, while only 853 Californians did so. Why the big difference?