Youth 411: Youth in the News
Volume 2, Number 5, March 1-15, 2007
Contents
State Watch
Research
Government
STATE WATCH
- In Texas, a faith-based agency opens a support program for youth transitioning out of foster care outside of urban areas.
- Gang violence continues to rise in Los Angeles.
- Universities across the nation are banning smoking on campus.
- In Missouri, there is a gap in services for homeless youth ages 17-21.
- In Worcester, Massachusetts, community members question funding for jobs for at-risk youth at a economic development hearing.
- Big Brothers Big Sisters expands its efforts in Florida.
RESEARCH
- The Office of National Drug Control Policy releases a publication about adolescents abusing prescription drugs.
- A new survey shows that on any given night in Minnesota, nearly 700 kids under 18 are homeless.
- A study shows that children who are more intelligent at the age of 6 are less likely to experience trauma by age 17 or develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
- The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board releases its first report on underage and high-risk drinking.
GOVERNMENT
- The Boston City Council discusses how sports and jobs could reduce the city’s youth crime rate.
- In Minnesota, community leaders testify on legislation addressing Asian juvenile crime prevention.
- In Wisconsin, proposed legislation requiring vaccinations against HPV loses support.
- Oregon’s House Majority Leader Dave Hunt introduces a bill requiring schools to adopt a policy against electronic bullying.
- In Utah, a bill awaiting the governor’s signature would allow driver’s licenses to be suspended for underage drinking.
ARTICLES
TEXAS
Baptist Agency Offers PAL to Young Adults Leaving Foster Care
March 9, 2007
By Craig Bird, The Baptist Standard
Baptist Child & Family Services has opened Texas’ first Preparation for Adult Living support program outside of urban areas for youths aging out of foster care.
The Kerrville Transition Center will serve hundreds of foster and at-risk youth ages 15 to 23 across a large swath of the Hill Country, including Boerne, Comfort, Fredericksburg, Junction, Leakey and Medina.
“Our Preparation for Adult Living programs cover 28 counties stretching from Victoria to Del Rio, and I have long been concerned with how we could deliver the same quality of service as we do in San Antonio,” said Terri Hipps, PAL program director for Baptist Child & Family Services, a ministry affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
“The Kerrville Transition Center, in many ways, will be the ‘home’ that young men and women who grow up in foster care usually don’t have.”
The beautifully restored, vintage 1800's house, “Is more than I dreamed. God’s finger prints are all over this. … We know we’re supposed to be here,” Hipps said.
“Two years ago the Legislature said residents of rural areas should have access to the same quality of programs as youth living in cities,” Vicki Coffee-Fletcher, division administrator of Family Focus with Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, told several dozen people who gathered for the grand opening. “BCFS is the first one to respond to that challenge.”
In addition to job skills and interpersonal skills training, hundreds of youth are expected to get help from Baptist Child & Family Services with money management, housing and transportation, health and safety issues and planning for a successful future, Hipps explained.
The transition center offers meeting rooms, computers/internet access, and even a washer and dryer for emergency laundry.
Other agencies such as Alamo WorkSource, Good Samaritan Community Services and Avalon Social Services will have offices at the center, providing ready access to a wide range of programs.
“When Child Protective Services removes children from their homes for reasons of abuse and neglect and places them with foster families, the larger community becomes their ‘parents.’ And a parent’s ultimate score card is what your children do with their lives after they leave the nest,” according to Janie Cook, executive director of Youth and Teen services for Baptist Child & Family Services.
“Most young adults who haven’t been in a foster program continue to get some sort of support (financial and otherwise) from their parents into their mid-20s. BCFS recognizes that reality and strives to support those youth and young adults into productive, successful adulthood.”
Hipps provided specific examples.
“Children aren’t placed in foster care because they are ‘bad’ kids. They have bad home situations. Because they grow up in foster homes it is not unusual for a young man or woman to age out without knowing how to open a checking account much less how to manage money. Often they don’t even have a driver’s license” she said.
“Just becoming a legal adult doesn’t guarantee you have the ability to live successfully independently. Where do you go for Christmas and July 4 if you’ve lived in multiple homes growing up but are no longer a part of any of them? PAL, and now KTC, will connect them to opportunities to learn survival skills and connect them with each other and staff that really care about them so both their information needs and their emotional needs are met.”
The Kerrville facility resulted from “a Dream Team of foundations,” Hipps said. When Baptist Child & Family Services started exploring the possibilities, Kerrville’s Floyd A. and Kathleen C. Callioux Foundation provided start up funding and invested with the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country to purchase the home. Finally, the Meadows Foundation heard about the project and told Hipps it wanted “to fill in funding gaps you have—and fund the restoration of the facility and two of the staff positions.”
“Paired with the enthusiastic support from throughout the Kerrville community, we were bound to succeed,” Hipps said.
Three Baptist Child & Family Services staff members in addition to Hipps will work from the Kerrville center. Hipps will divide her time between the San Antonio and Kerrville offices. Other programs will provide their own staff that will be housed in the facility.
“I am thrilled that, once again, our staff has moved to fill an unmet need in the lives of youth,” Baptist Child & Family Services President Kevin Dinnin said. “Terri and her team are on a mission to help foster care alumni survive and thrive within a spiritually nurturing environment, which is why we are in Kerrville. The opportunity to partner with several other human needs agencies and the good folks of the Hill Country is an added bonus.”
CALIFORNIA
A Friday night on the front lines of L.A.'s gang wars
Los Angeles saw a 14 percent jump in gang-related violent crime last year.
March 07, 2007
By Daniel B. Wood, The Christian Science Monitor
Sgt. Sean Colomey patrols the most gang-ridden neighborhood in the gang capital of America. It is his job to lead 28 specially trained police through an area where assault weapons seem as common as grass, graffiti "tags" define the turf, and 7 of every 100 residents are members of one gang or another.
He is just the man Police Commissioner Anthony Pacheco wants to know.
A wave of gang violence, one that some say is the most vicious in city history, has engulfed Los Angeles, and the city's police are mounting an equally historic response. It is Commissioner Pacheco's job to assess how effectively the LAPD is confronting the gangs – whether it has the tools and personnel it needs, whether police tactics stay within the law. He sees the response as a huge and necessary undertaking. No less than "the future safety of L.A. is at stake," Pacheco says.
So it is that on a recent Friday night Sergeant Colomey, the gang expert, and Pacheco, a civilian appointed to serve as one of five LAPD commissioners, meet in the parking lot of the Southeast Division headquarters at the corner of 108th and Main Streets. Pacheco will ride along on this shift – it's a chance to pick Colomey's brain about gang rivalries, to catch the cop's-eye view of the action. This ride-along, like others he's been on over the past 18 months, will help the commissioner decide for himself whether the police crackdown is having an effect.
It's just one night and just one lens on the gang problem, but Pacheco feels it's a vital perspective to gain.
Colomey slides on a bulletproof vest, and hands one to the commissioner. Velcro closes them tight, but it's small comfort. The vests can stop bullets from handguns, but not from AK47s. A Chinese-made copy of the notorious Russian assault rifle can be had on the streets for about $100.
"It's all over the place," Colomey says of the gun. "It's a military weapon that will send a bullet through you and the next guy and the house next door and keep on going."
The latest crime report came as something of a shock to many Los Angelenos. Crime rates had dropped citywide for five straight years, mirroring the trend in other major metropolises. But last year L.A. as a whole saw a 14 percent jump in gang-related violent crime. Police say there are 39,000 gang members in Los Angeles – and 15,000 of them are active in the compact area where Colomey and Pacheco will be on patrol.
Colomey, though, was not shocked. His division, which encompasses Watts and South Central L.A., has logged roughly 500 shootings a year for the past few years.
On their ride together through this 9.3-square-mile community – 200,000 people boxed in by four freeways – Pacheco and Colomey are taking a kind of inventory of 65 gangs who police say rule these streets like terrorists. "They do everything that terrorist groups do ... rule by fear and intimidation, the threat of violence and murder in every area of these neighborhoods," says Colomey, a 17-year veteran.
It's the apparent spread of gang violence to additional parts of L.A. that has set in motion a kind of "Marshall Plan" attack on the problem, of which the LAPD response is one part. So far, police department action includes unprecedented collaboration with the feds: the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). It includes injunctions that restrict the activities of certain gang members and nuisance-abatement crackdowns that target gang hangouts. It includes formal lists of "most wanted" members and "most wanted" gangs and better-coordinated ways to track and prosecute them.
But there's also plain old enforcement, meaning a bigger show of force and more arrests. This night would make that clear.
About half of Colomey's gang enforcement detail is on duty at any given time, so the sergeant is set for a casual tour of "non-frontline" duty with the commissioner.
That plan changes in the first minute of his shift.
They set off first for the scene of an earlier shooting. But the parking lot is still visible in the rearview mirror when Colomey and five other cruisers are summoned for backup in a cocaine bust just blocks in the other direction. That's a sizable backup squad, but Colomey says the extra hands will be needed for crowd control – local residents who often press the perimeter of an arrest scene.
At least 100 locals have gathered in front yards, in fact. Some are taunting the cops and videotaping the onslaught of cruisers. A suspect is already in handcuffs, after an officer felled him with pepper spray. Police say the man is a gang member who was selling rock cocaine in plain view as a cruiser drove by, and that he had ignored police orders to "show your hands." "People from outside the area ask us, is it really that blatant ... the disregard for authority and police?" says Colomey. "I tell them, yes, they are not deterred by us at all."
As Colomey walks between officers at the scene, a woman with a video camera to her eye says, "You don't have no business here. You can't come in here without a warrant. Go ahead, just try to come in here. I've got my eye on you...."
The antagonism is a testament to a long and tense history between the LAPD and Watts, a patchwork neighborhood of single-story, single-family homes, most with manicured front yards but barred windows, too. This is one of the places where riots erupted after police were acquitted in the 1994 Rodney King beating case, and again in 1995 and 1996 after the O.J. Simpson trials.
Now relations are taut again as police try to clamp down on violence they say is rooted in bitter rivalries between black and Hispanic gangs.
"There are four major wars going on right now [within the Southeast Division]," Colomey tells Pacheco, ticking off pairs of combatants.
The Southeast Division is not the only part of Los Angeles that appears to be spiraling closer toward race war. In recent months, altercations between black and Hispanic gang members have spilled from L.A. streets into the county jail and back to the streets, a vicious cycle of revenge and competition that has bred more violence. Even among law-abiding residents here, black-Latino relations have soured, as some feel they are losing out on jobs, affordable housing, and public spaces such as parks.
The result is a thick layer of fear that, some neighborhood activists say, has descended on this city like a pot lid. In all his years of duty, says Colomey, he's never seen the climate so foreboding in so many pockets of L.A., including Watts.
In such a climate, a kind of siege mentality can set in. Driving past a liquor store at 87th Street and Compton Avenue, Colomey points out groups of girls outside and in cars across the street, and he notes that police don't have the luxury of assuming they are as innocent as they look.
"Many, many times we find that it is the women who hold the guns for their gang members, do the shootings, and aid in the escapes," he says.
The shootings, he adds, are always about three things: "drugs, money, guns."
Later, he adds a fourth: respect.
"Some guys might go to a dance and hit on a girl who's a girlfriend of an opposing gang [member], and her boyfriend shoots them. It can be as simple as that," says Colomey. "Then you got a retaliation war going on."
From behind the wheel, Colomey offers his assessment of how well the LAPD's antigang measures are working. Chief William Bratton's new emphasis on coordinating with the ATF, FBI, and DEA is a dramatic change that is helping to gather evidence and prosecute gang members in ways that were impossible before, says the sergeant. "It used to be .... we didn't play well in the sandbox together. That's all over now."
Increased police backup from nongang units, another new initiative, is also creating a bigger show of force, he says. Several federal operations are in progress – attempts to disrupt and eventually dismantle gangs deemed to be the most troublesome and vicious.
By taking frequent ride-alongs, Pacheco says he can take note of mundane problems such as broken radios, an insufficient number of cruiser-based computers that connect police with databases and precinct dispatchers, and the need for cruiser-mounted video cameras. The videocams were called for after the Rodney King beating, but the LAPD is only now getting around to funding them. The Southeast Division is slated to get its first cruiser cams in coming months.
Another new tack is increased coordination with parole and probation officers. More of them have set up office in district headquarters, and the closer proximity to police is resulting in a better ability to give tipoffs about who is back on the streets from jail or prison.
Colomey drives Pacheco past three of his roughest neighborhoods: Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Heights, and Jordan Downs – housing projects with numbered buildings and bars on windows. A year ago, video surveillance cameras were installed on streetlight poles at Jordan Downs, enough to cover every inch of a six-block development. Since then, violent crime in the area dropped 41 percent, Colomey says.
"You are looking at what was one of the most violent and dangerous areas for violent crime in the entire US," says Colomey. "We think we are onto something that really works."
Pacheco says he has been distressed, on other ride-alongs, to see young children out and about at 11:30 p.m. or later. To him, it points to a culture of permissiveness, of parental absence and drug use. But it also yields more deaths of innocents, children killed by sprays of gang bullets aimed at someone else.
But this Friday night ride-along will end abruptly, well before 11:30.
Not long after leaving the cocaine bust, three separate radio frequencies crackle to life. It's bad: Shots have been fired at an officer, and the officer has returned fire. The dispatch continues, adding detail: Two suspects, alleged gang members, are fleeing in a black Thunderbird, apparently after having shot a man on the sidewalk.
Colomey flips on the siren and speeds down back streets, looking for the getaway car. He's on the radio, directing the response. A high-speed chase ensues, ending in a crash between the Thunderbird and another vehicle.
Arriving seconds later at the crash scene, Colomey and Pacheco see an overturned car, its driver lying on the sidewalk, and the Thunderbird, minus its front end ... and its occupants. The "perps," said to be carrying guns, have escaped into the neighborhood.
The next 90 minutes see the arrival of two helicopters, at least a dozen squad cars, three canine units (complete with assault rifles and Belgian dogs), several SWAT units, and three armored vehicles. Because an officer fired his weapon during the incident, and because two perpetrators with guns are at large, the megawatt response also includes the arrivals of Assistant Chief James McDonnell and South Bureau Chief Charlie Beck.
While copters overhead shine spotlights a half-mile from the scene, canine units begin going house to house looking for the suspects, a search that will last until morning.
Later, Pacheco sums up the Friday-night ride-along, in the context of dozens of others he has made as commissioner. For all the hoopla of the high-speed pursuit, multiple shootings, 'copters and canine units, the evening was also typically revealing in many respects, he says. Foremost, it showed "how thin the 'thin blue line' is," he says, how outgunned law officers are compared with the number of gangs and gang members.
It showed how exposed the police are to danger, leaving their cruisers to cuff gang members in hostile places. It showed, he says, the dedication and continued resolve of veteran officers amid a situation that has gone from bad to worse.
And, Pacheco adds, it underscored the conventional wisdom of those who've watched the gang crisis in L.A. for decades: "You can't arrest your self out of a gang problem."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is in line with that thinking, too. On Monday, he called for a statewide summit to forge a counterattack on street gangs – one that would involve both law-enforcement and gang-prevention measures.
It remains to seen whether L.A.'s extensive plan for facing down gangs – including job and community development, after-school programs, and other investments – can work.
But Pacheco, for one, is determined to see that the gangs' grip on Los Angeles – which he characterizes as "wildly out of control" is diminished. His part of the answer, law enforcement, "is moving forward to confront gangs," he says.
At the same time, he is unwavering that "robust crime suppression must not violate laws." And he has taken a place on the front lines to help make sure that is the case.
UNIVERSITIES
More colleges banning smoking
March 1, 2007
By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY
Colleges are snuffing out smoking everywhere on campus, even in outdoor light-up spots such as main quads and sidewalks.
At least 43 campuses from California to New Jersey have gone smoke-free, a trend that is accelerating, according to Americans for Non-smokers' Rights. Most have been community colleges and commuter schools, but more large universities with student housing are debating campus-wide bans, says the group's Bronson Frick.
"We want our institution to make a statement about doing the right things when it comes to good health," says Chuck Kupchella, president of the 13,000-student University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He intends to transform UND into a tobacco-free zone. "Smokers still will have rights, but just not on our campus."
Nearly 31% of full-time college students smoke, compared with about 25% of the overall population, according to the federal government's 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Students form lifelong habits in college, so reducing their exposure to cigarettes may have a lasting effect, says Betsy Foy of the American College Health Association. "If you're not allowed to smoke on campus, if you can't buy tobacco products on campus, it will definitely deter some students from smoking," she says.
At Indiana University in Bloomington, some students are opposing a proposal to make all eight IU campuses smoke-free. Two have been since August.
Last month, the Indiana Daily Student called the proposal an "infringement on personal liberties," especially for students in dorms. Smoking already is prohibited inside and 30 feet around dorms, says IU spokeswoman Susan Williams. A full ban could bar students from smoking in dorm parking lots.
"I can vote for president of the United States. I can go to war," says sophomore Alex Wukmer, 19, who smokes about a pack a day. "But I can't necessarily smoke a cigarette because they're afraid I'll make a bad choice?"
At UND, Kupchella has won support from staff and faculty groups. Last Sunday, the student government voted for his plan. "It seems like it's the right way to go," student body president Nathan Martindale says.
Youngstown State University in Ohio implemented a policy in December that allows smoking only in surface parking lots and on sidewalks adjacent to roads.
There have been violators, but the school is focused more on informing people than enforcing the policy, says spokesman Ron Cole. "We're not going to have the smoking police out there handcuffing students and employees," he says.
At the University of Iowa, a committee of staff, faculty and students recommended in November that the campus go smoke-free as early as July 2009.
Susan Johnson, an associate provost, says the 30,000-student school is preparing for an intense debate. "Our goal here is not to coerce individuals to give up smoking," she says. "Our goal is reduce the amount of secondhand smoke everybody is exposed to."
MISSOURI
Homeless youths trouble workers in aid professions
March 14, 2007
By Sara Agnew, Columbiatribune.com
At least twice a month, staff members at Rainbow House receive a call from a desperate teenager looking for a place to stay.
Most of the youths have run away, often leaving homes where drug-addicted adults present more danger to the teen than the risks of the streets, said Heather Windham, shelter clinical coordinator at Rainbow House, a facility for abused and neglected children.
Sometimes, a parent calls, searching for a safe place to take a teenage son or daughter whose behavior is destroying the family.
Either way, the phone calls are heart-wrenching. But Windham has nowhere to send them.
There is a gap in services for young people ages 17 to 21 with serious issues and no place to go, she said. "We want to do something for this population."
Representatives of more than a dozen organizations met yesterday at Rainbow House, 1611 Towne Drive, to talk about meeting the needs of homeless teenagers in Columbia. Ideally, Windham and the Rainbow House staff would create a facility providing transitional housing for homeless teens and young adults as well as giving them access to counseling, education and life-skills training. Other ideas include creating a drop-in center and employing peer counselors who might be more effective than adults in getting fellow teens off the streets and into rehabilitation programs.
"What is the community willing to accept - a drop-in center or transitional house?" asked Cindy Burks of Boys and Girls Town.
The group agreed to meet again at 5 p.m. April 4 at Rainbow House.
"These kids need more than shelter," Windham said. "Many of these young people aren’t ready to live independently. They don’t have the life skills, education or family support to move from being dependent to being self-sufficient."
Consequently, many of the teens resort to drug abuse, crime and prostitution for survival. Some live like vagabonds, depending on the good will of friends and acquaintances.
Vicki Buss, a child and youth services coordinator with the Missouri Department of Mental Health, said the situation is often complicated because many of the young people are emotionally stunted by emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
"Chronologically they might be 18, but emotionally they are 10 or 12," she said.
Because many of the homeless youngsters have spent years in foster care or other institutional settings, they often resist seeking help for fear of being placed back into the system, Buss said.
"Their push to be independent is often greater" than the average teen, Burks said.
But they are less equipped to deal with adult responsibilities.
According to the Boone County Juvenile Office, there were 188 runaway youth referrals in 2005. That same year, the National Runaway Hotline fielded 230 calls from the 573 area code regarding homeless and runaway youths.
Windham said that between 2003 and 2006, 27 students in Columbia Public Schools grades nine through 12 reported being homeless.
Lorenzo Lawson, who operates Youth Empowerment Zone in central Columbia, said many of the homeless youths he encounters have "aged out" of the system or escaped dysfunctional homes where they felt more at risk than on the streets.
"Often these teenagers go back to the home to rescue younger brothers and sisters," he said.
Nia Imani, who serves on the board of Fun City Youth Academy, said she has tried to take in homeless teenagers and help them.
"The frustration is, I can’t do it all for them," she said. "And they can’t stay focused long enough to help themselves. They haven’t been parented because they didn’t have a parent. They try to help each other, but they don’t have the skills."
MASSACHUSETTS
Jobs for at-risk youth pushed during city economic hearing
March 7, 2007
By Shaun Sutner, Telegram.com
Patrick administration officials got an at-times chilly reception at an economic development hearing here yesterday hosted by city lawmakers, absorbing criticism for underfunding local youth jobs programs, failing to reopen a branch of the state anti-discrimination agency in the city and a sharp funding increase for the new labor and workforce development secretariat.
State Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. , D-Worcester, who chaired the session with Sen. Harriette L. Chandler, D-Worcester, told Suzanne Bump, Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s new Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, that the state should direct more dollars Worcester’s way for summer jobs programs for at-risk youth.
“While Boston ate up the bulk of the money, Worcester is a fast-growing community that is not getting its fair share,” Mr, Augustus said at the hearing, held in the ninth-floor conference room of the city’s Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences campus.
Mr. Patrick, in his fiscal 2008 budget proposal released last week, proposed boosting summer job funding by $2 million to $6.7 million, but Mr. Augustus noted that last year the state’s second-largest city got only $300,000 of the total amount, or about 6 percent.
“Did you look at the distribution formula?” Mr. Augustus asked Ms. Bump. “If we up it to $6.7 million we have to get something more with our population.”
Ms. Bump responded that state economic development officials have looked at the formula and have met with Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray, the former Worcester mayor, about it — a sign state officials are taking the issue seriously, according to city lawmakers.
She commended the city for running a successful summer jobs program by lining up many private businesses to participate, and she said communities that work with such private partners should be rewarded with more state funding.
“The formula can be made more equitable that it historically has been,” Ms. Bump said.
Mr. Augustus also went on the attack over the city’s persistent lack of a presence by the Massachusetts Commission on Discrimination.
The agency, which investigates civil rights discrimination complaints, opened a satellite office here in 2000 but closed it a few years later. Recently, an administrator from the Springfield office worked in the city occasionally, but he has left on paternity leave, Mr. Augustus said.
“I’d like you to look at reopening that office. There are 10 or 11 people working in the Springfield office,” Mr. Augustus said. “Worcester certainly deserves that kind of presence and access to those kinds of services.”
Ms. Bump suggested that the recent transfer of MCAD from the division of administration and finance to the workforce and labor department should result in financial savings that could provide funding for a Worcester office. “There’s a real desire to work with you,” she said.
Mrs. Chandler, meanwhile, questioned Ms. Bump, a former state representative, about funding for the new secretariat, which combines previously separate labor and work-force development agencies.
The old labor department had an administrative budget of $378,600, while the new agency costs $1.7 million to run under Mr. Patrick’s budget.
“I need to understand better why there is such an enormous difference between the two,” Mrs. Chandler said.
Ms. Bump said much of the increase is because of four new positions in the combined agency: her own, the secretary; a director of legislative relations; a special assistant; and a press person. The new jobs cost a total of $290,000. The agency is also doing a $350,000 study of vacant job slots, she said.
FLORIDA
At-risk kids not a gamble for youth groups
From Big Brothers Big Sisters to the Boys and Girls Club, nonprofit agencies are branching into untapped areas.
March 8, 2007
By Anne Marie Apollo, The Times-Union
Within a few weeks, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida will make its first match in Putnam County.
Although children must have at least one parent in jail to qualify, the organization still expects about 400 kids in the rural community meet the bill.
Urban problems don't disappear outside Jacksonville's city limits. With 45,000 children estimated to be "at risk" in Northeast Florida - vulnerable to drug use, crime and dropping out of school - an increasing number of social service agencies are expanding their reach in the collar counties.
Steve Gilbert, chief operating officer for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida, said he believes the need has always been there in many areas outside the city. The challenge for the nonprofit agencies that work to keep kids on the right path is to go in and identify it.
"There is a 70 percent chance that those kids will also be in prison down the road without intervention," he said of children served by the program, which the organization calls Mentoring Children of Promise. "We can hopefully go in and break that cycle."
In west St. Augustine another agency that serves children, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida, recently started fundraising for a new $1 million building.
The organization first opened a club there in 2005 that now serves 70 children a day.
With a new building, it hopes to more than double that number, said its president, Deborah Verges.
The demand is there, she said. The same is true in other outlying areas.
In August, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida opened its second branch in Nassau County, where it has been a steadying presence for children after school and on weekends since 2000.
The organization, which has eight locations in Jacksonville and is in the process of building a ninth, has considered the need in Hastings in St. Johns County, as well, and has been asked to expand into Clay County.
Growth into those areas isn't about the need, Verges said.
"The need is going to be everywhere," she said. "It's about money."
Operating the new Nassau County club will take $250,000 a year, she said. Those resources have to come from the community, she added.
In St. Augustine, the new building will go up in Chase Park, on property leased long-term from the city.
Ann Breidenstein, executive director of the United Way of St. Johns County, reels off the list of child-oriented organizations operating there: The police youth league, the YMCA, Scouting.
But as the region grows, need is cropping up in new places.
In February, the United Way formed an advisory board to examine needs in swiftly growing northern portions of the county.
Counseling and prevention programs, help for ailments that cross all economic boundaries, are lacking, she said.
"I think there is always a need if for no other reason than prevention," she said.
That's the goal of most groups working with at-risk kids.
Big Brothers Big Sisters, which pairs children and teens with adult mentors, made 925 matches last year.
Gilbert said this year it wants to see 1,250 kids in the program and by 2011, wants to quadruple that number.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida recently began plans to step up operations in Clay County, which Gilbert called untapped.
"It's a large area," he said of the region. "There are a lot of kids out there to be seen."
ONDCP
Report Sheds Light on Teen Prescription Drug Abuse
The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has published "Teens and Prescription Drugs: An Analysis of Recent Trends on the Emerging Drug Threat."
Recent studies and reports indicate that the intentional abuse by adolescents of such prescription drugs as pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, and sedatives is a growing concern. The ONDCP report examines this emerging threat, which has seen the number of new abusers of prescription drugs, age 12–17, match the figure for marijuana.
Resources:
To access the report, visit http://www.mediacampaign.org/teens/brochure.pdf.
MINNESOTA
Survey finds hundreds of kids alone and on the streets each night
March 14, 2007
By Larissa Anderson, Minnesota Public Radio
Nearly half of all people staying in homeless shelters are under age 21, according to a new report on homelessness in Minnesota due out Wednesday. Some of these kids are with their families. But the new survey by the Wilder Foundation shows on any given night in Minnesota nearly 700 kids under 18 are on the streets or in shelters and alone.
You'd never know Kay was homeless by looking at him. The trim 17-year old makes a black t-shirt and pants look fashionable, and he sports the kind of thick, black-rimmed glasses you'd see on a young intellectual at a college campus coffee house.
But Kay lost his home last April after a fight with his mom turned violent. It was during this fight that he came out to his mother.
"I'd rather be homeless than the risk of going blind because your mother sprays oven cleaner in your eyes because she's mad. That's not safe for me," he says.
Kay, who's requested MPR withhold his full name over fear of reprisal for talking about his personal situation, describes himself as a Somali kid from the suburbs. He now lives in what's called transitional housing. But when he hit the streets, he didn't feel safe going to an adult shelter.
"It's very easy for people like to actually take advantage of you as like a 17-year old youth that looks very innocent, it's scary."
Katie Ann Kennedy also knows what it's like to fear for her safety in a shelter for adults.
"I was scared out of my mind the first time I went to an adult shelter and I cried the entire night," she says
Kennedy works part-time at Safe Zone, a resource center for homeless youth, and she stops in a coffee shop after her shift. She's now 19 and she also lives in transitional housing. But she became homeless five years ago when her mom moved to another state and left her behind.
"If you're young, it can just be really scary when one day you go over to your friend's house and you can't stay there that night and you go over to your other friend's house and they're not there and here it's like 9:00 at night and there's nowhere for you to go. You're sitting in a McDonald's with 27 cents in your pocket not even enough to get on a bus and go somewhere. It's probably the scariest, most lonely, empty feeling in the whole world."
On any given night in Minnesota, according to the the Wilder study, nearly 650 kids under 18 have nowhere to go for the night. There are under 100 emergency beds for them in the metro area. With these odds, Katie wound up in an adult shelter. There, she met a man who attacked her when she rejected his sexual advances.
"He grabbed me by my hair and slammed my head against the wall because I didn't like him like that," she says.
Her experience in the adult shelter is exactly what youth shelters want to help young people avoid. An adult shelter means a mat on the floor with hundreds of older strangers in the same space. But at a youth shelter, young people are separated by gender, and they may even get their own room.
Monica Nilsson, a homelessness worker formerly with The Bridge for Youth, one of only six youth shelters in the metro area, opens the door to one of the shelter's rooms.
"Well, (it's) like any other teenager's bedroom," she says.
The floor is carpeted with clothes and magazines.
"Some girls will be with us for one night and we'll never see them again. And some will be with us, unfortunately, for...many weeks to a few months," she says of her clients.
Nilsson says that for every kid that gets a bed here for the night, five are turned away. And, even with all these kids out on the streets, she says the public just doesn't see the problem. These kids are invisible.
"If you're driving down the street, it's pretty easy to point to somebody pushing a shopping cart and think that you recognize homeless people. But, are you ever going to point to someone who's marching behind the school patrols? Never. Are you ever going to point to someone who's handing you your change at the checkout counter? No. But we have youth working at the Bridge, are working at FedEx, are working at Holiday, are working at Kowalski's, and you would never suspect that they're homeless."
So what happens to young people who don't get a shelter bed?
Katie Ann Kennedy has the answer. She says that for homeless teens, finding a place to stay sometimes comes at a cost.
"Maybe they just do some drugs to fit in with some people who have an apartment or maybe they have sex with someone who has an apartment so they can live there and it's just...There's nowhere for them to go so they have to compromise," she says.
But shelter is just a start. Young people like Katie and Kay need more than a bed for the night. Kay puts it like this.
"Like I have friends of mine that they're like 17 just like me, but I'm still in some ways a kid and like sometimes we want someone to take care of us," he says.
Outreach workers and advocates are hoping the proposed Runaway and Homeless Youth Act will pass this session, which would put money towards more emergency beds and other resources for homeless youth.
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Smarter kids have less risk of PTSD
March 13, 2007
By Jase Donaldson
A report in the November 2006 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry states that children who are more intelligent at age 6 may be less likely to experience trauma by age 17 and if they do, may be less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Children with anxiety disorders and conduct problems at age 6 appear more likely to develop PTSD after experiencing traumatic events.
PTSD is a psychological condition that occurs after exposure to a traumatic event such as war, crime, natural disaster or a life-threatening situation or illness. Symptoms include depression, flashbacks, sleep problems, and anxiety. However, not everyone exposed to such an event will develop PTSD. Researchers believe that certain factors – such as gender, race and socioeconomic background – predispose people to experiencing trauma and also increase their risk of developing PTSD follow trauma exposure. These factors may be more critical than the type or severity of the traumatic even in determining who will develop the disorder.
Dr. Naomi Breslau, PhD, and colleagues at Michigan State University in East Lansing, studied 713 children (336 boys and 377 girls) born between 1983 and 1985 at two Michigan hospitals, once located is a lower-income urban area and one in a middle-class suburban community. At age 6, the children were given intelligence tests. Their teachers rated their behavior at school, and parents reported any anxiolytic symptoms, including phobias, separation anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). At age 17, the subjects completed an interview designed to measure the number and type of traumatic events they had experienced in their lives and also how deeply those events affected them, including whether they had ever experienced symptoms of PTSD.
By age 17, 541 participants (75.9%) had experienced a traumatic even and 45 (6.3%, 8.3% of those experiencing trauma) met criteria for PTSD. Those with an IQ greater than 115 at age 6 were less likely to be exposed to any type of trauma, especially violent assaults, and were less likely to develop PTSD by age 17 when they did experience trauma. Those whose teachers reported more conduct problems than normal at age 6 had a higher risk of being exposed to violent crimes like rape, beating or mugging, by age 17. Those children, and also those with anxiety disorders at age 6, were around twice as likely to develop the disorder by age 17 if they had experienced a traumatic event.
Sociodemographic factors also influenced the children’s risk for exposure to trauma and for PTSD. The authors wrote, “We observed in these data the sex-related pattern reported in previous studies, with males more likely to be exposed to trauma, and females more likely to experience PTSD following exposure. As in previous studies, the cumulative incidence of exposure to traumatic events was higher in inner-city (urban) youth than in suburban youth.”
Subjects with higher IQ scores were less prone to developing PTSD even if they had other factors, such as anxiety disorders and an urban background. “The ways in which high IQ might protect from the PTSD effects of traumatic exposure are unclear,” the authors concluded. “The findings underscore the importance of investigating cognitive processes in a person’s responses to challenging and potentially traumatic experiences and the involvement of general intelligence in shaping them.”
PENNSLYVANIA
PLCB Releases Report on High-Risk, Underage Drinking Among Pennsylvania's Youth
March 14, 2007
Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, Earthtimes.org
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board today released the first biennial report to the General Assembly on underage and high-risk drinking in the commonwealth.
The report, which includes state-wide agency prevention initiatives addressing the problem, concludes that while commonwealth prevention efforts are effective for middle school youth, Pennsylvania needs to build on those prevention successes to curb increased consumption by young adults in grade 12 and college.
"This report is significant both in scope and substance," said PLCB Chairman Patrick "PJ" Stapleton. "For the first time, the PLCB and other commonwealth agencies have joined efforts to provide a comprehensive overview of the underage and high-risk drinking problem in our state."
Mandated by Act 85 of 2006, the report presents current information on levels and trends of underage consumption, existing state prevention programs and science-based proven prevention strategies, which can have an impact future programming.
Contributing to the PLCB's production of this report were the Pennsylvania State Police's Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the Pennsylvania Department of Health's Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Programs; PennDOT and the Pennsylvania Department of Education
"The PLCB is proud to lead the fight against underage and high-risk drinking in our commonwealth," said Thomas F. Goldsmith, a PLCB board member, "Our hope is that this report will heighten the public awareness of this issue and provide invaluable insight on which the General Assembly can rely to address high-risk and underage drinking prevention through legislation."
Annually, the PLCB awards grants and hosts strategy conferences to empower parents, educators, law enforcement and community groups with the tools to best address the underage drinking problems in their communities.
Since 2003, with Governor Edward G. Rendell's support, the PLCB has dedicated more than $13 million in total resources to prevent Pennsylvania's youth from underage drinking.
The PLCB is an independent state agency that manages the alcohol beverage industry in Pennsylvania. It is responsible for licensing the possession, sale, storage, transportation, importation and manufacture of wine, spirits and malt or brewed beverages in the commonwealth, as well as operating a system of liquor distribution (retailing) and providing education to prevent alcohol use by minors and misuse by adults
To read the full report, visit http://www.lcb.state.pa.us/PLCB/lib/plcb/alcoholed/plcb_act85_report.pdf
MASSACHUSETTS
Council: Sports will help solve youth violence
March 7, 2007
By Victoria Demaria, The Daily Free Press
In its latest effort to lower the youth crime rate across the city, the Boston City Council said yesterday the city should encourage girls to play sports, citing anecdotal evidence that suggest girls who participate in sports are less likely to join gangs.
Council President Maureen Feeney (Dorchester, Harbor Island) and Councilor Michael Ross (Back Bay, Kenmore) said girls who participate in sports typically have a more positive self-image, which often keeps them out of trouble.
"If a young lady is involved in sports, [she] will be safer, more productive and will statistically succeed in life," said Ross, who chairs the Council's Committee on Youth Violent Crime Prevention.
Councilor Salvatore LaMattina (East Boston, North End) said girls in the softball league in his East Boston neighborhood have benefited from participating in organized sports.
"The girls are really excited [about it], and it keeps them off the streets," he said.
Some Council members said the city should consider adding more public works jobs. In a city with a population of 600,000 that has 1,500 students drop out each year, Councilor Chuck Yancey (Dorchester, Mattapan) said Boston, which currently employs 34 youth-service workers, should hire 300 new youth workers to council students.
"What are we doing to provide [students] with necessary mentorship and direction?" he said. "It's very obvious that our children need help."
Councilor Chuck Turner (Dorchester, Roxbury) said a lack of youth workers and inability to control the dropout rate has contributed to Boston's high crime rate, specifically robberies, in the Allston-Brighton area. Although Councilors-at-Large Stephen Murphy and Michael Flaherty said they support the measure, they also expressed doubt the city would be able to find 300 youth workers.
When it comes to funding 300 new workers, Yancey estimated it would cost an extra $9 million - four-tenths of 1 percent of the city's entire budget - to the city's Youth and Family Services budget.
"It's going to come down to dollars and cents," said Councilor Rob Consalvo (Hyde Park, Roslindale).
To address the problem of youth violence, which has plagued Boston for a long time, the Council has recently spent time considering alternative measures, despite criticism from some who said the Council is out of touch with Boston's real concerns.
Councilor-at-Large Sam Yoon wrote a letter to The Boston Globe on March 3, defending the Council against criticism from Globe columnist Brian McGrory, who wrote in a Feb. 27 column the Council's focus on choosing a city poet laureate diverts attention from real issues, including crime. Yoon said a focus on the arts would take steps toward solving the city's violence problems.
"Perhaps more investment in promoting the arts will encourage young people to pick up a brush, a pen, or a pile of clay, rather than a gun," he wrote in the letter.
MINNESOTA
Leaders testify in support of Asian juvenile crime prevention
March 08, 2007
American Asian Press
David Zander, Research Analyst, the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, executive directors, staff and youth from the Southeast Asian Agency Youth Programs in support of the Asian Juvenile Crime Prevention (SF 814/ HF 1148) before the House Public Safety Finance Committee on March 6, 2007. The bill will be included in the Omnibus bill and will need active advocacy when it reaches conference committee later.
David Zander, an Applied Anthropologist with the State Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, began by quoting the Reverend Sung Chul Park, Korean Adoptees Ministry. “Jail is more expensive than Yale.”
It is my honor this morning to introduce you to leaders from the Hmong, Lao, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Korean communities. They would like their voices heard on issues of gang violence which has increased, and how to stop children from turning to acts of violence at an early age. In the interests of time, one spokesperson (Yia Lee, Youth program coordinator Southeast Asian Community Council) SEACC) will speak in support of the bill for a group of Asian agencies serving youth. Appearing here today are directors and staff from all four of the Southeast Asian groups, Cambodian, Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese plus the Korean agencies serving youth. For a full list of the agencies see appendix.
There are at least thirteen Southeast Asian agencies with youth programs that help these at risk youth and combat the above problems. Programs provide mentoring, tutoring and after school academic and cultural activities, summer programs. Staff go into the schools to help youth resolve conflicts and problems that unless otherwise attended to, lead to truancy, dropouts, juveniles joining gangs, and criminal activity.
Mission, Goals, Objectives of the AJCP Collaborative
The twelve Southeast Asian and Korean agencies, members of the Asian Juvenile Crime Prevention Collaborative, are in agreement on the following points. Their overall focus is on helping Asian children and families. Their shared mission is to help Asian youth succeed in school. Their goal is to engage youth in constructive after school programs and help their parents get involved in their children’s lives. The shared objectives are designed so as to not to have youth hang around aimlessly and at risk to recruitment by gangs. The goals and objectives are shared but some of the methods differ in each community, according to the needs and differences in each cultural group.
Funding Asian Juvenile Crime Prevention (AJCP) accomplishes youth crime prevention through the following types of activities: Summer program, mentoring, tutoring, after school activities and weekend activities, programs that meet the social and cultural needs of the youth, gang prevention, and parent child communication.
The collaborative plays a significant role in improving parent involvement in the lives of their children. The collaborative believes that families and community agencies can best help. Children. They do not believe in placing children in institutions.
The Demographics based on the 2000 Census show that there are 45,443 Hmong, 11,516 Lao, 6,533 Cambodian, 20,570 Vietnamese, and 15,255 Koreans in Minnesota.
Background to the problem of Asian Juvenile Crime Prevention:
Many Asian juveniles are doing well in school and are on their way to becoming productive citizens, but others do not fall under this model minority image. There are many who need help. Sometimes there is an inadequate parental supervision; sometimes the youth are experiencing problems at school. As refugee families settled in the urban areas they found a new problem. Their kids imitated other groups here and formed gangs. The gangs started as a way of protection against other minorities. But the survival tactics led to increasing violence and crime. There was a rising incidence of criminal activity and arrests in these communities.
During the early 1980’s, shortly after the arrival of the first wave of refugees from Laos, the Asian Community leaders from the Asian communities worked hard with legislators to establish a permanent source of funding known as Asian Juvenile Crime Prevention (AJCP) programs.
One of the key community members was Lee Pao Xiong, Executive Director with the Hmong Youth Association of Minnesota, who later became Executive Director of Hmong American Partnership, and the executive director of the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesota. Lee Pao Xiong is currently executive director of the Hmong Studies Center at Concordia University. He and Kim Dettmer helped provide the following brief history.
Agency collaborations past and present: SACCYF
In 1990, with the rise in juvenile crime within the Southeast Asian Community, seven Southeast Asian organizations came together to coordinate activities through the Southeast Asian Community Coalition for Youth and Families. SACCYF was formed in 1991-1992 by the state Refugee Program Office and seven SE Asian MAA’s. The project idea came about because there was a lot of gang violence. Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who was at that time the head of the Juvenile Division with the St. Paul Police Department, worked with Lee Pao and Senator Randy Kelly. Through the leadership of Senator Randy Kelly, the Minnesota State Legislature appropriated $1 million to the Coalition to address gang violence within the Southeast Asian community. In 1991, the Coalition was given the opportunity to apply to the US Department of Justice’s Administration for Youth and Family division to further its work. As a result, The Southeast Asian Community Coalition for Youth and Families (SACCYF) was formally formed. The State Refugee Program Office of the Minnesota Department of Human Services took the lead in applying for the funding, which was eventually funded. Again, the project idea was to address gang violence within the SE Asian communities, to coordinate efforts between the various MAA’s and to maximize and streamline the various services targeting the vulnerable youth population. In addition to being able to expand its intervention and prevention services to work with youth and parents, the federal funding also allowed the Coalition to hire a full-time coordinator. Kim Dettmer was the first and only manager of the program and was hired in 1993. She was laid off in 1997 because there was no more funding. Kim writes, “It was really a shame because it was such a great project – true collaboration with input from all involved.” SACCYF was awarded the Minnesota Peace Prize in 1995 for its efforts to reduce crime and violence in the SE Asian communities.
The agencies involved were: Lao Family Community of Minnesota, United Cambodian Association of MN, Vietnamese Social Services, Lao Assistance Center, Hmong American Partnership, Hmong Youth Association of Minnesota, The Women Association of Hmong and Lao (WAHL) and the Association for the Advancement of Hmong Women.
There has also been a successful collaboration of three agencies working with court ordered youth (Wilder, Lao Family and UCAM).
The State appropriation funded about ten projects. There is still a need to restore program cuts. After school funding was cut. Human services funding was cut. The Wilder SEASAP intervention programs were slashed.
Sadly, many of these programs that were funded to help Asian youth stay on track have faced severe cuts and budget shortages. One of the first acts of Governor Ventura in his first budget was to eliminate $one million dollar state appropriation to AJCP along with funding for other programs he deemed unnecessary such as the Mother Read program. Two agencies have gone out of existence entirely due to insufficient sources of funding during the past lean years of the state budget deficit. (The Women’s Association for Hmong and Lao, and the Hmong Mutual Pacific Association).
With the help of Senator Linda Higgins and Randy Kelly, and House Representatives such as Rick Stanek, Joe Mullery and Sheldon Johnson, the one million dollar funding was fully reappropriated in the first two years of the Ventura administration. However, funding was not reappropriated in the second biennium, due to a failure to get a hearing in the senate; a state deficit had made further legislative action to restore funding unfeasible under the Pawlenty administration.
As a result of these funding cuts, at this moment as we testify here today before the legislators, an Asian Juvenile could be stealing a car, robbing a grocery store somewhere along University Ave, or Rice Street, or over on Arcade Avenue on the eastside of St Paul, or on Lyndale or Broadway in North Minneapolis. There are other crimes such as selling drugs and burglaries. At the other end of the continuum, others are putting themselves at risk simply by playing truant from school, dropping out of school, running away, hanging out with peers who are gang members. Agencies are struggling to provide outreach and help to juveniles at risk for these behaviors, and their siblings, parents, and families.
Lee Pao Xiong was said that “the reduction in gang violence and violence crime within the Southeast Asian community in the early and late 1990’s were the direct result of the successful and good work of these seven Southeast Asian agencies.’
As a result of funding cuts under the Ventura administration, all of these programs have been struggling to provide services to youth at risk, and two agencies are gone. If anything, the situation out there has worsened. Gangs have become more violent. Girls have become victims of rape and prostitution. Gang related deaths have occurred. The violence has spread to other communities such as the Tibetan. Korean leaders attest to a similar problem among the Korean Adoptees who now number 15,000 in Minnesota.
The members of the collaborative are working together. The perspectives of the collaborative may best be summed up in the phrase ‘Jail is more expensive than Yale.’ Having juveniles incarcerated is much more expensive than helping them through the AJCP activities.
We ask your help in restoring funding to the remaining programs. AJCP is one small tool in the efforts to save kids, prevent gangs, and ensure the safety of all.
WISCONSIN
Support slipping for cervical cancer bill
By Mark Pitsch, Wisconsin State Journal
In January two Democratic senators announced bipartisan support for a proposed bill that would require all sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer.
And, as a parent, state Rep. Jeff Wood (R-Chippewa Falls) has made up his mind about the vaccine. “My daughter will get it,” he said.
But social conservatives and medical groups have opposed the proposed mandate. Some Republican co-sponsors have withdrawn their support and the chairwoman of the Assembly health committee has declared the proposal dead on arrival in that chamber.
“If the legislation comes before my committee, it’s not going anywhere,” said Rep. Leah Vukmir, R-Milwaukee, the Assembly health committee chairwoman.
Sens. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, and Robert Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie, said they still plan on introducing the legislation, which would also include an opt-out provision for parents who object. But Wirch admitted this week that the mandate will have a hard time being enacted.
“There are significant obstacles in its path,” Wirch said.
As the bill was originally written, Wood opposed the measure.
“I’m opposed to the idea of any mandated shot . . . if the parents can’t opt out,” Wood said.
But the proposal won his support when a parental opt-out provision was added.
“I think that’s pretty reasonable,” he said.
Letting parents decide will eliminate any fears about having to receive the shot, Wood said, noting that it has only been available for a short time.
“I wouldn’t blame any parent for being hesitant (about the vaccine) right now,” he said.
Taylor said she’s still trying to build support for the legislation among lawmakers, medical groups and others, and she planned to continue pushing for a mandate. She also said she didn’t know when she would introduce the bill.
“The desire is to try to find something that moves us toward making sure we embrace this vaccine to eliminate cervical cancer for the daughters of Wisconsin,” Taylor said.
Across the country, more than 20 state legislatures are debating whether to mandate the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine for girls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some states are also weighing related legislation, including to require insurers to cover the cost of the vaccine, to educate parents or to use tax dollars to pay for the vaccine for poor or underinsured girls and women.
A vaccine mandate bill died in Mississippi, one was withdrawn in Maryland and another passed in Virginia and is awaiting the governor’s signature, the national legislature group said. In Texas, Republican Gov. Rick Perry this year issued an executive order requiring the vaccine for all sixth-grade girls.
Perry’s action sparked a national controversy over the vaccine after it was revealed that his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer.
Merck and Women in Government, a bipartisan group of female state lawmakers, were strongly pushing states to enact legislation mandating the cervical cancer vaccine in girls. But Merck announced last month that it would suspend lobbying. Neither Merck nor Women in Government are registered as lobbyists in Wisconsin.
Vukmir said she has not talked to representatives from either organization, but said she has received information from the women’s group on the cervical cancer vaccine.
9,700 new cases
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society, there were 9,700 new cervical cancer cases in the United States last year and 3,700 cervical cancer deaths. Nearly all of the cases resulted from the human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that also causes genital warts.
An estimated 20 million people are infected with the virus, and an estimated 80 percent of all sexually active women will contract it by the time they are 50, according to the CDC.
Last summer a federal CDC panel recommended that all girls and women ages 11 to 26 be vaccinated.
Gardasil is the first vaccine approved.
It was the first vaccine ever approved to fight cervical cancer, and proponents say it has the potential to nearly eliminate the disease.
Girls and women in Wisconsin can get the $360 vaccine, a series of three shots, if their doctor carries it. But some insurance providers or company health plans may not cover the cost, according to Phil Dougherty, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans, which represents health maintenance organizations and other insurers.
Because the CDC panel has recommended the vaccine, girls eligible for the state Vaccine for Children Program for low-income, underinsured and Native Americans can get the vaccine for free, said Stephanie Marquis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Family Services. Girls ages 9 to 18 are covered under the state program, and the federal government will pay for the vaccine, Marquis said.
Dr. Jim Conway, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at UW-Madison, said it is important to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active because once the virus is contracted it remains in the body. A woman with the virus could show no outward signs of infection, such as genital warts, but still get cancer later in life, he said.
Adolescents and young women who are infected are more susceptible to getting cancer than women who get infected later in life, he said.
The vaccine is safe and federally approved studies are continuing, Conway said.
But Conway, who is a consultant for Merck on other immunization issues and is immunization chairman for the Wisconsin chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said questions remain about how many years the vaccine will be effective, how many supplemental shots a woman would need throughout her life, and who will pay for it.
Some insurers have balked at paying for the vaccine, and some doctors aren’t stocking it because of the high cost and uncertainty over whether they’ll be able to cover their costs of making it available, he said.
Those questions have led proponents of the vaccine — such as the Wisconsin chapters of the American Cancer Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians — to oppose or remain neutral on legislation to mandate the vaccine.
Meanwhile, social conservatives oppose mandating the vaccine because they say it could lead to premature sexual activity.
“What we’re telling kids is, look, we expect you’ll be sexually active between 12 and 16,” Julaine Appling, chief executive officer of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin, said of a possible vaccine mandate.
Appling said parents and physicians should decide whether a girl should be vaccinated.
But Wirch and Taylor dismissed those concerns. “Why would social conservatives want to deny this vaccine to people if there’s an opt-out provision?” Wirch said.
Legislators withdraw
Vukmir and other Republicans agree. Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said she had expected to cosponsor Taylor’s legislation but decided against it after she learned it mandated the vaccine. Darling said she would support a public education campaign for parents about the vaccine, but that she’s not sure legislation is needed for that.
In her online newsletter for Jan. 20, Taylor also cited Republican Sens. Luther Olsen of Ripon and Dan Kapanke of La Crosse; Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz, R-Menomonee Falls; and Rep. Tamara Grigsby, D-Milwaukee as cosponsors.
Kapanke said he also has concerns about the bill and is no longer a cosponsor. Olsen, Jeskewitz and Grigsby didn’t return several telephone calls seeking comment. Taylor has since removed their names, along with Kapanke’s and Darling’s, from the list of bill cosponsors on her online newsletter.
OREGON
The New Bully Pulpit
The Internet means school taunting has gone high-tech. But does the Leg need to do something about it?
March 7, 2007
By Jake Thomas, wweek.com
Remember those carefree school days when bullies' abilities were limited to taunts and beating people up?
Those low-tech options now compete with "cyber-bullying"—which can include anything from sending threatening text messages or emails to taking embarrassing locker-room photos with a camera phone to creating cruel websites about a classmate.
And that's caught the attention of powerful Oregon legislators such as House Majority Leader Dave Hunt (D-Gladstone). He's sponsoring HB 2637, which would mandate that all Oregon schools adopt a policy aimed at curbing electronic bullying.
Nobody has numbers that highlight how prevalent the problem is in Oregon. But according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, about 30 percent of students nationwide from grades six through eight have been on the receiving or giving end of cyber-bullying. And about one-third of kids ages 12-17 have experienced it as well, according to a national poll released last August by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a law-enforcement group based in Washington, D.C.
At least two other states—Idaho and South Carolina—have adopted statewide anti-cyber-bullying policies, including punishments as severe as expulsion. Oregon is one of eight states considering similar legislation.
Hunt says his bill is designed to "catch up state law and district policy regulations with the 21st century" by giving Oregon's 198 public-school districts until July to update their policies. Otherwise, the state could withhold funds for noncompliance.
The Oregon Education Association supports the bill, but critics worry that school administrators could use cyber-bullying policies to suppress electronically expressed student criticism of school policy, under the banner of avoiding "a hostile educational environment."
What, for example, would a policy do if a Portland high-school student decided to blog about what an idiot her classmate is for testifying at a school board meeting in support of Superintendent Vicki Phillips?
Oregon ACLU Executive Director David Fidanque says existing anti-bullying statutes passed by the Legislature in 2001 that require each public-school district to have an anti-bullying policy are fine. (Portland Public Schools does a have a policy addressing bullying in general, but is silent on cyber-bullying.) Fidanque is uneasy that Hunt's bill would create free-speech concerns.
"We worked hard in 2001 to craft language that is not overly broad and will not create constitutional problems," Fidanque says.
Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., says Hunt's bill could easily be misused to infringe on students' rights to free speech.
"It's a bad policy," Collins says. "It's overly broad and rife with federal and state constitutional problems."
Hunt says he's amenable to working on free-speech concerns, saying it's not the bill's intent to infringe on those protections.
UTAH
Under-21 drinking drivers risk licenses
New law awaiting governor's signature
March 13, 2007
By Dawn House, The Salt Lake Tribune
Don't even think about having a beer or sneaking into a tavern if you're under the age of 21. Aside from breaking the law and killing a brain cell or two, you might not be driving for a long time.
Youths caught buying, possessing or drinking alcohol can lose their driver licenses, even if the offense is unrelated to a traffic violation.
Minors under age 18 face having their licenses suspended for any alcohol-related offense, but a new law extends those penalties to youth's under age 21.
Under a bill awaiting the governor's signature, anyone under the age of 21 caught in a tavern or private club can have their license suspended, whether or not the minor has been drinking.
"The rationale is that kids drinking alcohol shouldn't be driving," said Paul Boyden, executive director of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors. "It doesn't matter that the offense is related to driving or not. Driving is a privilege. It's not a right."
But civil rights attorney Brian Barnard says "in this day and age, a suspended driver's license can cause hardships, including losing a job, which makes the ability to drive much closer to a right." He also questions the state's power to suspend a license simply because a minor is convicted of going into a bar.
"This is a status offense, meaning you're been charged because you're somewhere you shouldn't be," Barnard said. "This isn't a crime like shooting someone."
The law is expected to go into effect April 30.
If minor is too young to drive, the penalty will be imposed for 90 days after the teen's 16th birthday.
Judges may opt to suspend a license for any alcohol-related offense for 90 days. But licenses will be automatically suspended for six months on the second offense and one year on subsequent offenses.
It's estimated that 5,300 individuals, ages 18 to 21, could have their licenses suspended under the new law, said Kim Gibb, state records bureau chief.
All states have had laws prohibiting minors under age 21 from drinking alcohol since the passage of the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act. States that did not comply faced a reduction in federal highway funds.
Since then, research has shown that teens drinkers damage their brain development and are more likely to end up as alcoholics than those who wait until adulthood to drink. Studies show that during teen years and into the early 20s, alcohol affects the brain's frontal lobe that governs judgment, complex thinking, decision-making, planning and impulse control. It also impacts the brain's hippocampus, responsible for learning and memory, according to the American Medical Association.
"Too many Americans consider underage drinking a rite of passage to adulthood," acting Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu said in a statement earlier this month. "Research shows that young people who start drinking before the age of 15 are five times more likely to have alcohol-related problems later in life."
Although there has been a significant decline in tobacco and illicit drug use among teens, underage drinking has remained at consistently high levels. The 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimates there are 11 million underage drinkers in the United States. Nearly 7.2 million are considered binge drinkers, typically meaning they drink more than five drinks on one occasion, and more than 2 million are classified as heavy drinkers.
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