lgbt homeless youth

NYC’S Homeless Teens at Risk Due to Budget Cuts, Says LGBT Advocate

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recently released executive budget could cut $7 million in funding to the city’s Runaway and Homeless Youth Services, effectively eliminating 160 beds from youth shelters across the city. According to a representative from the Ali Forney Center  - the city’s largest LGBT youth shelter - the need for shelter beds has increased dramatically in recent years, with the waiting list for the Center growing by 40 percent last year. The Ali Forney Center claims that there are only 250 shelter beds available in New York - despite an estimated homeless youth population of almost 4,000. Carl Siciliano, the Center’s executive director, told The Advocate he considered Bloomberg’s budget cuts to be “cruel, reckless and contemptible.”

“These cuts create an even bigger crisis for the LGBT teens who are thrown out of their homes and forced to endure homelessness on the streets of our city,” he said. “The Ali Forney Center and all those who work with and care about LGBT homeless youth will not be silent in the face of this decision, which offends us as a community and needlessly puts our young people in harm’s way.”

A New York City Independent Budget Office report from March predicted (on page 35) homeless shelter budget cuts, with the investigation identifying an increase in average shelter stay durations as well as the cessation of subsidy programs, such as Advantage, as the primary factors for budget shortfalls.

condom qr code

Young People “Checking In” Using Condoms With QR Codes

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Young people using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the location-based Foursquare are often criticized for posting photos from drunken parties or sharing mundane personal details such as what they ate for breakfast. Now, new geo-tracking condoms are taking the concept of over-sharing to a whole new level, encouraging young people to “check in” wherever they are having sex. Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest—serving Alaska, Idaho and western Washington, including Seattle—has been distributing to college students 55,000 condoms with QR codes (small, square barcodes that can be scanned by smartphones). Condom users scan the code, which takes them to a website called “Where Did You Wear It?” that allows them to anonymously post the location of their sexual encounter. The website asks for details such as age, sex and relationship type, and users can even rate how good the experience was.

H&R Block

College Assistance Program Praised By Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy

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Earlier this month, the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy – a nonprofit organization that frequently assists Congress in identifying successful social program models – gave H&R Block’s College Financial Aid Application Assistance Program a “Top Tier” rating denoting “sizable, sustained benefits to participants and/or society.”

According to a recent Top Tier Evidence Initiative report, the H&R Block program – which provides streamlined personal assistance to low-to-moderate income families with dependent children that wish to complete college financial aid applications, such as the Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) – resulted in a notable increase in retention rates for students that took advantage of the program. The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy stated that students that had H&R Block assistance in completing their FAFSA forms were almost 30 percent more likely to attend college for two consecutive years than students that did not receive program assistance and approximately 36 percent more likely to receive a federal “needs-based” assistance, such as the Pell grant. The Top Tier Evidence study consisted of a four-year, multi-site trial that tracked more than 1,000 college students in Ohio and North Carolina. According to the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, the estimated per-person cost for the H&R Block intervention is approximately $90 – resulting in an aggregate $375 in Pell Grant allotments for students given assistance by tax professionals in completing their application forms.

birth control

More Teens Using Contraceptives, Says CDC

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Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) unveiled new data suggesting more teen girls are using birth control. Part of the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” the data was compiled from several National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) cycles. According to the report, approximately 60 percent of sexually active teens reported using contraceptive methods considered “highly effective” by the CDC, such as hormonal treatments or intrauterine devices - an increase from 47 percent in 1995. Additionally, the CDC report estimated that 57 percent of females ages 15 to 19 reported they’d never had sex, up from 49 percent in 1995. The new report analyzed NFSG data collected from three different intervals - 1995, 2002, and a five-year survey encompassing findings from 2006 to 2010.

alcohol ad teens

States Failing to Reduce Youth Exposure to Alcohol Marketing

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A new study finds that states are failing to do much if anything to keep young people from being exposed to advertisements promoting alcoholic beverages. The report, issued by the Center on Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health notes eight methods, referred to as best practices, for states to limit and reduce youth exposure to such advertisements. And according to the new research findings, only 11 states implement more than one “best practice” policy – with 22 implementing none at all. In State Laws to Reduce the Impact of Alcohol Marketing on Youth: Current Status and Model Policies, CAMY researchers conclude that most states are doing inadequate jobs of keeping children from being exposed to alcohol ads in both traditional and untraditional media formats. The report found the legislative and regulatory steps taken by most states to be both “disappointing” and “inactive.”

The report assessed states on their utilization of best practices established by CAMY guidelines, including measures which prohibit alcohol advertising targeting minors, restrict outdoor alcohol ads in places children may frequent and establish jurisdictions over in-state television and radio advertising.

runaway kid

Runaway Youth Helped Using 10-Question Tool

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Experts estimate about 2 million kids run away from home each year putting them at greater risk of physical or sexual abuse, homelessness, drug addiction and physical and mental health problems. Many are in need of medical care or other services. To ensure runaways get the help they need, police in St. Paul, Minn. who encounter runaways are using a short, 10-question screening tool to assess the runaway’s safety and whether they have been victimized while they’ve been away from home. Medical professionals and researchers in Minnesota developed the 10-Question Tool with assistance from local police.

Families of Incarcerated Youth Demand Say in ‘Dysfunctional’ System

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Jeannette Bocanegra, a community organizer from New York City, told a gathering of juvenile justice system practitioners and advocates in Houston last week that as a mom with a child who was incarcerated, “This system made me feel like I was a dysfunctional parent, a bad parent … without realizing I raised six other children who never went into the system.”

Now she and other members of Justice for Families, an advocacy group, are out to prove that, in her words, “We are not dysfunctional … the system is dysfunctional.”

Liane Rozzell, another parent on the panel, said afterwards, “We don’t have 24-hour remote control over our children.”

During the panel discussion, Rozzell said when her son was first put into detention she thought it might be a good thing, it would teach him a lesson. But she did not realize how negatively he would be affected by the experience. She also recalled being in a meeting where a teacher from a correctional institution off handedly mentioned sending kids to “an inherently violent place like a juvenile correctional center.”
After hearing that phrase, Rozzell said, “I was just stunned that we can just casually talk about sending our children to an inherently violent place.”

In June, Justice for Families will be releasing an in-depth report, underwritten by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The report includes results of a survey of 1,000 family members who have had children incarcerated and examines how families of the incarcerated are portrayed by the media. Justice for Families co-director Grace Bauer says family involvement and networking is necessary because, “No one knows what it is like to struggle with a child in the system better than another parent.”

However, according to Bauer, early findings from the report reveal, “Families are not consulted.

Reform Justice System that Destroys Young Lives: Casey CEO

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Patrick McCarthy,President & CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, today called for transforming the juvenile justice in the United States into “a system that saves young lives rather than one destroying young lives. It will happen if the people working with youth “have the will, commitment and the courage” to make the changes needed. He made his remarks at the Casey Foundation hosted Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiatives conference in Houston. He added, "This moment in history is filled with opportunity to make a real difference, and to end forever the misuse of detention and the folly of the reformatory. If we miss this opportunity, this moment may not come again for many years.

Day Two: John Jay Juvenile Justice Conference

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NEW YORK – The John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice is holding a two-day conference for journalists on its campus in New York Monday and Tuesday. While the conference, Kids Behind Bars, Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System?, is primarily meant for journalists, many of the topics will be of interest not only to those in the field, but the general public as well. JJIE/Youth Today’s John Fleming and Clay Duda are attending the conference and continue their reporting today. For Day One coverage head over to our post here. DAY TWO

Panel One:

Mike Bocian, provided the keynote address Tuesday morning.

A Juvenile Justice System in Flux: Updates from John Jay Symposium

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NEW YORK – The John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice is holding a two-day conference for journalists on its campus in New York Monday and Tuesday. JJIE/Youth Today’s John Fleming and Clay Duda are attending the conference and will be reporting some highlights throughout. While the conference, Kids Behind Bars, Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System?, is primarily meant for journalists, many of the topics will be of interest not only to those in the field, but the general public as well. Speakers on Monday include: Mark Soler, executive director of the Center for Children’s Law & Policy; Vincent Schiraldi, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Probation; Ricardo Martinez, co-director, Padres & Jovenes Unidos and David Utter, director of policy, the Florida office of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Gail Garinger, a former juvenile court judge, who is now the Child Advocate of Massachusetts’ Office of the Child Advocate, will deliver the keynote address.