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In 2015, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) found that nearly 28,000 children across the state were in the custody of Child Protective Services (CPS). Of these tens of thousands of youths, an estimated 40 to 60 percent have behavioral health problems.

The complex emotional and behavioral challenges faced by foster youth demand an exceptional amount of individual attention and care — a demand that, for many, is left unsatisfied.

When a child falls through the cracks of the Texas foster care system, a lack of services isn’t always to blame. Gaps in accessibility play a major role in who receives treatment and who doesn’t, making it difficult for services to find their way to those who need them most. The system’s haphazard structure also makes it prone to breakdowns in communication and organization, resulting in overburdened caseworkers and even neglected allegations of child abuse.

Two years ago, the Hogg Foundation commissioned an evaluation of the Harris County Protective Services (HCPS) Integrated Health Care Program for Foster Children, a pilot program funded in 2012 and launched in 2014. The program led to the creation of the HCPS Integrated Health Care Clinic, which adapts the integrated health care model to foster care settings.

Read more on UTexas.edu.

Spanish-speaking parents seeking care for their children may encounter communication barriers with providers, according to a study published in the January-February issue of Academic Pediatrics. Children often must depend on their parents or guardians to relay their health issues to providers, making communication between parents and providers all the more important.

Researchers analyzed data from the 2011 and 2012 California Health Interview Survey public use child files. The survey assessed children’s health and health care experiences through interviews with their parents. The study looked at experiences of Hispanic children in relation to their parents’ household language and citizenship status. While there were no significant differences in care in regard to parents’ language or citizenship, disparities in provider-patient communication were identified.

Parents who both only spoke Spanish and those who were both non-citizens were the least likely to report that their children’s providers gave them clear instructions, and were also the least likely to communicate with their children’s doctors via phone or email. Parents who were both non-citizens were also less likely to report that their children’s doctors listened carefully to them.

Even non-citizens are afforded relatively good access to care in California, with enrollment in the state-funded Medicaid program, according to Roby, director of graduate studies in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. However, the study indicated gaps in access among people who are not citizens and do not speak English fluently persist.

While people who do not speak English have the right to a health care interpreter, people may be unaware that the option is available to them, Roby said. In addition, he noted, some health care systems rely on LanguageLine Solutions for interpretation services, but the system may complicate communication when passing a phone back and forth between a health care provider and parent.

Read more on APHAPublications.org. Read the abstract of the study.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Behavioral Health Barometer, United States, Volume 4 (pdf) report provides a powerful overview of the nation’s behavioral health. The Barometer includes key behavioral health issues such as the prevalence of substance use, serious mental illness, serious thoughts of suicide, and related treatment. Furthermore, the Barometer breaks down its findings into major groups according to age, gender, racial and ethnic categories, poverty status, and health insurance status.

For example, the Barometer shows the national annual prevalence of prescription opioid misuse and heroin use as well as increases in receipt of medication-assisted treatments over time. Among individuals aged 12 or older in the U.S. in 2015, about 12.5 million persons (4.7 percent) reported misusing prescription pain relievers, and about 828,000 persons (0.3 percent) reported using heroin.

Regarding facility-based substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, from 2011 to 2015, the number of individuals who received methadone as part of their SUD treatment increased by about 16 percent from 306,440 to 356,843, and the number who received buprenorphine as part of their substance use disorder treatment more than doubled from 32,676 to 75,724.

The Barometer also shows trends in an array of mental health issues and related treatment. For example, it shows a significant increase in the national annual prevalence of major depressive episodes among adolescents aged 12 to 17, which rose from 8.2 percent in 2011 to 12.5 percent in 2015. Only 39.3% of adolescents aged 12 to17 with a major depressive episode in the past year received treatment for depression, compared with 60.7% who did not receive treatment.

Read more on SAMHSA.gov. Read the full report (pdf).

When the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal nationwide two years ago, the White House was illuminated with rainbow lights reminiscent of the pride flag to celebrate.

For Amber Hikes and many others in the LGBT community, the lights were a powerful symbol of a government’s support for a marginalized community that had historically struggled to be recognized, much less openly supported. Now Hikes, a black queer woman, is excited about a new gay-rights symbol: a pride flag with additional black and brown stripes above the rest of the rainbow. The stripes represent LGBT individuals of color, a group that can often be overlooked within the overall LGBT umbrella.

The flag was unveiled at a Pride Month kick-off event in Philadelphia as part of a new campaign, More Color More Pride, which aims to recognize nonwhite LGBT communities as part of the broader pride movement, starting with the most visible and widely-recognized symbol of the LGBT community.

The campaign was developed by Tierney, a local ad agency that worked with Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs, where Hikes is the executive director. Hikes said she shed a tear when the flag was raised last week for the first time. Others at the event had similar reactions. To the best of Hikes’ knowledge, Philadelphia is the first city to publicly and symbolically recognize racial discrimination within the LGBT community.

Read more on CNN.com.

They are the nation’s invisible homeless population, undercounted for years, hiding out in cars and abandoned buildings, in motels and on couches, often trading sex for a place to sleep. And now, for a complex variety of reasons, the number of youth — teens and young adults — living on the street appears to be growing.

San Diego saw a 39 percent jump in homeless youth over the past year. In Atlanta, the number of homeless youth in 2016 was estimated to be nearly triple that of previous years. After a concerted effort to count homeless young people, Seattle’s King County saw its numbers jump more than 700 percent between 2016 and 2017. And the number of homeless, unaccompanied public school students increased one-fifth between 2012 and 2015.

There’s no one reason for the rise in youth homelessness, said Naomi Smoot, executive director of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. Communities are just starting to get better data on homeless youth, which may be one reason for the increase. Then again, Smoot said, “it’s the drug crisis, it’s the economy, it’s the cost of housing, jobs being scarce. As a result, growing numbers of young people are having to take care of themselves on the street at a very young age.”

Many communities are stepping up their efforts to deal with the problem. The idea is to intervene early, with services targeted toward the particular needs of young people — before homelessness becomes chronic, and it’s much harder to move them off the street.

Read more on MitchellRepublic.com.

New research suggests that poverty itself, rather than unemployment and foreclosures, contributed to the rise in the suicide rate during the Great Recession of 2008 to 2009. These findings were based on an analysis of county-level data from 16 states in the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) from 2005 to 2011. Although poverty rates were found to be strongly associated with suicide death rates among men and women above the age of 20, foreclosure and unemployment rates were not correlated with an increase in suicide independent of poverty.

The authors of this study suggested that unemployment may contribute to the suicide rate by increasing the rate of poverty, and that lack of resources and opportunities in impoverished areas may contribute to suicide risk. They also suggested that their research shows the importance of suicide prevention in communities with high rates of poverty, especially during economic downturns.

Read more on SPRC.org. Read the abstract of the study.