First 5 LA

An overwhelming number of voters want local officials to invest in early childhood education, according to a poll released Tuesday by a pair of Los Angeles County advocacy groups.

Groups interested in understanding the current state of early childhood in Los Angeles County now have access to a new and vast amount of data they can mine to make informed decisions about how best to design and deliver social programs.

With homelessness among women and children rising in Los Angeles, county leaders are looking to offer more home visiting services to new mothers and their babies living in shelters, jails and mental health facilities.

Los Angeles County’s child welfare agency is betting that improved technology and analysis can make its family visitation process more efficient for kids and parents. The county’s Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) will use a $130,000 contribution from philanthropic partners and $30,000 in county funds to move ahead with a plan to use high-tech mapping to improve court-ordered visitations for the 18,000 children placed in the county’s foster care system.

Fear and uncertainty are not new to many families in Los Angeles. For some, there’s the constant uncertainty that comes from living paycheck to paycheck. For others it’s the fear of losing a job, or having an unexpected expense because of health care or other basic needs.

Next week, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote on a motion aimed at “enhancing” and “expanding” the county’s patchwork of home visiting programs. In L.A., like across the country, the concept of home visiting takes many forms.

As the state struggles to provide enough foster homes, California advocates and policymakers say one major challenge has been a lack of childcare for foster parents. For first-time foster parents Irene Barraza and Amy Saucier of Oakland, adding a new child to their home forced them to come up with creative solutions to balancing childcare with work.

I want to respond to the recent Chronicle of Social Change article about Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). I think the article misses an important point, which is that the Training, Intervention, Education and Services for Families (TIES) clinicians, while making small adjustments in the way they provide PCIT to fit the needs of their different adoptive families, are not “adapting” the PCIT model.

First 5 LA makes the case for why parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) can play an important role in helping support kin caregivers in a new video released on its site. PCIT helps strengthen the bond between parents or caregivers and their children, who are often dealing with trauma as a result of experiences that brought them into contact with the child-welfare system.