Jeremy Loudenback

Moving swiftly in the wake of the third high-profile child death to strike Los Angeles’ high desert in the past six years, L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger intends to boost the area’s beleaguered child welfare workforce. 

The Imprint’s rundown of child welfare and youth-related news from up and down the Pacific Coast. Oregon School District Requires Teachers to Report Students’ Sexual Activity Teachers and staff at the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon must report to law enforcement or state Department of Human Services if children under the age of 18 are sexually active, even if it is consensual.

Los Angeles County has amassed a $36.7 million hoard of unspent money that is earmarked for community-based approaches to preventing at-risk youth from entering the juvenile justice system. Among the unspent dollars is funding for a county-wide diversion program that has yet to serve even one child, and is at the center of a controversy about how Los Angeles County’s Probation Department has failed to allocate money to community organizations that work with at-risk youth.

After five years at the helm of the largest child welfare system in America, Philip Browning will be retiring from Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The agency’s 8,800 staff learned about their director’s decision in a memo sent out today.

Former Santa Clara County Probation Chief Sheila Mitchell and former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department jail reformer Terri McDonald are among a slate of five candidates who will be interviewed next week by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to lead the county’s Probation Department.

While meditation has expanded in recent years from a zen-seeker’s path to higher consciousness to a best practice for hard-charging CEOs, it’s now gaining a foothold at a school in Southern California serving students with serious emotional and behavioral issues.

Proposed legislation, and the prospect of yet another class-action lawsuit against the state, may press lawmakers to resolve the issues preventing kids placed in out-of-county foster homes from getting needed mental health treatment.

The reforms enshrined in a Los Angeles County blue ribbon commission report may be one step closer to reality with the recent appointment of a new child protection leader for the county.

California is home to more than nine million children and youth under the age of 18, about 13 percent of minors nationwide. A decade ago, a troubling chasm existed in the mental health services offered to the state’s most vulnerable children and youth: those who were either in foster care, or in danger of entering foster care.