• More children held in grip of poverty, By Bill Ruthhart and Will Higgins, June 22, 2010, Indianapolis Star: “At its inaugural summer Breakfast Club program a year ago, the Lord’s Pantry served seven hungry people. Earlier this month, the program’s summer kickoff meal drew three times as many, 17 of them children. The increase in demand for food at the Breakfast Club reflects the increase in poverty nationally, especially children in poverty. Nationally, 22 percent of American children will be living in poverty this year, according to a new study. And a local expert says that rate likely is similar in Indiana. ‘There are lots of kids in this neighborhood, and a lot of them need some help,’ said Julie Molloy, who runs the pantry that serves Stringtown families on the Near Westside. The analysis by the nonprofit Foundation for Child Development found that two years after the recession began to ravage the U.S. economy, children are living on the edge at a rate not equaled in two decades…”
• Report says one in 10 Terrebonne children lives in extreme poverty, By Naomi King, June 18, 2010, Houma Courier: “Children in Lafourche Parish are more likely to live in extreme poverty than in Terrebonne, according to a report released this week by the Southern Education Foundation. The report says 14.3 percent of children lived in extreme poverty in Lafourche Parish in 2008, while 9.9 percent of children in Terrebonne lived in extreme poverty that same year. That’s about one in seven kids in Lafourche and one in 10 children in Terrebonne. Louisiana’s extreme poverty rate will only grow, local and regional child-care officials say, because of lingering effects of the national recession and the ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, which has prevented fishermen from harvesting and led the federal government to ban new deepwater drilling…”

Unlikely mentors give felons hope, By Kevin Johnson, June 21, 2010, USA Today: “James Churchill was nearing the end of a 10-year prison term for armed robbery last year when he struck an unusual bargain with an unlikely partner. If Churchill, a career criminal at age 34, could stay out of trouble during his first months of freedom, police Lt. Ralph Mason pledged to help find him a job. The collaboration between cop and criminal in a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate is remarkable and so far, successful. Eleven months after his release, Churchill has been employed for nine months - without incident - by a industrial plumbing company, earning up to $21 per hour. Churchill says he was ’shocked’ by Mason’s help, but the officer’s intervention is a sample of the untraditional methods Michigan officials are using to help ex-offenders re-enter society and slash troubling rates of those who return to prison. As communities across the nation struggle to assimilate about 700,000 ex-offenders who leave prison each year, according to the Justice Department, local Michigan officials are recruiting doctors, clergy, business leaders and even police as mentors to help keep them out…”

Fed housing assistance stalled in Detroit, By Catherine Jun, June 21, 2010, Detroit News: “Eight months after desperate crowds elbowed each other at Cobo Center for federal emergency housing money, less than 8 percent of Detroit’s $15.2 million has been spent, according to federal reports. That amounts to help for just 330 households, far less than the 3,400 Detroit families targeted through the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. It also means Detroit is lagging in the national program designed to get money to homeless or nearly homeless families, falling behind Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. The federal stimulus dollars help with utility bills and up to 18 months of rental assistance. But observers worry that for some, delays mean the help is coming too late…”

Dads who don’t live with their kids find ways to be involved, By Sharon Jayson, June 16, 2010, USA Today: “Half of all U.S. children won’t live with their father for part of their childhood. But just because ‘non-resident’ dads don’t live with their kids doesn’t mean they’re not involved with them. ‘There are fathers that are very involved. There are some that are not. We have this image of the non-resident dad, and for some, that’s the deadbeat dad,’ says Valarie King, a sociologist and demographer at Pennsylvania State University who just completed work on a five-year grant studying non-resident fathers. Decades ago, non-resident fathers were largely divorced, but King and other researchers say many non-resident dads today were in a non-marital relationship that didn’t last. Divorced fathers have been shown to be more involved, on average, than those who were never married to the child’s mother, King says. Such research findings (some yet unpublished) - along with changing attitudes and custody laws - are creating a new picture of today’s non-resident dads…”