Illinois Foster Care System Feels Pinch from Budget Cuts
from The Public News Service – Illinois
Bring back the funding Illinois children need to thrive. That's the message from foster care advocates and providers who are urging Governor Blagojevich to sign legislation restoring funds cut from the budget. Those cuts have reduced staff at the Department of Children and Family Services as well as payments for foster homes and services. More

Hunter College School of Social Work to Move to East Harlem
from The New York Times
With the help of the largest gift ever to the City University of New York, the Hunter College School of Social Work is moving uptown. The graduate school, with 930 students, has occupied the building at 129 East 79th Street since 1969. More

Pastry Chef Turned Social Worker Donates Her Time — and Desserts
from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
When pastry chef Lynn Abernathy traded her whisk for a career in social work, her KitchenAid didn't get the memo. Abernathy and her trusty mixer still churn out breakfast pastries for meetings, quick breads for clients and cakes for all occasions, but baking is now a hobby. Social work is her profession, helping people her mantra. More

Aging Even Tougher for Gays and Lesbians
from The Chicago Tribune
Getting old isn't easy for anyone. But aging poses particular problems for members of the nation's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community. Compared with heterosexual counterparts, many more of them are socially isolated, fear discrimination from health-care providers, live alone and don't have children or other close relatives to call upon for help. More

Study Links Sexual Content on TV to Teen Pregnancy
from CNN
Sexual content on television is strongly associated with teen pregnancy, a new study from the RAND Corporation shows. Researchers at the nonprofit organization found that adolescents with a high level of exposure to television shows with sexual content are twice as likely to get pregnant or impregnate someone as those who saw fewer programs of this kind over a period of three years. It is the first study to demonstrate this association, RAND said. More

Fremd High School Makes Sure Students Succeed
from The Chicago Sun-Times
The three-year-old Problem-Solving Teams at Fremd High School in northwest suburban Palatine, Ill., moved away from the traditional system of assigning students alphabetically to counselors who consult with support staff as needed. Now, three teams of four counselors, a psychologist and a social worker, led by three assistant principals, come together each week to focus on the caseload of students. More

Study Identifies Three Effective Treatments for Childhood Anxiety Disorders
from The National Institutes of Health
Treatment that combines a certain type of psychotherapy with an antidepressant medication is most likely to help children with anxiety disorders, but each of the treatments alone are also effective, according to a new study funded by the National Institute’s of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) The study was published online Oct. 30, in the New England Journal of Medicine. More

Housing for the Disabled is a Challenging Find
from The Chicago Tribune
Persistence paid off for Shawn Roberts, who needed an accessible apartment to accommodate his wheelchair. The 37-year-old Chicago resident bounced from one relative's home to another after an injury left him paralyzed and unable to walk. At one point, he moved into a walk-up apartment with his 60-year-old mother. "She had to drag my wheelchair up six steps just to get me into the house," Roberts said. More

Violent Video Games Linked to Child Aggression
from CNN
About 90 percent of U.S. kids ages eight to 16 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing so (more if you're a boy). Now a new study suggests virtual violence in these games may make kids more aggressive in real life. Kids in both the U.S. and Japan who reported playing lots of violent video games had more aggressive behavior months later than their peers who did not, according to the study, which appears in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics. More