Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Staying Connected: Moms Who Pump in Prison

    Riverside Correction Facility in Philadelphia has implemented a program that allows incarcerated new mothers the opportunity to both learn about the benefits of maintaining breast milk supply, and also provide it for their newborns. The lactation program not only carries significant health benefits for the infant and mother, but also encourages crucial bonding between the two.

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  • Poverty Forces People to Surrender Their Pets. It Doesn't Have to Be This Way.

    Across the nation, animal shelters are doing more to offer services and solutions for people giving up their pets, not because of any malicious intent, but because they can no longer afford to take care of it. In L.A., for example, Downtown Dog Rescue has been connecting low-income pet owners with resources like low-cost veterinarian care to help people keep their pets.

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  • How Minneapolis Managed a Massive Homeless Encampment

    In Minneapolis, they've dealt with one of the largest encampments of people experiencing homelessness - not by "clearing" it as many other cities do, but by collaborating with local organizations to help residents transition out of the encampment and into housing. Because the encampment's residents were predominantly Native American, Red Lake Nation offered up a small portion of tribal lands to serve as a navigation center for temporary housing while they work on a permanent center for the city's homeless population.

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  • Jail or Bail? There's a New Option

    Between the opposite extremes of jailing too many people unnecessarily before trial or releasing too many unsupervised, New York City judges in 2016 began to use a "supervised release" option. In the first three years, the program's 11,000 defendants showed up for court dates 89% of the time while 8% were rearrested for new felony crimes. The program, which requires people check in regularly with a case manager, helped reduce the jail population by more than a third. The approach tries to balance the needs of public safety with the reality that even a short jail stay carries its own social harms.

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  • The city with no homeless on its streets

    Local UK governments look to Helsinki, Finland as an example of a city that has nearly eradicated homeless by offering people on the streets free housing, unconditionally. While often drug use and alcoholism persists in these communities, Helsinki officials see housing as the first step to recovery. What can UK cities learn from Finland, where the number of rough sleepers has fallen dramatically?

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  • How This Country Has Solved Homelessness

    In Finland, homelessness has been largely perceived as eradicated through its pilot of the now internationally recognized concept of Housing First, where people experiencing homelessness are offered safe, stable and permanent housing without the requirement of intensive services first. "Between 2008 and 2015, the number of people experiencing long-term homelessness dropped by 35 percent," a number that many countries are trying to replicate.

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  • Building the Prison-to-School Pipeline in California

    Providing those experiencing incarceration with educational services has shown to reduce recidivism by 28%. While many prisons offer GED or higher education classes, the opportunities are still hard to come by consistently, so organizations like Underground Scholars help recruit individuals after prison to colleges. Looking forward, those pushing for criminal justice reform hope to overturn a 1994 legislation that banned incarcerated individuals from being eligible for Pell Grants, which could help drive more people from prison to school.

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  • Blunting Addiction's Impact

    Millions of Americans are addicted to and hundreds of thousands have died from opioids, but learning what hasn't worked in treating the epidemic is providing a path forward to creating solutions that do have impact. From making medication-assisted treatment more accessible and less stigmatized to expanding Medicaid coverage and implementing harm reduction strategies, states across the U.S. are piloting new initiatives based off the knowledge gained from assessing the limitations of previous approaches.

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  • Switzerland fights heroin with heroin

    Drug-assisted treatment has reduced rates of new substance abuse cases and HIV infections in Switzerland. With the implementation of an innovative drug policy program in 1994, Swiss doctors began to treat those suffering with chronic substance abuse with heroin-assisted treatment (HAT). The program benefitted from positive results in early trials and has encouraged the implementation of similar programs in other countries.

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  • The Art of Humanizing Social Systems

    For social service agencies, prioritizing well-being requires new procedures and a framework for understanding holistic wellness. The Full Frame Initiative has partnered with agencies in the states of Massachusetts and Missouri in an effort to bring categories of well-being into their purview. The Initiative uses five metrics—safety, mastery, social connectedness, and access to resources— to help align social systems, ranging from courts and juvenile corrections to homeless housing services, with social needs so that agencies can better assist their communities.

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