Jeremy Loudenback

1 week ago | imprintnews.org | Jeremy Loudenback

It was the annual high school wrestling tournament that Lily Dorman Colby looked forward to most when she was a teen in foster care two decades ago. At the time, she was an All-American wrestler at Berkeley High. More than the actual competition, Colby was excited about the opportunity the tournament gave her to see a younger brother, who was also in foster care, but had been placed in a separate home.

3 weeks ago | imprintnews.org | Jeremy Loudenback

In this fourth installment of the Imprint’s multi-part series Medicated in Foster Care: Who’s Looking Out? we hear from young adults prescribed heavy doses of psychotropic medications in Los Angeles County more than a decade ago. Foster youth are typically in greater need of mental health support. But these four women found their pain and anguish muffled, not healed. Read the entire series here. Lethargic. Sluggish. Dizzy. Woozy. Destabilized. That was life in foster care on sedating psychotropic drugs.

3 weeks ago | imprintnews.org | Jeremy Loudenback

Today, in the third of The Imprint’s multi-part series Medicated in Foster Care: Who’s Looking Out?, we examine oversight measures in California, where judges monitor psychotropic prescriptions. Next up in the series, read about the experiences of young people who took psychotropic medications while in the care of the state. In California, foster youth prescribed psychiatric drugs are asked a series of questions: Do you know your diagnosis? Do you know the reason for the prescription?

1 month ago | imprintnews.org | Jeremy Loudenback

By law, teachers, nurses, child care providers, social workers, police officers and therapists must call authorities if they suspect potential child maltreatment. But too often, advocates say these requirements result in more harm than help: Unnecessary government intervention can drag parents into the child welfare system simply for being impoverished, not abusive. Bolstered by a year-long reform effort, the California Legislature will soon consider an alternate path.

1 month ago | imprintnews.org | Jeremy Loudenback

“Nickel Boys,” a movie that portrays the struggles of two Black teens held in a nightmarish juvenile detention facility in 1960s Florida, will contend for the best picture Oscar at the 2025 Academy Awards next month. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the story Is based on true-life abuse at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida.