San Jose Mercury News

Two award-winning California journalists focused on child welfare recently ended long-term stints with newspapers in order to work for news outlets where they will have the resources necessary to do in-depth, investigative reporting on vulnerable children.

I had always been a good student, getting A’s and B’s, but everything changed in tenth grade when I failed English, one of my favorite classes. Although we were reading books I had read before and loved, like Brave New World, I couldn’t stay awake to participate in class discussions.

As California prepares to implement massive changes in how it provides care for foster children, many of the local agencies that will determine the failure or success of the effort — the county behavioral health departments — are completely unprepared to deliver on the promise of improved care.

More than a year after a landmark San Jose Mercury News investigation exposed the impact of the over-prescription of mind-altering drugs given to foster youth, Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed a package of bills into law that would place limits on those practices.

The multimedia series “Drugging Our Kids,” published by the San Jose Mercury News, won the Edward R. Murrow Award for an online news video documentary by a large online organization last week.

By Han Jiang A bill proposed in February would require the California Department of Social Services to create a new system where public health nurses monitor the prescription of psychotropic medications to foster youth.

In the six years that I have covered the foster care system and worked along its fractious point of contact with the news media, an all-too-common theme has been one of mistrust, fear and subsequent misinformation.