Most important reads for this week 

Foster Youths Meet Psychiatry: A Wickedly Sticky Wicket 
Wayne Munchel peels back the onion on the dark side of the overuse of psychotropic drugs with foster youth.

National Wraparound Initiative Seeking Volunteers to Take Video-Booster Training 
What? Free booster training for wraparound aficionados? Oh my goodness, NWI just keeps on giving… Get on it Wrappers and help advance the knowledge of best-practice wraparound.

Frustrated You Can’t Find A Therapist? They’re Frustrated, Too
There are a lot of people suffering from a mental health condition who need therapy. And there are a lot of therapists who want to help them. But both sides believe the insurance companies that are supposed to bring them together are actually keeping them apart.

The Carter Center is Looking For a New Director
Thom Bornemann, long time Director of the Mental Health Program at The Carter Center, is retiring and the Center is looking for someone to fill his position. Current programmatic activities include but are not limited to stigma reduction, including a fellowship program for journalists, child and adolescent behavioral health services in the state of Georgia, and scaling up mental health services in post-conflict Liberia. The Mental Health Program reflects the lifetime body of work of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

A Bipartisan Approach to Poverty 
Great read from Anthony Biglan, Ph.D., Neil Wollman, Ph.D., and Diana F. Fishbein, Ph.D. on how our nation can make progress in addressing the problem of poverty if the trend toward using behavioral science to guide policymaking reaches its full potential.

Senators Press for Mental Health Parity 
Props to the eighteen Senators who wrote a letter to the White House pressing for more to be done to ensure mental health parity laws are being followed and that people with mental health challenges are getting equal access to treatment. In the letter to White House Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz, the Senators laid out specific recommendations for the Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Taskforce to consider when developing its recommendations.

Child Mind Institute Explores Issues That Affect Girls More Often Than Boys
The Child Mind Institute is out with another great listing of helpful articles on the emotional well-being of children. 

Make America Safe: 5 Ways to Transform Policing
In the wake of Baton Rouge, Dallas, and St. Paul, our nation is once again in heated debate over what we do and do not want from law enforcement. The Republican National Convention opened with a parade of speakers vowing to “Make America Safe Again,” while President Obama has caucused with both law-enforcement and racial-justice advocates calling for reform. But if we are to truly make America safe, our discussion about different forms of policing must be informed by the same communities in which policing has become such a flashpoint. Rather than discredit those who feel marginalized, we need to provide platforms that empower communities to have meaningful input into how they are policed.

Resources

• NIDA creates online resource to raise awareness about naloxone 
  Responding to public demand for tools and information to help stem the growing opioid overdose epidemic, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has created a web section dedicated to resources about the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone. The new web resource includes information about the medication, how, and by whom, it can be given, and where to obtain it. 
• Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance – U.S., 2015 
  Priority health-risk behaviors contribute to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults. The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System monitors six categories of priority health behaviors among youth and young adults.
• Health coverage for homeless and at-risk youth 
  This fact sheet outlines options for healthcare coverage under the ACA for homeless and at-risk youth. 
• New Foster Care Transition Toolkit Offers Tips for Helping Foster Youth Succeed as Adults 
  The U.S. Department of Education released a new toolkit to inspire and support current and former foster youth pursuing college and career opportunities. The Foster Care Transition Toolkit includes tips and resources intended to help foster youth access and navigate social, emotional, educational, and skills barriers as they transition into adulthood. 
• Identifying the Trauma Recovery Needs of Maltreated Children: An Examination of Child Welfare Workers’ Effectiveness in Screening for Traumatic Stress
  Maltreated children in child welfare systems are significantly affected by trauma, and child welfare workers are an effective yet often underutilized resource for identifying their trauma recovery needs via trauma screening.