Even in the best of times, child welfare systems in California are beleaguered, underfunded, and stressed. There are too few social workers for foster children and their troubled birth families, and these caseworkers are often overworked within a huge bureaucratic system. Juvenile Dependency judges will have caseloads of 500 children, and children’s attorneys are likewise […]
Prior to the invention of the television in 1927, the computer, smart phone, and other electronic devices a child never had the opportunity to interact with these machines. They did not exist. Today is different: they are almost everywhere. Never in the history of the world has there ever been as many electronic devices and […]
How quarantine taught me.. I began 2020 by calling the suicide hotline. My brother was in crisis. I was there with him when he confessed it. I was there with him in the ER room. And I was there when they committed him to the mental health hospital. It was one of the scariest and […]
About this time two years ago we were in Azerbaijan with our old college friend Alison. While this is remarkable in its own right–hell, the very idea of a vacation is remarkable right now–what sticks out in my mind is an epic walk Alison and I took one day. She wanted to revisit some of […]
Hello my name is Dr. Jaisimaran Sidhu. I live in a small town in California called Porterville with 60,000 residents. My father Dr. Jasvir Sidhu and I run a rural health clinic here with primary care and pediatric care for the Medicaid population and the uninsured. He has served this community for 30 plus years. […]
Letter to The Editor: As the founder of Caring Cause, I realize the majority of Tulare residents aren’t aware of our Facebook Group. Therefore, I’d like to tell the community a little bit about Caring Cause and invite them to join. Originally, the name of our group was Caring Cause – Stop Neglect at Tulare […]
“For those who wanted a world without vaccines…here’s the world without ONE vaccine.” Author unknown It’s my very strong opinion this crisis will not end until a safe and effective vaccine is developed—Israel may be the first country to have a vaccine (within the next 90 days?), but can they rapidly produce it in the […]
The above, I believe, can be credited to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at University of Washington. What I would like you to take notice of is California’s curve on this graph. That’s us, at the very bottom. Which means we’re at the top of our game when it comes to social distancing […]
Our youngest son called me last week to let us know, he said, that he is alright. “Of course,” I said. “I know you are.” He was not grasping the epidemiological aspects of the new coronavirus pandemic. “Listen,” I said. “You and I can probably drink a glass of this stuff and, according to the […]
After seven years of flying the Valley Voice you would think I’d be inured to carelessness by now. I wish I were, yet it sometimes still gets under my skin. Like when people characterize the entire newspaper based on a single press release. As if we had authored, or even endorsed it. Like when people […]