Pauli Gray puts in a long and often challenging day working with the Syringe Access Services program at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.   On the streets of the city’s most drug-addled neighborhoods, he shares “harm reduction” strategies as he exchanges used syringes. Simultaneously, as a trainer for the DOPE Project, he dispenses anti-overdose kits and trains those he meets to use Narcan, a drug that blocks the effects of heroin ......

A San Francisco federal judge has ordered the California Department of Social Services to increase payments to foster parents after finding the state out of compliance with federal law. The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the increases Friday, two and a half years after he first ruled that the state’s foster care reimbursements did not cover the costs of raising children. Judge ......

California child advocates are spitting with rage over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto last week of funding restorations to the state’s child welfare system. The County Welfare Directors Association of California issued a press release Friday calling Schwarzenegger a hypocrite. A spokeswoman for Senate leader Darrell Steinberg likened the governor’s veto to an act of cruelty. (You can read a report by Daniel Weintraub of Healthy Cal about the reactions of ......

He waited until the last minute, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger finally signed AB 12 today, extending foster care services up to age 21. In a press release, The County Welfare Directors Association of California called the legislation “the most significant policy change to occur in the foster care field for decades.”  Each year, roughly 4,500 foster youth age out of the system and suffer high rates of unemployment, homelessness, substance ......

Monolingual Spanish speakers in the Bay Area will now have somewhere to turn if they are victims of sexual assault. The advocacy group Mujeres Unidas y Activas on Wednesday announced the launch of ALMA, which means "soul" in Spanish and stands for Ayuda, Llama a Mujeres Ahora — a crisis line to be staffed by 28 women. The counselors, many of whom have experienced abuse themselves, took an intensive 52-hour ......