Financial Policy For Psychological Services: Fill & Download for Free

I have been evaluating various books on economics for the Civil Services. Of late I have come across two books that deal with contemporary economic issues. The books are:Penny Panache: Piecing the Economic PuzzleFinancial Felicity: Making Sense of Money Matters.Both books are authored by Dr Rachna Singh, IRS.These books give a crisp and all-encompassing (800–1200 words) overview of economic issues like demonetization, GST, inflation, disinvestment, monetary policy, Bank NPAs, currency swings, Bad banks, consolidation of banks, credit bubble, sovereign wealth fund, black economy (including amnesty schemes), merger of oil marketing companies (OMCs), digital payments, bitcoins, universal basic income, RERA, Bankruptcy code, financial policies etc. The author discusses issues in an objective and analytic fashion. Ideally suited to the Civil Services exam. These books are available on Amazon.

Yes, in America, in the past, refugee children have been separated from their parents and placed into foster care, and this has been happening for a long time. I know this because I LIVED WITH THEM, IN GROUP HOMES.First, some facts:Placing refugee children into the foster care system is actually NOT a ‘New Policy’, but the administrations issuance of a ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy has massively exacerbated the AMOUNT of refugee children who are entering an already overwhelmed and dysfunctional nightmare of a situation!MANY of the Refugee Children who have now been placed into the American Foster Care System, for a NUMBER of reasons, WILL REMAIN IN THE AMERICAN FOSTER CARE SYSTEM.I have a friend from El Salvador who grew up in the American Foster Care System, because when her parents were deported, she did not have any family who were Green Card holders, or American Citizens, who could take her, and her parents believed that she was better off in America, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, than she would have been in El Salvador.Google the history and situation of El Salvador. Her parents were probably right. The American foster care system at least offered their daughter a better chance of ACTUAL survival. They left her here so that she would REMAIN ALIVE. (Incidentally, both of her parents were killed, about ten years after being deported, and while she was still a child in foster care - although she did not find that information out until she was in her mid 30s.)So many CHILDREN have lived through that EXACT EXPERIENCE, that there are Adult, Survivor, National Support Groups IN America FOR them!I remember the refugee children who were placed in the system with me, in the 70s and 80s, when I was in foster care. Because I spoke Spanish and English, I was often their translator. Even back then, it was NOT UNCOMMON for those children to have absolutely NO CONTACT with their family members, for YEARS. They were always confused, and they were always completely terrified. Most of them told me that they came from what can only be described as a loving home, with dedicated parents who were willing to do whatever it took to give their children a better life. The trauma and abuse that those children suffered BEGAN when they ENTERED the American foster care system. Of the many, many children that I personally knew, who were separated from their parents and placed into the foster care system, solely due to immigration related issues, I do NOT know of even one child who was reunited with their family. Maybe it did happen, but I NEVER SAW that happen.These kids need your help. I’m seeing people online losing the minds because none of the children are being hugged. If you want to help the children in the foster care system, both the refugee children, and the American born children, you can actually do a lot MORE, right this second, than JUST physically hug these kids!!! Not being hugged is the LEAST of the problem for ALL of these kids, believe me.I was in foster care in America, as a child (beginning at age 9, in 1979), and in the 'Residential Facilities' which were more often called 'Group Homes', NO HUGGING was allowed, AT ALL, EVER. Children were NOT even allowed to hug each other - not even siblings, and staff were ONLY allow to touch the children for 'disciplinary purposes', meaning they were allowed to physically restrain the children, if there was 'violent behavior or noncompliance to the rules'. Sheets of paper, with that written on it were posted all over the facilities. Aside from physical discipline, only 'High Fives' were allowed. The thought process behind that demented 'no hugging' rule is that *it would prevent sexual abuse of the children*, but It didn't prevent the sexual abuse of children, at all.HERE IS HOW YOU CAN HELP! THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN DO, EASILY, AND TODAY, IN ORDER TO HELP THEM… (tl;dr = 'Buy them a Starbucks Frappuccino!' Which sounds crazy, out of context, SO JUST READ THIS.)Anyone with with the desire and time (usually once a month, for a few hours) to help children in the foster care system, which includes refugee children who have been removed from their parents, can apply to become a volunteer for CASA, which exists in every city in America. You can become a Court Appointed Special Advocate for youth in care, and in doing so, you will be a part of the system that has been PROVEN to have a POSITIVE EFFECT on the outcome of the immediate situations, and ultimately the lives, of foster youth. They need you, and they need a hug, but they also need a lot more than just a hug, and by volunteering for CASA, you can be the person who gives them what they all need - You can be the person in their life who is really looking out for them. Right now, you can sign up to be the person who helps to ensure that the refugee children are reunited with their parents. There is NO system in place to reunite those kids with their parents, and therefore, the volunteers at CASA are inevitably going to be taking on this important role - you can also donate money to your local CASA: https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Court_Appointed_Special_Advocate…Foster kids are constantly moved from placement to placement. Often, no warning is given. When I was in care, I needed things like…a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and a pen. Tiny but important things like that, if we even had them to begin with, were often left behind during our last minute transitions. We didn’t have luggage. Our few personal belongings were usually placed in a black trash bag. Would you send a child anyplace with their clothes and toothbrush in a black garbage bag? Even though I was only a small child, I knew that those bags were for garbage, and every time my meager belongings were placed in those bags, I was afraid they were going to be thrown out - Just like I was thrown out. It would have meant the world to me, to have had a little backpack, for my belongings. You can provide backpacks with care products for foster youth, by donating to Comfort Cases. Keep in mind that in all of my many years as a child in the foster care system, I never had pajamas, or a stuffed animal, or crayons. Most of us had none of those things! You can provide that, and more, by donating to Comfort Case. A Comfort Case is a small duffel bag or backpack with a purpose to provide comfort for youth as they enter the foster care system. The case provides the essentials for the first few days in a new place as well as comfort items to help ease an extremely scary transition. https://www.comfortcases.org/whats-in-a-comfort-case/Children in care, and adults who have experienced the foster care system, are often in need of longterm and lifetime psychological services. Childhood trauma never goes away, and being removed from your family of origin, regardless of the reasons, and regardless of the quality of the placements, is always an extremely traumatic experience for any child. Many of us have been removed from our family due to abuse and neglect. Many of us experience even more abuse and neglect while we are in the system. The large majority of former foster youth will face abysmal outcomes in life. Many former foster youth end up homeless, entirely uneducated, suffering from the disease of addiction, and chronically unemployed. Many of us end up incarcerated. Many of us are suffering from PTSD. Even me, a survivor of the system who is miraculously living a safe, happy, normal, middle class life - someone not cursed with the disease of addiction, with a Masters Degree and a good marriage - is in need of regular therapy. I have an anxiety disorder, and my disorder was absolutely brought on by having been a foster child. I am a high functioning adult because I am able to access, free of charge, the psychological services that I very much need. A Home Within is the only national organization dedicated solely to meeting the emotional needs of foster youth, and adult survivors of the foster care system. THEY PROVIDE QUALIFIED THERAPISTS WHO AGREE TO SEE A FOSTER CHILD, OR AN ADULT FOSTER CARE SURVIVOR, IN WEEKLY, PRO-BONO (NO CHARGE) THERAPY FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES. This specific charity has literally saved my life. If you are a therapist, please consider volunteering your valuable services to this organization. If you’d like to help traumatized children, right now, obtain the psychological services that we all very much need, you can donate to them here: https://www.ahomewithin.org/donation/You can also donate to the Foster Care Alumni of America. "Our mission is to ensure a high quality of life for those in and from foster care through the collective voice of alumni. We intend to erase the differences in opportunities and outcomes that exist for people in and from foster care compared to those who have not experienced foster care.” This organization provides a platform for youth in care, and adult survivors of care, to advocate for ourselves.” Nobody knows what foster children need, better than foster youth, and adult survivors of the system. Not the social workers, not the judges, and not the foster parents - We know, because WE LIVED IT, and through this organization, we can work WITH them. The Foster Care Alumni of America also provides much needed educational scholarships for former foster youth. Only 3% of former foster youth obtain a college degree, and with your donations, this organization will work to increase that number, which will help to ensure a lifetime of financial success and personal autonomy for former foster youth. Many people in and of care have no blood relatives in their lives, and therefore the meet ups of this organization often take the place of normal family get togethers. This organization gives me a sense of connection that otherwise would be entirely missing. The Foster Care Alumni Association has given me a sense of having a family. You can donate here: https://fostercarealumni.org/pro…/make-a-recurring-donation/There are also a number of charities SPECIFICALLY FOCUSED on directly helping ONLY the Refugee Children who have been negatively effected by the recent ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy change, but I am unfamiliar with them, so I have not linked them to my post. I am looking into them, and if I can comfortably do so, I will add them later. I have only added charities that I personally know and trust.The last and final thing that I’m going to say is that, to this day, and even RIGHT this second, I feel very, very uncomfortable EVER asking anyone for anything, and this is absolutely a side effect of having been raised by the system - There was no one to ask, for anything, and if I would have asked for anything, the answer would have been ‘No’. So, I learned very early on… Not to ask anyone for anything, EVER.So, this is not easy for me to DO, and this post has been extraordinarily difficult for me to write, because I still struggle with this, MASSIVELY, even though I have been out of the system and in therapy for 34 years… But this is not about me, and this situation is far too important to be ignored any longer so… I am fighting my extreme anxiety, and my intense discomfort and chronic fear of rejection - which are all very common side effects experienced by survivors of the foster care system - and I AM ASKING YOU FOR HELP, for these kids.Even if you do not have the time to be a CASA volunteer, and you are not a therapist who can volunteer to give treatment to someone who is, or has been, involved with the foster care system… You can STILL HELP these children.Can you PLEASE donate just $5.00 to any one of the fantastic charities that I have mentioned above?I am extremely familiar with the charities I have mentioned, and I can absolutely promise you that those SPECIFIC charities are PROVEN to be making a huge, positive difference for lives, and the eventual outcomes, of children in the foster care system.So, I’m asking for you to please just give a one time donation of $5.00, which is literally the price of a Starbucks Frappuccino.Straight-up, I am asking all of you to put your money where your mouth is, and where your *heart* OBVIOUSLY is… Your $5.00 donation to any one of the charities I have provided links to IS NEEDED, FOR THE CHILDREN, EVEN MORE THAN A HUG IS NEEDED, and none of us can deny the fact that those kids need a lot MORE than JUST a hug.It’s just five bucks. A Starbucks Frappuccino. ONE Frappuccino.It’s just five bucks.At this point, I don’t really care about placing blame.I only care about helping the children.It doesn’t matter how you voted, or what party you support. I’m a die-hard liberal, and I am very concerned about the kids, AND I HAVE SEEN MANY, MANY REPUBLICANS EXPRESSING CONCERN ABOUT THOSE CHILDREN.You can vote for whatever political party you prefer, and you can still care about kids, and you can still help children who, for whatever reasons, and regardless of where they were born, are now about to spend their childhood inside of the American foster care system. End of discussion.This is not a political issue. This is a MORAL ISSUE.Just please, for once, come together and focus on ONE thing that we should ALL easily be able to get behind: Help the children.

By the logic of this question, 2010 and 2015 made me more conservative than I was before, since I’d like to conserve the Affordable Care Act and equal rights for LGBT individuals, including but not limited to recognizing marriages.So, for sure, if you go back to 2010, I would be way more ‘liberal’ than I am now, in the sense of having a lot more that I’d like to see change. I wasn’t sure that we would ever see comprehensive healthcare reform in my lifetime, and it was brilliant to see that legislation be made.Let’s focus on the healthcare topic here. I have voted Democrat in every election since 2000, and my formative political identity was to grow up with relatively liberal opinions with parents that voted Republican, essentially because of the classic middle class platform of lower taxes. So I’m used to arguing for bigger government and more taxes to make it work. Now I’m suddenly back on the other foot, arguing to preserve the private system. Why?I really like the philosophy behind Obamacare and want it to work. Meanwhile, most of my peers see it as a compromise and want a system much more like Canada, the UK, or Norway.Before 2010, we’d be on the same side of the fight. Now, we’re not. The political zero yard line has moved, and I have the difficult position of wanting both sides of the aisle to lose in their attempts to repeal and replace the ACA.We might be able to find some common ground, of course. Actually, I can now find common ground with Democrats and Republicans on healthcare. I believe that the Affordable Care Act needs more federal funding and more generous benefits, both to better serve its public good function and to bring in more people who might not otherwise justify buying healthcare. I would imagine that a lot of Democrats would agree to that. I also believe that there needs to be more competition in health insurance, including a national exchange, which is something that Republicans have previously talked about.So far, my support for Obamacare has netted me no criticism from people on the right of me, so I will gloss over why I believe it’s both an ethical and economic imperative to keep the reforms of Obamacare. It might suffice to say here that I know several people who have been able to use the healthcare benefit, not only to improve our health, but to enable us to have enough good health and financial resources to go on to become more productive workers and to contribute much more in taxes and to the economy, indeed even after no longer taking a benefit.For people on the left, I’d say that I don’t believe the work is done. I believe the funding for the ACA at the federal level should be at least double what it is now. I also believe that there can be reasonable attempts to make the private market more efficient. That, I am all for.However, I recognize the downsides to government-provided service. I also recognize the upsides to the private system. And so I hope that we really give ourselves a chance to make Obamacare work.The downsides to government-provided service are crystal clear. Once the people have democratically elected representatives that enact government-provided healthcare, they have made their Faustian bargain. They will get the much-touted benefit of driving healthcare expenditure down to a much smaller percentage of the GDP, that is for sure.Ever wonder how? There are three levers.(A) Good service, especially more expensive treatment but also therapy that is expensive to provide because so many are afflicted, becomes harder to get for the insured.(B) Medical professionals are paid less, by a monopolistic employer, often half as much as their American counterparts even in countries with a high cost of living.(C) Some ‘capitalist fat’ is cut, such as advertising and paying damages for malpractice, and replaced with wholesome ‘bureaucratic lard’.If you can see that (A) and (B) are the big money savers, you understand math.The voters, who used to be consumers on the private market, had a great deal more power over what kind of healthcare they wanted to have. Now, no longer as consumers in the private market but instead as those dependent on the government and as people who have spent their vote, they have very little power to effect change. Especially the kind of change that matters most, which is the kind that affects that individual. You had best like Plan A. Every government will always promise to make it better, but the details of that are up to them, not you.Every time someone writes about healthcare, some Americans are going to ask, ‘but is it really that bad?’ Some Europeans and Canadians are going to chime in, ‘nope, not really that bad.’ And, to them, it isn’t. It seems almost impossible to cut through this fog. You’re not getting the full picture from your relatively healthy and generally proud European friends. You’re not getting the whole story from the press, and the press which is giving the other side of the story is the press that you instinctively distrust. Unless you have at the least heard from the ‘discontents’, the people who are currently being underserved by a different system, you’re not going to understand the drawbacks of that system.The biggest money saver of all is simply not trying anything too expensive to save someone’s life. Quite literally, Americans put a higher value on life when it comes to the quality of medical care than any other country. Every other country has a lower threshold for when they’re willing to say it’s not their problem, and, so sorry, but that treatment is not approved.Cost-effectiveness analysis made its first appearance in the health care literature more than 4 decades ago. In Britain, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) explicitly considers cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained among its criteria for coverage recommendations to the National Health Service; some observers have inferred that explicit criteria such as £30,000 per QALY may be used to guide these recommendations. The World Health Organization has proposed that developing countries might use a cost-per-QALY threshold of 3 times the per-capita gross domestic product to guide their health care resource allocations. Despite widespread use elsewhere in the world, cost-effectiveness analysis has gained only limited traction in the United States as an explicit guide to clinical practice, insurance coverage, and policy decisions.Source: Milton C. Weinstein, How Much Are Americans Willing to Pay for a Quality-Adjusted Life Year?For all the talk of the greed of the private healthcare system, medicine in the United States is actually remarkably insensitive to the cost of providing treatment. Yes, we do spend a lot of our GDP on healthcare. Yes, we need to expand access. But, for all those who lived or died depending on whether their treatment is approved, for any of hundreds of treatments that are approved in the United States but not in many other countries, they’re certainly grateful.The United States leads the world in treating rare diseases, and it is researching treatments for diseases that other countries wouldn’t even consider because the population affected is small enough to shrug off and say it costs too much.There are approximately 7,000 rare diseases affecting 25 to 30 million people in the United States. Children make up more than half of those afflicted. Many of these diseases, or conditions, are life-threatening or life-limiting. Patients and caregivers in the rare disease community face many obstacles; one of the most challenging is that few people, including doctors, have heard or know anything about them. Further, treatments are available for just 5% of the estimated 7,000 diseases. Confronted with these unique challenges, the rare disease community avidly works to raise awareness and educate medical professionals and elected officials, as well as funding and supporting research to develop treatments and cures. …Due to smaller populations that they cover, orphan drugs can be more expensive; the median annual cost for an orphan drug in 2016 was over $32,000 per year. However, a number of orphan therapies have a more modest cost. Exhibit 4 shows an inverse relationship between cost per year and number of patients, with many less expensive therapies being dispensed to relatively few patients. The ten therapies used by the greatest number of patients averaged $14,909 per year and include therapies such as Avonex and Copaxone for the treatment of MS, the oncology product Gazyva and the anti-infective Alinia.Source: Orphan Drugs in the United StatesThere is a unique system in the United States that encourages this kind of research, research which certainly would not proceed at the pace that it does or tackle all the problems that it does if it weren’t for private enterprise and the private market. Many of the drugs, once researched, become extremely affordable once their patents expire, a system that benefits everyone.Ailments that affect a large percent of the population, such as mental illness and mood disorders such as depression, also see disparities in treatment between the United States and other countries. Here, the treatment would be expensive in the aggregate to make readily and easily available. Somehow the United States manages to provide this treatment to a lot more of those who need it, while other countries find a way to get by on a skeleton crew of medical support.Approximately 2% of those surveyed indicated that they had consulted a psychologist in the 12 months prior to the survey. …One striking finding was that the vast majority of individuals using psychoactive medications or experiencing emotional difficulties had not consulted a psychologist in the past year. It is particularly noteworthy that only 10% of those who felt that life was not worthwhile sought services from a psychologist. As well, the majority of depressed individuals in the population did not receive either antidepressant medication or psychosocial interventions from a psychologist, social worker, or counsellor. …Dr. Hunsley and his colleagues conclude from their study that there are many Canadians who could benefit from psychological services who are not currently receiving them. The researchers suggest that, despite the substantial empirical evidence of the effectiveness of psychological interventions, the Canadian public appears to be less than fully informed about the value of psychological services. They recommend that greater efforts be made to inform Canadians about the benefits of psychological services and to reduce the barriers faced by many of them to access these services.Source: Who uses Psychological Services in Canada?Even the uninsured in the United States were about seven times more likely to have seen a mental health professional in the last 12 months. Around 40% of the insured had done so.Source: Percentage of Adults Aged 18–64 Years Who Have Seen or Talked with a Mental Health Professional in the Past 12 Months, by Health Insurance Status and Age Group — National Health Interview Survey, United States, 2012–2013The most fundamental reason that the United States spends more on healthcare is that a higher quality of care is being provided. The main problem, before 2010, is that there was extremely unjust access to that healthcare. There is still a lot of work to be done in improving how accessible and affordable healthcare is in the United States. Hopefully, we can do it without compromising on our commitment to the highest standards of care and without giving up essential choice for consumers of healthcare, who are best able to ensure that the quality of healthcare in the United States continues to be as high as it is.Because some bean counter at a desk in D.C. isn’t going to do it for you.