Having single posts appear under the blog homepage and highlight menu items properly?

You can edit your permalinks like so:

/be-the-first-to-care/first-to-care-blogs/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

I’m not sure why blog posts work like that, maybe somebody can give you further insight but the above works for me. You can edit your permalinks via:

Admin Panel -> Settings -> Permalinks

Then click the “Custom Structure” radio button and fill in the textbox with the above.