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for Kids.org: Better Policies for Kids
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NEW ON CONNECTFORKIDS.ORG
**Lunchroom Revolution
**Connect for Kids Weekly
**Services for Kinship Care
HELPING LOW-PAID WORKERS GET AHEAD?
**A Hand Up: How State EITCs Help Low-Paid Workers Get Ahead
**Encouraging Job Advancement Among Low-Wage Workers: A New Approach
**Recent Trends in Food Stamp Participation: Have New Policies Made a Difference?
KIDS & POLITICS
**House Votes for More Tax Breaks Only for Wealthy Families
**A New Budget Deal: To Be or Not to Be?
**Senate Committee Approves Child Nutrition Bill
**A Snag on the Road to Approval
**Senator Introduces "Education Begins at Home" Bill
HEALTH NEWS
**Psychotropic Drugs for Children Outpace Medications for Asthma
**Vaccines Safe, Says Institute of Medicine
**National Hunger Awareness Day June 3
PEW COMMISSION CALLS FOR FOSTER CARE CHANGES
**Pew Commission Calls for Changes
**Child Welfare League of America Praises Pew Report's Basic Principles
**Children's Defense Fund Sees Opportunity for Reform in Pew Report
**Recommendations for Financing Foster Care: What do They Mean for Children?
**Children's Rights, Inc. Stresses Importance of Reasonable Caseloads
**Former Foster Youth: How Are They Faring?
IN AND AFTER SCHOOL
**Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of School Reform
**America after 3 PM
RESOURCES FOR YOUTH WORKERS
**Improving the Human Services Workforce
**Know Thyself: Evaluating Your Youth Program
**Youth Organizing
FOCUS ON THE STATES
**State-by-State News
Arizona
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Kansas
Maryland
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Texas
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NEW ON CONNECTFORKIDS.ORG
**Lunchroom Revolution
When a mother, who's also a nutritionist, looked inside the lunchroom at her children's school, she didn't like what she saw and decided to take action. Douglas J. Buege reports on Sara Tedeschi's struggle to put real food on the table in Madison, Wisconsin.
http://www.connectforkids.org
**Connect for Kids Weekly
If you are a parent, teacher, nurse or youth worker, every week you can get the latest news and research on issues important to children and families in the Connect for Kids Weekly. Sign up today!
http://www.connectforkids.org
**Services for Kinship Care
It's a time-honored way to meet the needs of children who are orphaned or whose parents cannot care for them -- grandparents and other relatives opening their own homes. Yet kinship care has never received the kind of official attention given to non-relative foster care. Jennifer Ehrle and Rob Geen of the Urban Institute say these caregivers need more support.
http://www.connectforkids.org
HELPING LOW-PAID WORKERS GET AHEAD?
**A Hand Up: How State EITCs Help Low-Paid Workers Get Ahead
The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) lifts more children out of poverty than any other government program, and 18 states have enacted state EITCs to help further the success of the federal program. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains how state EITCs help families in tough times.
http://www.cbpp.org/5-14-04sfp.htm
**Encouraging Job Advancement Among Low-Wage Workers: A New Approach
In decades past, a worker could advance to better pay and benefits through hard work and experience, but today's workplace is different. Georgetown University Professor Harry Holzer finds that getting ahead now depends more on the boss than on how hard or long an employee works. With pay for low-wage jobs stagnating, Holzer recommends helping low-wage workers find higher-wage employers who provide on-the-job training and/or career ladders. He also urges public policies -- raising the minimum wage, emphasizing better job placement instead of "work first," investing in job placement agencies, and providing tax credits to businesses that offer on-the-job training -- to improve these conditions.
http://www.brookings.edu/es/research/projects/wrb/publications/pb/pb30.htm
**Recent Trends in Food Stamp Participation: Have New Policies Made a Difference?
The Urban Institute's Survey of American Families suggests that new rules and procedures helped welfare-to-work families access food stamps as the economy soured, but participation rates for poor families with no welfare experience -- the largest share of poor families with children -- did not budge from 1997 to 2002. To increase food stamp participation, the Urban Institute recommends that states intensify outreach efforts through grocery stores, community centers, and schools; that food stamp offices shift their emphasis from preventing fraud to boosting awareness of and participation in the program as a work support.
http://www.urban.org/media/B58_norelease.pdf
KIDS & POLITICS
**House Votes for More Tax Breaks Only for Wealthy Families
Last week, the House voted to extend child tax credits for families with incomes in the $110,000 to $300,000 range. Families with low-paying jobs (with earnings below $10,750) would continue to be ineligible for the child tax credit.
http://www.cbpp.org/5-18-04tax.htm
**A New Budget Deal: To Be or Not to Be?
The House adopted a one-year budget blueprint last week, but the bill stalled in the Senate after moderate Republicans and Democrats opposed the absence of "pay-as-you-go" fiscal discipline rules for tax expenditures. Senate leaders postponed a Senate vote until after the Memorial Day recess.
http://www.chn.org/humanneeds/article.asp?Art=2329
**Senate Committee Approves Child Nutrition Bill
New House and Senate child nutrition bills go a long way toward helping America's vulnerable children, says the Food Action and Research Center (FRAC). The House has approved its bill, while the Senate version was passed by the Agriculture Committee and will come to the floor after the Memorial Day recess. Both bills permanently reauthorize key provisions, including one excluding military families' privatized housing in income eligibility calculations. The Senate bill also includes a 3-year summer food rural transportation pilot; the potential for pilots to offer free meals to households with incomes up to 185 percent of poverty; mandatory direct certification for food stamp households applying for free or reduced price meals; and a Child and Adult Care Food Program pilot which expands eligibility for child care in rural areas. FRAC is calling on activists to encourage their Senators to press for quick passage in the full Senate.
http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/cnreauthor/052104reauth.htm
**A Snag on the Road to Approval
In the above debate, the Senate Agriculture Committee defeated a proposal by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) to let the federal government develop model nutrition guidelines for foods sold in vending machines and elsewhere on school grounds -- a move that reflects the undue influence of the food industry lobby, charges the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
http://www.cspinet.org/new/200405201.html
**Senator Introduces "Education Begins at Home" Bill
On May 12, Senator Bond (R-MO) introduced a bill that would provide $500 million to states over three years to expand access for some 2.7 million families to Parents as Teachers and other parent education and family support services, especially on military bases and to families with English language learners.
http://bond.senate.gov/pat.cfm
HEALTH NEWS
**Psychotropic Drugs for Children Outpace Medications for Asthma
Although children take fewer medications than seniors, their medications are more expensive per child per day, reports Medco Health Solutions, a subsidiary of Merck, in its annual review of pharmaceutical spending. Spending on drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) surged for children under age 5, and the number of children of all ages who are on behavioral medications jumped more than 20 percent between 2000 and 2003.
http://www.drugtrendreport.com/art/drug_trend/dt_symposium_highlights_0517.pdf
**Vaccines Safe, Says Institute of Medicine
Examining the evidence for the hypothesis that childhood vaccines can cause autism, the Institute of Medicine has concluded there is no causal relationship.
http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=20155
**National Hunger Awareness Day June 3
On June 3, food banks, anti-hunger groups, food-rescue organizations, soup kitchens, food pantries, individuals, faith-based organizations and businesses will focus attention on domestic hunger by donating time, raising funds, and giving food.
http://www.hungerday.org/
PEW COMMISSION CALLS FOR FOSTER CARE CHANGES
**Pew Commission Calls for Changes
The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care calls for restructuring child welfare and boosting federal financing so states have greater flexibility -- and greater accountability -- to tailor their programs for specific families and children. The Commission recommends keeping the guaranteed federal funding for child welfare and expanding foster care and adoption assistance to all children, not just limited to those from impoverished families. It also called for making sure that courts have the tools, information, and training necessary to fulfill their responsibilities to children in public care.
http://pewfostercare.org/
**Child Welfare League of America Praises Pew Report's Basic Principles
The Child Welfare League issued a statement supporting the broad principles contained in the Pew report -- particularly, the call for new federal resources to help states and communities invest in programs for families, guaranteeing the current federal support level as the starting point for additional funds, and improving conditions for the child welfare workforce by ensuring manageable caseloads and training.
http://www.cwla.org/newsevents/news040518pew.htm
**Children's Defense Fund Sees Opportunity for Reform in Pew Report
The Children's Defense Fund praised the Pew Commission's report as an important opportunity to generate momentum for long overdue reforms at the federal level on behalf of abused and neglected children, especially its systemic approach to increased investments, increased flexibility, and in new ways of doing business that build on the good work already going on in selected states and communities around the country.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=669&ncid=669&e=11&u=/usnw/20040518/pl_usnw/children_s_defense_fund_urges_federal_child_welfare_reforms122_xml
**Recommendations for Financing Foster Care: What do They Mean for Children?
Voices for America's Children says that many of the Pew recommendations would be welcome in most states, especially federal help for financing legal guardianships so grandparents get the help they need when caring for their grandchildren. The organization is more cautious about the financing recommendations, which guarantee pre-set increases in funds for state administrative needs and family services, but may not grow at a rate that keeps pace with need.
http://www.voicesforamericaschildren.org/Template.cfm?Section=Homepage_1&CONTENTID=3715&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
**Children's Rights, Inc. Stresses Importance of Reasonable Caseloads
Noting that organizations have set standards but the federal government has never required states to limit the number of children for whom individual workers can be responsible, Children's Rights, Inc. emphasized the importance of the Pew Commission report in helping urge Congress to pass clear, enforceable, mandated standards on reasonable caseloads, critical to meeting the medical, mental health and educational needs of abused or neglected children.
http://www.childrensrights.org/press_releases/05-18-04.htm
**Former Foster Youth: How Are They Faring?
Illinois foster youth who become ineligible for government-funded services as they age out of the child welfare system face steep challenges on the road to adulthood, according to Chapin Hall's "Midwest Evaluation of Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth." Less than half of the young people aging out of foster care reported being offered any help with money management, finding housing or employment, or other key services. (But they were much more likely than their non-foster counterparts to receive psychological counseling, family planning services, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and substance abuse counseling.) Over one-third reported experiencing five or more school changes during their foster care stays, and half reported being in special education at some point. More than half of the foster youth reported having a history of arrest and over a third had spent the night in a correctional facility.
http://www.chapinhall.org/article_abstract_new.asp?ar=1359&L2=61&L3=130
IN AND AFTER SCHOOL
**Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of School Reform
School must do a better job preparing all students for the requirements of today's workplace. This Mass Insight Education brochure outlines the benchmarks and reform strategies in standards, testing, curriculum and investment that have helped boost achievement among struggling students in Massachusetts and Washington state.
http://www.massinsight.org/docs/LessonsLearned.pdf
**America after 3 PM
Here's a scary thought: 42,819 5-year-olds -- 1 percent of all kindergarteners -- are home taking care of themselves after school. The Afterschool Alliance reports that while most children are in the care of an adult after school, millions of elementary and secondary school kids spend an average of 7 hours a week caring for themselves. Only 11 percent are in after-school programs, though many more would participate if they could afford them or find suitable programs in their community.
http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/america_3pm.cfm
In visits to Capitol Hill last week organized by the Afterschool Alliance, parents, teachers and advocates urged lawmakers to reject President Bush's proposal to flat-fund the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school initiative in Fiscal Year 2005, and provide the full $2 billion authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act.
http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/challenge_2004.cfm
RESOURCES FOR YOUTH WORKERS
**Improving the Human Services Workforce
The latest issue of AdvoCasey, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's policy magazine, explores the workforce crisis plaguing children and family services. Foundation president Doug Nelson highlights the need for renewed focus on frontline workers serving needy kids and families. Other articles document this challenge in Greenville, South Carolina, Michigan's "just-in-time" hiring process and Cincinnati's pay-for-performance contract with area human services workers.
http://www.aecf.org/publications/advocasey/spring2004/index.htm
**Know Thyself: Evaluating Your Youth Program
Want to monitor how your program is performing so you can improve your services or make a stronger case to donors? Find guiding questions and tools on conducting a self-evaluation on the new Planning and Evaluation Center (PERC) Web site.
http://ase.tufts.edu/adsi/perc
**Youth Organizing
Young people have a lot at stake in how well their schools are working, but are rarely asked or encouraged to give guidance in improvement efforts. Thanks to the Forum for Youth Investment, you can find out about projects around the country that are engaging youth in education reform.
http://www.forumforyouthinvestment.org/workingpapers/yaecresourceguide.pdf
FOCUS ON THE STATES
**State-by-State News
Arizona
Just nine months ago, students in 63 Arizona schools had some of the worst reading
scores in the state. Today, reading readiness for these kindergartners has soared,
aided by a federal grant that put some of the best reading programs in the country
into schools with the poorest track records. Full-day kindergarteners made stronger
improvements than part-time kindergarteners.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0520kinder20.html
In a surprise vote, the House approved a budget that could preserve child care,
college education and drug treatment for thousands of Arizonans. The budget
rebellion by moderate Republicans and Democrats could also mean all-day kindergarten
next year in the state's poorest schools. The Senate must still decide if it
accepts the House changes.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0521budget21.html
Florida
Florida ranks 45th among the states in bachelor's degrees per capita, a measure often linked to economic development. The Tallahassee Democrat reports that Florida universities would more than double their output of bachelor's degrees over the next eight years under a plan developed by the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees higher education.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/local/8699075.htm
Georgia
The National Center for Children in Poverty used its new Georgia income simulator
to chart how the state's public policies reward or discourage employment for
two hypothetical Georgia families in "Low-Income Families in Georgia: When a
Full-Time Job Isn't Enough."
http://www.nccp.org/pub_frs04b.html
The Georgia income simulator is available online.
http://www.nccp.org/modeler/modeler.cgi
Illinois
Illinois Voices for Children praises a new General Assembly approach to closing the state's budget deficit. By restructuring the revenue system, the bill would increase education funding by $1.8 billion, and $2 billion for child care, health care and other human services. The tax changes include cuts for people earning the lowest wages and offering refundable tax credits to help ensure no net tax increase for Illinoisans with the lowest 60 percent of incomes. Meanwhile, state leaders are considering whether to adopt a spending plan with no increases in vital supports for children and their families.
http://www.voices4kids.org/actionalert.htm
Kansas
A Kansas judge has ordered the state to shut down its schools June 30 rather
than continue its unconstitutional system for financing them, reports Education
Week. The ruling follows a legislative session marked by tumultuous debate--but
no progress--in responding to the judge's December ruling that the state's school
aid is unconstitutional. State officials are assuring districts that funds are
likely to flow this summer.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=37Kansas.h23
The Associated Press reports that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) signed a bill
last week granting some illegal immigrants a tuition break at state universities
and colleges. The new law, which takes effect on July 1, will extend in-state
tuition to illegal immigrants who have attended a Kansas high school at least
three years and graduated or earned a general educational development certificate
in Kansas.
http://ljworld.com/section/legislature/story/170818
Maryland
The Community Conferencing Center in Baltimore is an innovative and effective community justice and conflict resolution program that is working to keep Baltimore, Maryland youths out of the state's juvenile system, holding young offenders accountable by bringing them face-to-face with victims to discuss what has taken place and its ramifications and to agree upon a resolution or some other reparative action.
http://www.cccbaltimore.org
New Hampshire
New legislation in New Hampshire allows adults who were adopted as children to obtain their original birth certificates at age 18.
http://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/articles-archives/legislation-win.htm
New Mexico
Developing a Children's Agenda in the last gubernatorial election season raised the visibility of children's issues. Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) has adopted eight the nine priorities in the Children's Agenda as his own and begun to act on most of them, reports Voices for America's Children.
http://www.voicesforamericaschildren.org/Content/ContentGroups/Publications-Voices/CAMAD/20043/March-April.pdf
Texas
Several funding plans were debated in a special legislative session trying to find new ways to fund Texas' beleaguered school system -- adding business taxes, legalizing video gambling, increasing cigarette taxes, initiating a payroll tax provision -- but all ended in defeat, reports the Washington Times. The school-funding system is at the breaking point, with half of the state's districts taxing property at the highest legal rate.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040518-103934-3199r.htm
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Keep up the hard work, everyone!
Have a good Memorial Day break, everyone!
Jan
Jan Richter, Advocacy Director, and the Connect for Kids team
Jan@connectforkids.org
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