Connect for Kids / Child Advocacy 360 / Youth Policy Action Center - Articles

Precision Engineering

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:31:18 -0500

Changing the odds for young people requires both passion and precision: passion in our commitment to providing high-quality support to all youth, and precision in measuring how well we and they are doing. In this column, Karen Pittman says it's possible, affordable and essential that we develop ways to measure community-level outcomes to help leaders change the ways they do business.

Foster Care 2008: What We Know, Where We're Going (a Q&A with Experts)

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:19:07 -0500

(2008) May is Foster Care Month, and for the 20th anniversary celebration of the campaign, Connect for Kids spoke with Candice Douglass, communications director with Casey Family Programs, to get the latest on foster care and child well-being, and emerging trends we should all know about. We also got the scoop the Kinship Caregiver Support Act currently in Congress and an innovative approach to permanency for teens in a Q&A with Celeste Bodner, executive director of FosterClub, the national network for young people in foster care. Find out what’s new, what’s working, and how you can make a difference no matter how much time you’ve got to give.

Geography Matters for Child Well-Being (and so do $)

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:19:26 -0500

Where a child is born and raised can plays a surprisingly large role in his or her chances of getting and staying healthy and surviving to adulthood, according to this major new report by the nonpartisan Every Child Matters Education Fund. There’s a “huge investment gap” across the states—Every Child Matters is urging adults who care to get the facts and take action to make better investments and better outcomes a priority.

Communication Designed to Inspire Community Action: the Under-Achievers

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:04:20 -0500

“Because I have a strong belief in the power of community action and citizen engagement in all areas of child well-being, I constantly comb major Websites and print publications for relevant Real People, Real Results stories to share with CFK readers,” writes Hershel Sarbin. A recent find in Casey Family Services Voices publication prompted his thoughts on how nonprofits can do a better job reaching a broad audience.

Dropout Prevention Campaign Kicks Off with Stunning New Data

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:38:20 -0500

An April 2008 report from the America’s Promise Alliance has stunning data about the high school graduation rate in our nation’s 50 largest cities: only about half (52 percent) of students in the main school systems actually finish high school with a diploma—the number is as low as 35 percent in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis. A new Dropout Prevention Campaign is working hard to make sure those numbers improve, and that all students are ready for college, work and life.

Scorecard: Children’s Rights & Hitting the MARC

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:19:13 -0500

Tracking the reach and results of the work is a challenging task for many child and youth organizations. In our ongoing Scorecard series, CFK and Child Advocacy 360 highlight examples of organizations' efforts to measure impact and results. Here, Children's Rights, Inc., shares its follow-up to the groundbreaking Hitting the M.A.R.C. foster care reimbursement study.

For Organizations | Children’s Rights Scorecard as Model for Research Accountability

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:11:20 -0500

A few months ago, in this column, Hershel Sarbin challenged child advocacy organizations to do a better job of showing Return on Investment from research and surveys on critical issues in child well being. Here's what he's found so far.

Moms’ Walking Group Leads Push for a Walkable Neighborhood

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:33:29 -0500

In Bakersfield, California, parents formed a walking group that turned out to be good for the health of their community, as they took on dangerous litter, crime and traffic to make their streets more “walkable.” This grassroots snapshot from the Children’s Advocate has the story.

Kicking Off the Ready by 21 Challenge

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:38:47 -0500

On February 27, the Forum for Youth Investment and its national partners launched the Ready by 21 Challenge to help state and local leaders "change the odds for youth by changing the way they do business." Here are some of the voices from the launch, and more on the initiative, which supports bigger goals, bolder strategies and better partnerships to ensure that every young person is ready by 21—ready for college, work and life.

How Kids Fare in the Federal Budget: the Lowlights

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:15:00 -0600

President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal includes $2.8 billion in cuts to programs that impact children—a 3 percent drop from last year's federal budget. First Focus, a bipartisan children's advocacy organization, takes a reader-friendly look at the numbers and what they say about our nation's priorities.

Keeping Score in Child Well-Being: Why It Matters

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:25:08 -0500

Hershel Sarbin writes: "It is my habit each month to search the sites devoted to child advocacy and child well-being in order to discover and report on Who’s Doing What That Works to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children. Whatever the organizational focus, I am always looking for 'The Scorecard'—concrete, specific data on outcomes." In this column, Hershel offers an excellent example of The Scorecard, from the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, and why tracking performance can bring real results for organizations.

A“Ticket to Work” for Transitioning Youth – and Those Working With Them

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:12:55 -0600

If you work with teens with disabilities, you’ll want to know about the Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work (TTW) program. Its Youth Transition portion offers funds for organizations that help students receiving Social Security disability benefits find employment. Is it right for you? Melody Goodspeed, Youth Transition Specialist for TTW answers some common questions about the funding.

Getting Beyond the Foster Care System: What Works for Teens

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:47:19 -0600

Could you have made it entirely on your own at 18 or 21? Each year, roughly 25,000 young people “age out” of the foster care system, many without family or economic supports. Without connection to a caring adult and support to plan and prepare, these youth face steep challenges, including higher rates of unemployment, poor educational attainment, health issues, incarceration, and homelessness. But those are the problems, the statistics—what about the potential of these teens, and their desire to succeed? We spoke with Betsy Krebs, co-director of the New York City-based Youth Advocacy Center, about what works to help teens aging out of foster care succeed. There’s room for the whole community...

Creativity, Spirituality and Youth Work: Claiming the Territory

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:03:56 -0600

Karen examines the connections between two seemingly divergent articles in the October 2007 issue of Youth Today—and offers this recommendation to the youth development field: "Seize the day. Let's claim powerful words like 'creativity' and 'spirituality' and make them our own. Let's define them in ways that reflect and respect diversity and capture the essence of what makes us human: the desire to find the spark, the spirit, the connection to something bigger than ourselves or something deep within ourselves. Let's acknowledge the central role that youth workers can play and are playing to help young people find themselves."

The Real Math of Child Poverty In America

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:01:32 -0600

I was somewhat surprised when I recently came across the following paragraph on the Voices for America’s Children Website: “As a society we pay a steep price for allowing one in five of our nation’s children to live in poverty. Economists estimate the annual national cost of persistent childhood poverty due to lost adult productivity and wages, increased crime, and higher health expenditures is massive: approximately $500 billion or four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product”...