On July 14, 2009, President Obama unveiled the American Graduation Initiative, a plan to raise graduation rates, improve facilities, and develop new technology. The plan would allow colleges to improve remedial and adult education programs and integrate developmental classes into academic and vocational classes and provide comprehensive personalized services to help students plan their careers and stay in school.

The health of young children is negatively affected when parents forego health care coverage for themselves or other adult members of the household. Children's HealthWatch finds that children whose families face high health care costs are at increased risk for health problems, developmental delays and food insecurity.

This brief examines the potential effects of health care reform on the more than 25 million children who currently have coverage under Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. Increased parental coverage will help these children since many have uninsured parents with unmet health needs.

Two Committees in the Senate have been working on separate pieces of health reform legislation. The first, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee , passed its bill on July 15, 2009. Like the House bill, the HELP Committee's reform legislation would place shared responsibility on individuals, employers, and the government to ensure that most Americans receive health coverage. Key members of the Senate Finance Committee continued bipartisan closed-door meetings to finalize their health reform bill. The full Senate will not vote on health reform legislation prior to its August recess.

Two of the House Committees with jurisdiction over health reform passed legislation out of Committee that would overhaul our nation's health care system. On July 17, the Ways and Means Committee approved the tri-Committee's health reform legislation, the America's Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200). Later on July 17, the Education and Labor Committee also voted H.R. 3200 out of committee with a vote of 26-22. H.R. 3200 was introduced jointly by the three House Committees on July 14, 2009.

New York City faces a civic crisis of “disconnected” youth and young adults. There are over 163,000 young people ages 16 to 24 who are neither in school nor in the labor force. When we add the number of “unemployed” young adults, who are actively seeking work but unable to find it, we have more than 220,000 young people who are not in school nor working—nearly one in five of the total age group. These young people—largely youth of color from poor communities—are at high risk of becoming permanently disengaged from the labor market, threatening their ability to break out of the cycle of poverty and contribute to our economy and community. Their idleness represents a great waste of resources and human potential. The Community Service Society of New York looks offers recommendations.

New Yorkers are living with the effects of poverty in every part of New York City, but the
experience of poverty remains closely tied to place. Half of the city’s 1.4 million poor
people live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is at least 24.8 percent (compared
to a citywide rate of 19.2 percent), and one-quarter live in neighborhoods where the rate
is at least 34.1 percent. The maps reveal that there is more to the geography of poverty in New York
City than is revealed by a glance. Poverty interacts in important ways with other factors,
such as immigration, which are distributed in a different way than poverty itself. And
the effects of poverty can be modified or mitigated by resources, such as subsidized
housing, that also have their own geographic patterns.

More than 20,000 public housing residents are seeking jobs in New York City’s
recession economy. The city and the Housing Authority have every reason to
connect them to opportunities.

The Community Service Society of New York draws on a 160-year history of excellence in addressing the root causes of economic disparity. Through applied research, advocacy, litigation, and innovative program models, we respond to urgent, contemporary challenges by pioneering programs for a more prosperous city.
As millions of low-income New Yorkers struggle to keep pace with declining wages, insufficient benefits, and dwindling prospects for career advancement, the Community Service Society focuses greater attention on helping hard-working people rise above.

Too many children experience abuse and neglect with negative lifelong consequences. Too few children get the services and supports they need to heal. Yet, proven and promising practices can reduce maltreatment and ameliorate harm. Taking these practices to scale will require federal investment and leadership in five strategic areas. We must: (1) increase prevention and early intervention services that help keep children and families out of crisis; (2) increase specialized treatment services for those children and families that do experience crisis; (3) increase services to support families after a crisis has stabilized (including birth families, as well as kinship and adoptive families created when parents are unable to care for their children); (4) enhance the quality of the workforce providing services to children and families; and (5) improve accountability both for dollars spent and outcomes achieved. Together these efforts will improve the lives of millions of children across the nation