- NJ children face social, health barriers, report shows, by Nicole Leonard, July 31, 2018, Press of Atlantic City: “The early years of New Jersey’s youngest residents are crucial to childhood growth and development, yet some of the state’s 310,285 children under age 3 face challenges that threaten their potential to succeed and thrive, a new report has found. Advocates for Children of New Jersey’s new Babies Count report, which piggybacks on data from the organization’s Kids Count report, details health, financial, childcare, trauma and racial disparity issues that affect families and babies both in the short-term and long-term…”
- Utah is reducing its child poverty rate, one piece of data at a time, By Renata Sago, July 30, 2018, Marketplace: “Shannon Starley and her team of case workers at Utah’s Division of Children and Family Services have a tough job. They help decide whether to remove kids from their parents’ custody. The agency investigated 21,093 cases last year. Many involved parents struggling with substance abuse. ‘A lot of mental health issues,’ Starley added. She said she has seen parents lose their kids, get them back, then lose them again…”
Tag: Utah
States and Medicaid Expansion
Republicans lead Medicaid expansion push in 2 holdout states, By Mattie Quinn, March 30, 2018, Governing: “After five years of failed attempts to expand Medicaid, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill last week to do just that. It may come as a surprise that the bill was sponsored by a Republican. Republicans have historically opposed making more low-income people eligible for the government health insurance program. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Obama’s signature legislation, the federal government pays 90 to 100 percent of the costs for any state that expands. But Republican-led states have been slow to expand Medicaid, and nearly 20 of them still have not…”
Intergenerational Poverty
- Despite modest gains, ‘intergenerational poverty’ is still a challenge in Utah, report says, By Christopher Smart, October 2, 2017, Salt Lake Tribune: “Childhood poverty continues to decline modestly in Utah, according to a state evaluation, but intergenerational poverty, in which two or more generations remain at low-income levels, remains stagnant. In 2016, 39,376 adults and 59,579 children were in intergenerational poverty, according to the state’s sixth annual Intergenerational Poverty Report released Monday…”
- Breaking the cycle of poverty, two generations at a time, By Dwyer Gunn, October 4, 2017, Pacific Standard: “On Wednesday afternoons, Toneshia Forshee picks up her son, a four-year-old who suffers from optic nerve hypoplasia and wears thick Coke-bottle glasses, from the early childhood education center he attends in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She brings him home to her immaculate two-bedroom apartment in a well-maintained complex down the street from a Sonic burger joint. She makes dinner for her son and her one-year-old daughter, and the threesome eats together at a table in the corner of the living room, under a painstakingly arranged gallery wall of family photographs interspersed with wooden signs reading ‘Hope,’ ‘Love,’ and ‘Life’ in decorative script. After dinner, Forshee tucks her kids into bed and, four nights a week, she heads to work…”