CFK Weekly—April 22, 2002

We encourage distribution of this information! If reprinting in whole or part, please attribute it to Connect for Kids (www.connectforkids.org).

NEW ON CONNECT FOR KIDS
**Should Teenagers Start School Later in the Morning?
**The Lowdown on Dropping Out

KIDS AND POLITICS
**Welfare: from Cash to Child Care and Other Supports
**House Energy and Commerce Committee Mark-Up
**Child Advocates Call for $20 Billion Increase in Child Care Funding

THE PUBLIC SPEAKS ABOUT POLICIES AFFECTING KIDS
**California Voters Believe Welfare Should Help Move Kids Out of Poverty
**Washingtonians Favor Funding for All-Day Kindergarten, Quality Preschool
**Ohioans Support Making Schools Centers of the Community

CHILD CARE -- IS IT REALLY THERE?
**From Welfare to Child Care
**Navigating Child Care Subsidy System Can Undermine Work Efforts of Parents

IMPROVING HEALTH OUTCOMES
**Taking Action: Creating an Action Plan for the Asthma Crisis
**Effect of Managed Care on Children's Health Care
**Cognitive and Motor Outcomes of Cocaine-Exposed Infants

CONNECT FOR YOUTH
**Improving the Odds: The Untapped Power of Schools to Improve the Health of Teens
**Limited English Proficiency Students and High-Stakes Accountability
**The Impact of Teen Court on Young Offenders

KIDS AND POVERTY
**The Recession Hits Children
**Understanding Poverty
**Disadvantage Among Families Remaining on Welfare

THINGS TO DO! PLACES TO GO!
**April Showers, May Flowers

STRENGTHENING FAMILIES
**Transitional Jobs Programs: Stepping Stones to Unsubsidized Employment
**Fragile Families -- High Hopes, Big Challenges

FOCUS ON THE STATES
**TANF State Fact Sheets
**State-by-State News

SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
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NEW ON CONNECT FOR KIDS

**Should Teenagers Start School Later in the Morning?
by Kathleen Meister
Just because teens doze off in class doesn't mean they're staying up too late -- early school start times and biology play a part. Kathleen Meister reports on two New Jersey mothers who lobbied for a later school start time in their district.
http://www.connectforkids.org

**The Lowdown on Dropping Out
by 8-18 Media
What do a public school superintendent and a Michigan teenager have in common? They were both high-school dropouts, and they have similar advice to kids struggling to stay in school, in this story from the young reporters and writers at 8-18 Media.
http://www.connectforkids.org

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KIDS AND POLITICS

** Welfare: from Cash to Child Care and Other Supports
In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) reauthorization, the General Accounting Office reported that state welfare spending is shifting from monthly cash payments to services, such as child care and transportation to help working families. Cash assistance caseloads dropping by more than 50 percent from 1996 through mid-2001. Although most former welfare recipients who left the welfare rolls were employed at some point after leaving welfare, their earnings typically did not raise them above the poverty level.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-615T

**House Energy and Commerce Committee Mark-Up
This week the U.S House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to mark up its portion of the TANF reauthorization bill, which covers health coverage for welfare-to-work families. Families USA supports alternative legislation that would include a provision permitting states to use federal dollars for Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program coverage for all eligible immigrant children and pregnant women who are lawfully in the United States.
http://capwiz.com/familiesusa/issues/alert/?alertid=128360&type=CO

**Child Advocates Call for $20 Billion Increase in Child Care Funding
As Congress takes up negotiations over spending for child care as part of the Child Care Development Block Grant and other child care bills, child advocates are applauding some proposals to increase funding levels to better match the increased needs of low-income working families. To keep track of legislative proposals and opportunities for action, sign up for the Children's Defense Fund child care advocacy e-newsletter.
http://www.childrensdefense.org/head-takeaction.htm
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THE PUBLIC SPEAKS ABOUT POLICIES AFFECTING KIDS

**California Voters Believe Welfare Should Help Move Kids Out of Poverty
Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of California voters believe that the principal goal of federal welfare law should be moving people out of poverty, instead of into a job where they will not earn enough to support their families. While most voters ? Democrats, Republicans and Independents -- generally approve of the changes made by the 1996 federal welfare law, they also support changes designed to help families move out of poverty, as well as public programs that provide support to working families.
http://www.cbp.org

**Washingtonians Favor Funding for All-Day Kindergarten, Quality Preschool
There is overwhelming public support for public policies to improve the quality and availability of early learning and care for children, according to a Washington state survey conducted by the Economic Opportunity Institute. Three out of four voters favor providing funds to make voluntary, all-day kindergarten available to all 5-year-olds and voluntary, high quality preschool available to all 3 and 4-year-olds.
http://www.epn.org/whatsnew/full_cite/1943.html

**Ohioans Support Making Schools Centers of the Community
A recent poll by the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Ohio provides evidence that the public sees schools as the center of communities, offering more than just academic instruction during traditional school hours. There is significant public support for locating additional community resources and services in local school facilities.
http://communityschools.org/newsletterv.2.7.html#poll
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CHILD CARE ? IS IT REALLY THERE?

**From Welfare to Child Care
Too often the child care arrangements available for low-income mothers force them to choose between safe, nurturing environments for children and lesser-quality those that allow them to hold a job. This Joint Center on Poverty Research report on a May 2001 conference argues that raising employment rates for low-wage mothers requires a parallel increase in the child care options available to them for their children. The Child Care Bureau reports that despite funding increases for child care subsidies, only about 10 percent of the 14.7 million children eligible for subsidies under federal guidelines actually receive them, and subsidy use is typically short and intermittent. Scroll down for the report.
http://www.jcpr.org/newsletters/vol6_no2/index.html

**Navigating Child Care Subsidy System Can Undermine Parents' Work Efforts
This Urban Institute analysis of interviews with agency staff and welfare-to-work parents finds a serious catch-22 for families eligible for child care subsidies: Low-wage moms have to miss so much work to apply for and maintain their child care subsidies that they jeopardize their ability to keep their jobs. Complications include requiring multiple face-to-face visits during work hours and insufficient resources for processing child care subsidies by phone or computer.
http://www.urban.org/ViewPub.cfm?PubID=310450
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IMPROVING HEALTH OUTCOMES

**Taking Action: Creating an Action Plan for the Asthma Crisis
The number of children with asthma has more than doubled in the last 15 years, and children 5 years old and younger are the most seriously affected. These children, their parents, their caregivers, their neighbors and their community leaders need to know more about managing asthma. Here's a how-to manual that helps community leaders and parents map out a plan for improving your community's resources and action plans to manage this dangerous disease. Cost: $10 plus shipping and handling (pdublin@uic.edu; 312-413-0068)

**Effect of Managed Care on Children's Health Care
Research reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine suggests that compared with white children, minority children experience poorer patient-provider relationships, even controlling for socioeconomic status and health system factors. The authors suggest that minority children are particularly impacted by managed care policies that restrict patient freedom in choosing where to seek care.
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/issues/v156n4/abs/poa10398.html

**Cognitive and Motor Outcomes of Cocaine-Exposed Infants
Research has found that cocaine-exposed babies had significant cognitive deficits and twice the rate of developmental delay during the first two years of life compared to their ethnic and socioeconomic counterparts, according to this report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v287n15/abs/joc11807.html
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CONNECT FOR YOUTH

**Improving the Odds: The Untapped Power of Schools to Improve the Health of Teens
The latest results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) suggest that good classroom management is the most important factor in helping teens feel connected to their schools -- more important than teacher experience, class size or teachers having a Master's degree. Students feel safer when the school sets clear expectations for individual responsibility and conflict resolution among students, when teachers consistently acknowledge all students and when students have input on classroom rules or help set grading criteria.

The study shows that school size, not class size matters (the optimal school size being between 600 and 1,200 students). There is also some evidence that students in schools with harsh discipline policies, like zero-tolerance policies, feel less safe at school than do students in schools with more moderate policies.
http://www.allaboutkids.umn.edu/presskit/monograph.pdf

**Limited English Proficiency Students and High-Stakes Accountability
While the number of limited-English proficiency (LEP) students is growing, the inclusion of these students into one-size-fits-all state accountability systems is putting the cart before the horse, argues this report by the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, as many states put standards and high-stakes assessments in place ahead of the learning supports and teacher preparation that are prerequisite for students' success.

The authors argue that funding administered by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Bilingual Education and Language Minority Affairs should not be block granted to the states, but should instead be more carefully targeted to critical unmet needs: key research issues, demonstration programs that might advance understanding of promising new approaches, curricula and assessments, and professional development programs that prepare new and veteran teachers to work with language minority youth.
http://www.cccr.org/Chapter17.pdf

**The Impact of Teen Court on Young Offenders
This Urban Institute evaluation study finds evidence that teen courts may offer a better alternative to the regular juvenile justice process in jurisdictions that do not, or cannot, provide a meaningful response for every young, first-time nonviolent offender. But more research is needed to answer the question -- what is it about teen courts that makes them effective?
http://www.urban.org/ViewPub.cfm?PublicationID=7636
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KIDS AND POVERTY

**The Recession Hits Children
From late 2000 to late 2001, the number of children with one or more out-of-work parents surged by 1.2 million children (or 41 percent), wiping out most of the employment gains during the late 1990s for low-income families, according to this Children's Defense Fund analysis. Single mothers were especially hard hit by the combination of job losses and reduced cash assistance. In 2001 they suffered a 25 percent jump in unemployment, the same year that states spent $546 million less on cash assistance for low-income families.
http://www.childrensdefense.org/fs_recession01_1.htm

**Understanding Poverty
Trying to do something about poverty may seem as fruitless as trying to do something about the weather, but when so many American kids live in poverty, or near its edge, understanding the ways in which public policies can improve the odds for disadvantaged families -- from tax and welfare policies to education and health programs -- is a critical first step for equalizing opportunities for disadvantaged families. Understanding Poverty, edited by Sheldon Danziger and Robert H. Haveman, provides a historical and policy perspective. Cost: $55.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/DANUND.html

**Disadvantage Among Families Remaining on Welfare
Welfare reform's emphasis on moving welfare parents into the workforce may be helping those who have the skills and circumstances to make it in the workforce, but for those who can't, the emphasis on work may be seriously undermining a major safety net. This Joint Center for Poverty Research analysis of the differences among those who have remained on welfare and those who have left indicates that the most disadvantaged are most likely to have been sanctioned off of welfare. The report suggests that the neediest families may indeed no longer be part of the welfare system at all.
http://www.jcpr.org/policybriefs/vol3_num12.html
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THINGS TO DO! PLACES TO GO!
**April Showers, May Flowers
There's a lot left to April: Playground Safety Week, Turn Off the TV Week, National Youth Service Day, Children's Memorial Day and SpankOut Day. May brings National Mental Health Month, National Foster Care Month, Worthy Wage Day and World No-Tobacco Day. Find out about these and other days of note on the Connect for Kids calendar.
http://www.connectforkids.org/calendar1569/calendar.htm
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STRENGTHENING FAMILIES
**Transitional Jobs Programs: Stepping Stones to Unsubsidized Employment
Transitional jobs are paying jobs that help hard-to-employ workers improve their prospects for getting and keeping a good job in the unsubsidized employment market. According to this Mathematica report, transitional jobs show promise for welfare-to-work recipients. Participants report that transitional jobs programs have helped them improve their skills, and they cite the benefits of having program staff's support and encouragement along with becoming a valuable and appreciated member of their work site.
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/redirect.asp?strSite=transitionalreport.pdf

**Fragile Families ? High Hopes, Big Challenges
Researchers at Princeton and Columbia report that the data shows that unwed parents are committed to each other and to their children at the time of the birth, but, despite their high hopes, most unmarried parents face numerous challenges in trying to support themselves and their children. Although unwed mothers report being healthy, more than one-fifth do not receive prenatal care in their first trimester and 11 percent have babies born below normal weight.
http://www.crcw.princeton.edu/fragilefamilies
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FOCUS ON THE STATES

**TANF State Fact Sheets
Do you know the levels of assistance for welfare-to-work families in your state, what your state's rules are regarding eligibility, or how many kids in your state live in poverty? The Children's Defense Fund has the answers in its state fact sheets.
http://www.childrensdefense.org/pdf/TANFwelf_sbs.pdf

**State-by-State News

Arkansas
Two new briefs from the Paycheck$ and Politics series from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families explain the amount of money involved in state tax breaks for business and suggest that such revenues be considered along with other sources to address the potential budget crunch.
http://www.aradvocates.org

California
California Budget Project's "TANF Reauthorization: A California Perspective? describes the impacts of welfare reform in California and proposes increased funding and
policy changes to the welfare reform law now being debated in Congress.
http://www.cbp.org

Urban Institute's ?Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in California? reports that since 1997, California expanded public health insurance coverage and increased provider and health plan payments in a fiscally responsible way, significantly expanded children's coverage through the Healthy Families program and is planning to expand Healthy Families further to include parents.  http://www.urban.org/ViewPub.cfm?PubID=310441

The Center for Families, Children & the Courts booklet in English and Spanish helps California foster parents and relative caregivers understand court processes and how they can participate. http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/cfcc/programs/description/caregivers.htm

Illinois
The Emergency Campaign aims to mobilize public opinion and grassroots support for a state budget that provides adequate funding for crucial human services programs. More than 130 organizations -- including Voices for Illinois Children, Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Work, Welfare and Families, League of Women Voters, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago and many more -- have joined the campaign. Join the Emergency Campaign, volunteer for activities or to learn more. http://www.workwelfareandfamilies.org.

Indiana
The State of Indiana has a telephone help line designed to assist children and families searching for a wide range of social and human services.  If this applies to kids in your youth agency, you can encourage their families to call the Indiana Family Help Line: 800-433-0746.

Massachusetts
Urban Institute's ?Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in Massachusetts? finds that Massachusetts tradition, political ideology, an influential non-profit hospital industry, ample state revenues, and a generous federal Medicaid waiver worked together to support several health coverage expansions for low-income families in the state from the mid-1990s through 2001. Eligibility rose to at least 200 percent of the federal poverty level for many categories of beneficiaries, raising enrollment in MassHealth by almost a third. Depending on revenues, more significant cuts may occur in 2002 and beyond.
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310431.pdf

Minnesota
Urban Institute's ?Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in Minnesota? reports that Minnesota hasn't made big changes in its health care system, but has continued to build on its strong system by expanding coverage to new populations and by refining its service delivery strategies.
http://www.urban.org/ViewPub.cfm?PubID=310443

New Jersey
Urban Institute's ?Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in New Jersey? reports that in the 1990s through June 2001, New Jersey significantly expanded
health coverage for many low-income residents, especially low- and moderate-income children and their parents, by maximizing federal support while spending limited state tax dollars more cautiously. By early 2001, New Jersey provided public coverage to the highest income levels in the nation: children with family incomes up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level and parents up to 200 percent. The state may be challenged to maintain these expansions in the future.
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310438.pdf

Wisconsin
Urban Institute's ?Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in Wisconsin? reports that while health care was not a top priority for Wisconsin, the state
implemented some major health care initiatives. BadgerCare, the state's
publicly subsidized health program for low-income families with incomes too
high to qualify for Medicaid, is often touted as a model for other states. The economic slowdown, exacerbated a large budget deficit but Medicaid and other health programs were cut only slightly in 2001.
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310437.pdf

Have a great week, everyone!

Jan
Jan Richter, Policy and Outreach Specialist, and the Connect for Kids team
Jan@benton.org