Child Welfare

In a month, Congress's Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, known informally as the Super Committee, will issue its recommendation on how to deflate the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. In a year, Americans will go to the polls to select many federal, state, and local leaders. And in between these events, state capitals will tangle anew over shrinking revenues, burgeoning constituent needs, and balanced-budget dictates.

Where, in all of this, are America's 74 million children? What challenges and opportunities are posed by budget battles when we think about the dramatic changes in children's lives in recent decades -- almost 22 percent living in poverty, the trend toward "majority minority" among children, the regional shifts from northern states losing children to southern states gaining them? What will it take to come to national and state budget decisions that invest at the level needed for the youngest generation to succeed, especially in light of states' senior role in funding children's programs and services?

This report provides detailed demographic information on Virginia's uninsured population in 2009, including data on their income, employment status, race, ethnicity, age and citizenship, and region of residence. Between 2008 and 2009, 47,000 nonelderly adults in Virginia became newly uninsured, though there was no significant change in the number of uninsured children, due in part to increased coverage through Medicaid and CHIP. Overall, 13.2 percent of Virginians (889,000 total) under the age of 65 lacked health insurance in 2009. The majority of Virginia's uninsured are US citizens and live in working families, but most are in low-income families.

Many children and youth - abroad and here, with their families or unaccompanied - flee their toxic surroundings, hoping to find new homes elsewhere and create new lives. With a panel of experts whose knowledge spans the globe, this forum will plumb the experiences of vulnerable youth who are displaced or on the move and examine ways to protect them, sparking an overdue exchange on policy lessons from America and abroad.

The ripple effects of the foreclosure crisis have created increased instability for children and families. In this brief we focus on two such sources of instability in the lives of public school students in Washington, D.C.: moving homes and switching schools. We find high rates of residential and school mobility for students in general, and even higher rates associated with students who lived in buildings that entered the foreclosure process. These mobile students tended to stay in the same neighborhood or move to areas that were similarly poor and high-crime. In this policy brief, we make a series of low-cost recommendations to school districts and nonprofit housing counseling agencies in order to minimize the harm of additional instability on children.

Sweeping policy changes and scapegoating caseworkers after high-profile cases of child abuse are not the best ways to enhance the safety of young people, says child welfare expert Olivia Golden. Taking lessons from the airline industry and elsewhere, Golden lays out why clear-headed, evidence-driven examination of the resources, conditions, and communication that guide workplace decisionmaking should be the center of attention.

This factsheet presents a quick overview of recent cross-cutting Urban Institute research on poverty, including 13 key points on poverty's effects on immigration, health care, children, infants with depressed mothers, employment, assets, and neighborhoods. One in an occasional series of "Thirteen Ways" factsheets.

The 17th annual Fact Book is a comprehensive data source for indicators of child well-being in the District of Columbia. It tracks the progression of child well-being over time, as well as differences in child well-being across wards and races/ethnicities. It is organized to reflect the six citywide goals for children and youth in DC: children are ready for school; children and youth succeed in school; children and youth are healthy and practice healthy behaviors; children and youth engage in meaningful activities; children and youth live in healthy, stable, and supportive families; and all youth make a successful transition to adulthood.

This special forum will scan the demographics of the children of the undocumented, explore the developmental and educational challenges they face, discuss social and cultural barriers to integration, and debate how public policy and agencies can foster a healthy atmosphere for children living and learning here.