Updated: October 1, 2009
The Children's Defense Fund recently released a new report in conjunction with the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that 3,184 children and teens died from gunfire in the United States in 2006-a 6 percent increase from 2005. This means one young life lost every two hours and 45 minutes, almost nine every day, 61 every week. Of these deaths, 2,225 were homicides, 763 were suicides and 196 were due to an accident or undetermined circumstances.
Read the report, Protect Children Not Guns 2009, to learn more about gun deaths in your state and how to protect children from gun violence.
- From a Children's Defense Fund e-Alert on Sept. 30, 2009
As the nation's largest single employer with over 2.7 million employees nationwide, the U.S. government should be leading the way in family friendly workplace policies. Instead, it lags far behind. Urge your senators to take an important step toward changing this by supporting the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act (S. 354). This important legislation will provide federal workers up to four weeks of paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, and will be a significant step towards paid parental leave for all Americans. While the House passed this measure in the last Congress, the bill never got a vote in the Senate. With your senators' support, that could change this time around.
A report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found the U.S. to have the least generous parental leave policies of the 21 high-income countries surveyed. A February 2007 study by Harvard and McGill University researchers found that the U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in their survey - along with Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea - that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave.
While federal workers are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act, many cannot afford to take the time off while not receiving a paycheck, especially these days. The Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act will allow federal workers the ability to take care of and bond with their newborns and newly-adopted children, which is critical to the health and well-being of the child and the parent, without the increased burden of the loss of wages.
In these tough economic times, going without a paycheck could mean financial disaster for many families. The U.S. government should ensure that its employees can afford to take the leave they need to care for themselves and their families by making this leave paid. Such protections and improvements are critical to women's equal opportunity and economic security.
Urge your senators to support the Family Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act (S. 354) so that America's federal workers don't have to choose between keeping a job and caring for a new child.
- from AAUW's Action Network for February 11, 2009.
On Wednesday, President Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (H.R. 2) into law, allowing seven million children to continue to receive government health insurance coverage and extending coverage to an additional four million children. The Washington Post reported that President Obama sees SCHIP as a down payment on his commitment to provide health coverage for all Americans. During the Bush Administration, former President George W. Bush vetoed two similar SCHIP bills.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for February 6, 2009.
Federal regulations that took effect in 2006 require that individuals provide proof of citizenship when applying for or renewing Medicaid or other public health insurance coverage. In the new Commonwealth Fund report, Getting and Keeping Coverage: States' Experience with Citizenship Documentation Rules, Laura Summer examines the impact the documentation rules have had on the stability of public coverage for low-income families in seven states: Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington.
According to Summer, a senior research scholar at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, the new requirements have increased the complexity, administrative burden, and costs of enrollment and renewal in each state, making more it difficult for children and their families to get and keep health coverage. In some cases, states' ongoing efforts to simplify enrollment processes have been curtailed, as resources were diverted for citizenship documentation purposes.
The report also found that a state's approach to implementing the rules, as well as its organizational and technological capacity, can mitigate the impact. For example, Washington State established a "Citizenship Central Unit" to help current and potential program participants document their citizenship, and state officials conduct database searches to find birth certificates for applicants and enrollees. These actions not only promoted coverage stability but also saved time for workers in the field.
- From a Commonwealth Fund e-Alert on January 13, 2009.
CDF recently released its State of America's Children 2008 report, a compilation of the most recent and reliable national and state-by-state data on poverty, health, child welfare, youth at risk, early childhood development, education, nutrition and housing.
The report provides a statistical compendium of key child data showing epidemic numbers of children at risk:
from the Children’s Defense Fund