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Tallahassee, FL – As the annual legislative Children's Week gets under way, the recession has squeezed family budgets, threatening children's health and well-being. Yet the programs serving them are more vulnerable than ever. Margie Menzel reports on the state of Florida's children.
Children's Week at the Capitol always begins on Sunday with the Hanging of the Hands, colorful paintings and cut-outs of their hands made by kids in day care, after-school and other programs and hung from the upper floors into the Rotunda. This year, the most hands ever - more than 100,000, says Jason Zaborske, who coordinates Children's Week for the United Way of Florida.
"This is a critical time," said Zaborske, "that we really want to bring those voices from all across the state to talk to the Legislature about these services and make sure that they're aware that these services are important, and that's why we're going to be bringing 4,000-5,000 folks to the Capitol on Tuesday."
Advocates say the state of Florida's children is in decline. Roy Miller, president of the Children's Campaign:
"We've actually fallen four places in the last couple of years in Kids Count, which is a measure of how children are doing across America, and they compare states against each other. And we believe, based on this year's budget, that Florida will decline even further."
According to Kids Count, the national study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, last year Florida was ranked 36th of the 50 states in overall health, education, safety, economic security and other signs of child well-being. And this year, programs that serve children are facing further cuts. But Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon and chair of the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, says lawmakers are working to ensure that the programs they fund are truly working.
"It does us no good if we capture people who maybe are not abusing their children today, maybe have the potential to abuse their children, but maybe with a little bit of intervention, they would benefit from that and protect their children," Storms said. "It makes no sense if we refer those people to programs that are not effective."
Both chambers have protected child welfare funding, says George Sheldon, Secretary of the Department of Children and Families. And with $97 million in potential cuts to mental health and substance abuse programs restored, along with the $27 million Healthy Families program for child-abuse prevention, Sheldon is breathing easier. His biggest concerns now: adoption maintenance subsidies are frozen and Independent Living supports for youth aging out of foster care have been cut by 50 percent.
"And that is a program to move kids to permanency that is so important as they transition from foster care and attempt to go to school," said Sheldon. "The House has language that I frankly don't think will stand where they cut in half that subsidy on the Road to Independence. So there are some issues we've got to deal with, but I'm optimistic we can deal with them."
As to the voluntary pre-kindergarten program that serves 156,000 Florida children, the current Senate budget cuts funding by $255 per child, the House slightly less. School readiness programs - which provide low-income working families with child care and early learning while parents are on the job - are now held harmless in both chambers after having been slated for cuts. Chris Duggan, CEO of the Early Learning Coalition of the Big Bend, says the coalitions will get the same level of funding from the Agency for Workforce Innovation, so they won't have to drop children from their rolls.
"At this point, both the House and the Senate have restored our funding back to this year's funding, and they've also given AWI permission to use the balance of the stimulus dollars for next year," said Duggan. "That's good."
But Duggan's coalition, which serves seven counties, already has a wait list of 1,600.
"With the current funding, I have a wait list," she said. "I cannot add children. So I just watched a mother and a father walk in, and they wanted a voucher for their two-year-old, and they were told, 'We'll have to put you on the wait list.'"
As to fighting for proven programs, advocates successfully countered a plan to eliminate Healthy Families, which has a 98 percent success rate. Now they're trying to show the effectiveness of Florida's 31 Healthy Start coalitions, which have cut infant mortality by one-fifth since 1991. The House wants to eliminate the coalitions and return the services to the county health departments, but Sheldon says Healthy Start, while not under his agency, is nonetheless crucial to children's services.
"Even though it's over at the Department of Health, I think it is an important program, and the Healthy Start coalitions around the state I think are important," Sheldon said. "So that is an issue that's a difference between the House and the Senate, but I think the advocates have had a huge impact on that, so again, I'm optimistic that will be resolved."
Also hanging fire: Storms and the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs committee are backing a bill that would protect children in foster care from being placed on psychotropic drugs without a Guardian ad Litem or a treatment plan. But the House companion is stalled, says Storms.
"The House is not considering it as seriously as we are in the Senate, and I don't know why that is," said Storms. "Naturally, it's a very important issue. And particularly when we can be meeting the needs of children through behavioral services rather than medicating them, that's a better strategy. And so I really wish the House would take the matter up and give it serious consideration."
Roy Miller says if the state wants better educational outcomes, study after study proves that the quality of a child's life outside the classroom has a huge impact on his or her academic performance.
"And when we're knocking out health care, and we're knocking out before- and after-school programs - and let's face it, we're not doing anything about high quality for children that are in foster care, bouncing from school to school, and in the juvenile justice - locked up in residential programs, away from their home base I mean, if we don't address those issues, we're not going to have the educational gains that people want to have in the state of Florida."
As the budget reconciliation process unfolds in the next week, parents and advocates will be working the Capitol, urging lawmakers to give children's programs more funding.