We hope that you have been using the KIDS COUNT Data Center to see how the children in your county and state are faring on hundreds of indicators of child well-being. If you have used the Data Center, then you know that it not only gives you the opportunity to view data for a wide range of indicators of economic security, education, health, safety and risky behaviors, but it also gives you the ability to [...]
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month – commonly marked by citizens rallying across the Commonwealth and the nation to raise awareness of the prevalence of child abuse in our communities. Yesterday, Kentucky Youth Advocates joined Kosair Charities and several other partners at Slugger Field in Louisville for a rally to end child abuse. The rally also served as the official launch of the Face It campaign, a ten-year initiative led by Kosair Charities to end [...]
The third annual Kentucky Literacy Celebration week is next week, March 4-8. The result of collaboration among several literacy/education institutions and Kentucky’s First Lady Jane Beshear, Kentucky Literacy Celebration is intended to highlight the issue of literacy in Kentucky, celebrate accomplishments made, and focus on the challenges we still face as a state. Kentucky Youth Advocates is spreading the word because we know how vital reading proficiency is – to overall school achievement, to the [...]
If you work for a public school in Kentucky you’ve probably already heard, but we want to make sure after-school programs and summer camps are also in the know about a free bullying/violence prevention workshop taking place April 10 at Murray State University. The Kentucky Center for School Safety, Murray State University Center for Environmental Education, MSU College of Education, and MSU Regional Outreach are sponsoring a full-day training by Operation Respect. Operation Respect is a non-profit organization founded [...]
Kentucky Youth Advocates (KYA) was just informed by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) that the chronic absenteeism data provided by KDE in the recently released 2012 Kentucky KIDS COUNT County Data Book is inaccurate for all school districts. KYA has taken the chronic absenteeism data off of our online KIDS COUNT Data Center until the corrected data is provided by KDE. KYA has also put a hold on fulfilling book request orders until this [...]
Citizen Review Panels (CRP) are groups of volunteer citizens throughout the nation who are federally mandated to provide an evaluation of their State’s child protective services system. In Kentucky, the Statewide CRP is composed of members from all nine of the Department for Community Based Services’ (DCBS) regions. In keeping with its mission to involve the larger community in evaluating DCBS practices and policies, the Statewide CRP is assessing community perceptions about DCBS’ current system for [...]
All children deserves to grow up in a safe, loving and permanent home. Every child who has been placed in foster care should be promised a family who can provide that for them. Sadly, every year there are more than 100,000 children in public foster care waiting to be adopted because they do not have the option of returning to their parents or other relatives. In Kentucky, more than 1,900 children are hoping to be [...]
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month – a time to pause and remember the effects that child abuse has on our most precious citizens, to recognize the impact it has on all of us, and to commit to doing our part to eliminate it. According to state child protective services, more than 17,000 Kentucky children were victims of abuse or neglect in 2011. But, we know that that number is actually higher. Not all [...]
You might have heard that the Kentucky Department of Education released the results of public schools’ achievement tests under the new accountability system of higher standards today. Looking for a simple way to see how well your child’s school or their school district performed? The Courier-Journal has an easy-to-use database where you can see the overall results for schools and districts here, see their results by specific subjects here, and view high school graduation [...]
This week Kentucky Youth Advocates added four new child welfare indicators to the KIDS COUNT Data Center. These four new indicators span the continuum of child welfare decision-making points and, coupled with the other indicators already on the Data Center, provide Kentuckians a wealth of information on vulnerable children and families in our state. One new indicator shows the prevalence of certain risk factors in cases where child abuse or neglect was found to have [...]
