November mornings in Kentucky are as divisive as a UK/UL basketball game. On one day, as dawn breaks and the sun glistens effortlessly across the dew soaked bluegrass, you are reminded of the subtle beauty of life’s simple pleasures. Meanwhile, on the very next day, as the crisp air whirls dead leaves amidst a dense dreary haze, you instantly regret leaving the comforts of a warm bed. Regardless of what type of morning it is [...]
More than 59,000 children in Kentucky are being raised by grandparents and other relatives – known as kinship care. The majority of these kinship family arrangements are informal, and oftentimes relatives do not have legal custody or guardianship of the children. This can make it difficult when it comes time for kinship caregivers to enroll children in school or access educational services or health care for them. Often, relatives step in to help stabilize the situation [...]
October is a busy month for awareness in Kentucky: Breast Cancer Awareness, Domestic Violence Awareness, and even Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog Month. Thanks to Governor Beshear, October will now also bring awareness about the problem of bullying in the Bluegrass, as he recently declared this Anti-Bullying Awareness Month. It’s hard to deny that bullying isn’t happening in our schools. The Kentucky Department of Education reported 15,520 incidents of bullying during the 2013 school year. With such a large number of incidents, Governor [...]
Why do people love fall so much? The changing leaves. Pumpkin flavored everything. Chilly air. And for me, time to pull out those scarves and boots. I’ve often wondered what the appeal of fall is and my best conclusion is that it brings a sense of change and hope. For us at Kentucky Youth Advocates, fall is a season where we start to prepare for the Kentucky legislative session that begins in January. We release [...]
A couple weeks ago, I shared with my 2nd grade son that I was going to a strategic planning meeting to talk about how to make things better for the community. My son enthusiastically asked if he could go too. The idea of being a part of figuring out how to make things better for something he cared about excited him. I had to break the news to him that the meeting was during the [...]
Kentucky will hold elections for seats in both the Kentucky State Legislature and U.S. Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections on November 4, 2014. To help inform voters about the positions of the candidates, KET will be hosting debates for select U.S. Congressional races. The debates will air on KET at 8/7 PM on the following days: Oct. 6: U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd Congressional District Rep. John Yarmuth, Democratic Party Michael Macfarlane, Republican Party [...]
Do you recall that ever-familiar roll call at the beginning of every day in every class for twelve years or more in school? It was one of those daily rituals that documented our presence each day. There was an obvious understanding that if you didn’t come to school, you missed-out on learning. But in today’s world of tracking data and results, we now know the impacts of school absenteeism are numerous and far-reaching. September is [...]
On Tuesday, we released the 2014 Kentucky KIDS COUNT County Data Book made possible with support from Signature Sponsor Passport Health Plan, Diamond Sponsors Kosair Charities and Delta Dental of Kentucky, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. This report provides a picture of the status of children in Kentucky counties based on 16 indicators of child well-being. We hope state and local leaders will use the book to help evaluate what is going well for [...]
For the past month or so, social media channels have been flooded with images and sounds of the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.” My own 13-year-old daughter answered the challenge both individually (using a high school soccer team’s orange cooler of leftover ice water) and again with her golf teammates who then challenged their high school principal. She also committed some of her hard-earned babysitting money to the ALS Foundation for further research. This “pay-it-forward” movement has had unprecedented success in bringing awareness of the ALS disease and generated an [...]
I have invited you to travel with me for over a month in exploring the 2014 National KIDS COUNT Data Book as it pertains to Kentucky. We have talked about the stellar progress in health; the mixed bag of results we find in education; and, the changing dynamics of family life as seen in the “family and community” domain. In today’s blog, we probe economic well-being which is a deep, overarching, and stubbornly persistent barrier [...]
