On Thursday, January 16, 2014, hundreds of advocates, business leaders, youth and elected officials will gather at the Capitol in Frankfort to be a visual and audible presence for Kentucky’s most precious asset: its children. Since the first Children’s Advocacy Day in 2004, the event has grown in numbers but has maintained its purpose of rallying advocates to stand up and speak out on behalf of kids. This year, the 10th Annual Children’s Advocacy Day [...]

Step Up For Kids on #GivingTuesday by Investing in Kentucky Youth Advocates www.kyyouth.org/donate.  Your Support DOES Make an Impact!

On behalf of all of us at Kentucky Youth Advocates (KYA), we send to each of you – our partners – the best hopes for a blessed and meaningful Thanksgiving. That wonderful writer and theologian, Chuck Swindoll, remembers a Thanksgiving in 1944 when he had just turned ten and was in the fifth grade at Southmayd Elementary School in East Houston.  He recalls: Draped high across the front of our classroom was a huge American [...]

Do we run systems for children from an adult orientation or a kid’s perspective?  That is this week’s big picture question in thinking about Kentucky’s kids during their first eight years of life. We have been writing for the last couple of weeks about a recent report, The First Eight Years: Giving Kids a Foundation for a Lifetime of Success, which was co-released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) and Kentucky Youth Advocates on [...]

Last week, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Kentucky Youth Advocates co-released a new KIDS COUNT policy report, The First Eight Years: Giving Kids a Foundation for Lifetime Success. Part I in this blog series on the report was posted last week and highlighted one important aspect of the report—the impact of poverty on young children. And now for Part 2 in this series, the impact of adverse childhood experiences on the first eight years. Adverse [...]

November is National Adoption Month, so it seems fitting to take a moment to discuss how Kentucky’s foster care system is working for children waiting for a permanent home. The North American Council on Adoptable Children recently released adoption fact sheets for every state in the U.S. with data collected in 2011. The fact sheets provide analysis on data indicators like the amount of time a child waits to be adopted, or the number of [...]

The KIDS COUNT policy report, The First Eight Years: Giving Kids a Foundation for Lifetime Success, was co-released this week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Kentucky Youth Advocates. We release a lot of reports, as does Casey – I know that.  But this one made me think as deeply as any “report card” styled brief that I have read in a long time.  The report builds a strong case for investing in quality early [...]