It’s that time of year. U of L wins a bowl game! I don’t want to talk about the U of L/UK basketball game. Those Holiday decorations come down. And we all make a few New Year’s resolutions, whether we admit it or not! You can find lists of resolutions that detail the most common commitments to a new year. Items like: “Get in shape.” “Get my finances in order.” “Pay attention to balance in [...]
Where else could they go? It was either us or a foster home. When you have a loving family that wants to take them in and support them there has to be something to support that. –Grandmother raising 3 grandchildren, Kenton County Kentucky’s strong family values are exemplified by the thousands of relatives stepping up to care for children in their family. With the number of children being cared for by kin nearly doubling over [...]
Kentucky Youth Advocates Board and Staff wish you a great holiday season and look forward to seeing you in the new year!
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 [...]
I’d like to start with two seemingly disparate paragraphs. The first is about Edward DeBono. DeBono is one interesting guy. He holds multiple doctorates – including a medical degree – from places like Oxford and Cambridge. A Rhodes Scholar, DeBono has held faculty appointments at his two alma maters and Harvard. He is widely viewed as the leading international researcher around the neuroscience of thinking. While he has written over seventy books, his research was [...]
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 [...]
Over the past few months, Kentucky Youth Advocates has been talking with professionals, surveying support group leaders and listening to kinship caregivers in order to identify the needs facing children in kinship care in Kentucky. Some 63,000 children in Kentucky are being raised by grandparents and other relatives, at the second highest rate in the nation. Last week we shared about confusion over the fact that all children who are being raised by relatives are [...]
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 [...]
It’s time to set the record straight on eligibility for the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP). During the month of October, Kentucky Youth Advocates held five focus groups across the state to learn more about the needs of kinship families. During those focus groups, I learned that many of the participants were struggling financially but were not accessing financial assistance through K-TAP due to a belief that they were not eligible. I did some research [...]
