The 2003 Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook is beautifully designed. Filled with colorful drawings and sharp graphics, each new section begins with a poem from the works of people like Langston Hughes, William Butter Yeats and Robert Louis Stevenson.
If you’re not familiar with Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, you should be. The organization does a lot of the grunt work on which sound public policy can be built – all in the name of our children.
By definition, Rhode Island KIDS COUNT is a “children’s policy organization that provides information on child well-being.”
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But that doesn’t begin to tell how important KIDS COUNT really is – how valuable the information it gleans can be.
Primary funding for the organization comes from The Rhode Island Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Additional support comes from Prince Charitable Trust, The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, CVS/pharmacy, Hasbro Charitable Trust and others.
Elizabeth Burke Bryant is the organization’s executive director. Rhode Island KIDS COUNT also partners with the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University and the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College.
Each year the organization releases its Factbook. There is a big press conference. To Elizabeth Burke Bryant’s credit, it’s on the “must attend” list for political heavyweights and many state officials.
They take Rhode Island KIDS COUNT very seriously.
This year’s Factbook is once again an impressive collection of information. In terms of presentation, it quite simply, looks nice.
But it reads like a slap in the face, telling us things that are difficult to hear. Difficult, but so necessary.
What kinds of things?
• Children who live in deep, long-term poverty experience the worst outcomes as a result of their family’s income status. In 2000, 19,773 children in Rhode Island lived in extreme poverty. This is 8 percent of all Rhode Island children and half of all poor children in Rhode Island.
• In 2000, 19 percent (14,548) of Rhode Island children under age 6 were living in poverty, compared to 17 percent nationally. Of these children, 7,230 were extremely poor.
• Rhode Island ranks 33rd in the country for participation in school breakfast by low-income students. In Rhode Island, there are only 37 low-income students participating in school breakfast for every 100 low-income students participating in school lunch.
• In Rhode Island, nearly half (45 percent) of students have used alcohol by ninth grade and almost one in five have used alcohol by seventh grade. Research indicates that more than 40 percent of those who start drinking at age 14 or younger will develop alcohol dependence.
• 1,561 children under age 13 received emergency housing in a homeless shelter or a domestic violence shelter in Rhode Island between July 1, 2001 and June 30, 2002…131 youth entered the Rhode Island emergency shelter system accompanied by a parent or another adult. This is a 54-percent increase since 1997.
• During 2002, 455 women and 359 children spent time in a domestic violence shelter. Rhode Island’s domestic violence agencies provided services to 921 children…. In 2001, police officers reported that in 2,288 incidents the children saw their parent being abused and in 2,553 incidents the children heard (but did not see) their parent being abused.
The above statistics are just a sampling of what you will find in the Factbook. And not all of the news contained in it is negative.
For example, as of 2001, 4.5 percent of Rhode Island’s children under age 19 were uninsured. That’s the lowest rate of uninsured children in the country.
Also, the number of children entering kindergarten with a history of lead poisoning has decreased throughout the state. In 2002, the Factbook points out the General Assembly passed the Lead Mitigation Act, a piece of legislation that has been lauded for its enforcement components for lead safety, including penalties against landlords who do not abate their properties in a timely manner.
That’s good news. Such examples show that if we sincerely address real problems, we can go a long way toward solving them.
You can draw a number of conclusions from the statistics contained within the 2003 Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook.
Too many of our children can’t read. Too many of our children find themselves in the middle of a domestic violence situation. Too many of our children, for one reason or another, end up at the training school. Too many of our children go to bed hungry.
And there’s one more unmistakable conclusion. That is, we can all do a better job of advocating for our children. They deserve better than they’re getting.
The Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook is worth reading. You can order a copy by calling the organization at 351-9400.
And if Elizabeth Burke Bryant happens to answer, you ought to thank her for all that she does.
