Child welfare stats tell familiar, sad stories

We’ve become accustomed to dreary reports like the latest detailed and documented studies on the appalling state of child well-being in our region.

That’s a big part of the problem. We’re getting too accustomed to them.

The 2016 state-by-state rankings of the welfare of American children, compiled and published annually by the nonprofit Annie E. Casey Foundation, have routinely found Georgia and Alabama on the lowest tiers. As if that weren’t bad enough, we’re getting worse.

The foundation’s 2016 Kids Count report, which assesses children’s financial well-being, education, health and family/community stability, compared the data in those four categories from 2008 to 2014, the latest year for which data are available.

Georgia’s ranking has dropped from an already abysmal 40th down to 42nd. Alabama has continued its steady regression, from 44th in 2014 to 45th last year to 46th. At this pace, rock bottom is only four years away.

In both states, there have been good-faith efforts and frustrations. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley fought the determination of a special-interest-owned legislature to take desperately needed state money from essential social services, including children’s services. But his personal scandal has brought his agenda, and potentially his governorship, to a virtual halt. Even so, the legislature increased pre-K funding by $16 million, or 25 percent, for the next school year.

Georgia, despite too much legislative time wasted on political hot-button nonsense, managed to increase funding for, among other services, early childhood learning programs and more child welfare case workers.

The best news in the report is that child health indexes showed improvement in both states, though they were all still below the national average. The most dramatic category of improvement was in births to teen mothers, where Georgia’s rate was cut almost in half since 2008, from 50 per 1,000 to 28. In Alabama the change was almost as dramatic, a drop of 37 percent.

Both states also showed improvement in the categories of low birth weight babies, child and teen deaths, substance abuse and children without health insurance.

The positive trends pretty much end there. The economic numbers have just gotten worse, as they have over much of the country. Georgia’s child poverty rate has increased from 20 to 26 percent since 2008, Alabama’s from 22 percent in 2008 to 28 percent by 2014.

Not surprisingly, child health and welfare advocates in both states note that childhood woes today bode ill for everyone tomorrow.

Brunswick pediatrician Evelyn Johnson told Georgia Health News that the sharp increase in Georgia child poverty is “very disturbing” — too many children already lack access to a pediatrician, and many doctors don’t accept Medicaid because of low reimbursement rates.

“Unfortunately,” said Emily Pelton of Voices for Georgia’s Children, “we need to do more to invest in the economic well-being of our kids and continue to increase their rates of insurance enrollment so they can be healthy, fulfill their potential, and become a strong future workforce.”

Pelton’s counterpart, Voices for Alabama’s Children research director Rhonda Mann, underscored what should be obvious: “Poverty can actually impact every area of [a child’s] life.” Poor families tend to live in poor school districts; there might not be safe play areas, and there are limited transportation options to get elsewhere. Children from poverty often start school with limited vocabularies that put them at a disadvantage before they’ve even begun.

People who labor at the thankless tasks involved in trying to make these children’s lives better, especially in places like Alabama and Georgia where the frustration and despair factors must sometimes seem crushing, deserve more credit than they will ever get.

“As people who care about and advocate for children,” said Georgia’s Pelton, “we should take heart in the improvements, but we are still quite a long way from being able to rest on our laurels.”

When our overall index of child well-being ranks in the bottom 10, we have precious few laurels to rest on, and no excuse for resting on them.

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 5:28 PM with the headline "Child welfare stats tell familiar, sad stories."