Tag: West Virginia KIDS COUNT

Child Care Access A Barrier To Improving Child Well-Being In W.Va.

West Virginia ranked 42nd in the nation for child well-being in this year’s KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each year, the foundation chooses a specific hurdle to improving child well-being, and this year’s focus is the state of child care.

West Virginia ranked 42nd in the nation for child well-being in this year’s KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The data book is a 50-state report of analyzing how children and families are faring. The analysis is based on metrics, such as education, health, family and community.

Tricia Kingery, executive director of West Virginia Kids Count, said the biggest factor in the state’s ranking is its economic outlook.

“The underlying factor as to why we’re 36th in economic well-being, 47th in education, 39th in health, and 34th in family and community is the economic landscape of our state,” Kingery said. “We have to invest in working families. And that does mean jobs. It does mean benefits, it does mean child care.”

Each year, the foundation chooses a specific hurdle to improving child well-being, and this year’s focus is the state of child care.

Tiffany Gale, owner and director of Miss Tiffany’s Early Childhood Education House in Weirton, as well as the family child care chair for the West Virginia Association for Young Children, said a lack of accessible and affordable child care is holding back West Virginia.

“It is such a huge issue not only for child care in general, but also for business and economic development and for workforce participation,” Gale said. “Families cannot get to work without access to child care, and businesses cannot thrive without workers and workers need child care.” 

Gale said there isn’t enough child care in the state of West Virginia to support the businesses that already exist, nor to support the businesses that are coming. Gale and Kingery both said many people who want to work cannot because they do not have reliable child care.

Beyond the immediate impact to the workforce, Gale said there is also a long-term impact from the lack of access to child care.

“Early childhood education is extremely important, because 80 percent of brain growth happens before kindergarten,” she said. “We can change the trajectory of a child’s life, and really the trajectory of communities in the first five years of care.”

West Virginia Kids Count plans to publish a more detailed, county by county report of child well-being in the fall.

West Virginia Improves 4 Spots on Child Well-Being Rankings

West Virginia has improved from 43rd to 39th among all states in a foundation’s rankings for overall child well-being.
 
The group West Virginia KIDS COUNT announced the change in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2016 national rankings of child well-being.

West Virginia KIDS COUNT says the Mountain State tied with five other states for the second-largest improvement since the 2015 marks.

The group says West Virginia ties for third for percentage of children covered by health insurance.

The foundation measures well-being through four metrics.

West Virginia ranked 31st in economic well-being, 46th in education, 41st in health and 33rd in family and community.

Report: More than 1 in 4 W.Va. Kids Living in Poverty

A new report says more than one in four West Virginiachildren are living in poverty.

The annual KIDS Count report says the number of children living in poverty grew from 87,000 in 2008 to 100,000 in 2013, an increase of nearly 15 percent.

The report says 38 percent of children, or 144,000, were living in families whose parents lacked secure employment in 2013, compared to 32 percent in 2008.

Several other child well-being indicators improved during the same period. The death rate for children and teens declined from 36 per 100,000 to 34. The teen birth rate fell from 47 per 1,000 to 40.

Overall, the report ranks West Virginia 43rd for child well-being, down from 37th in 2014.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation released the report on Tuesday.

Low-income Kids at Risk of Falling Behind in School Report Says

A report says one-third of West Virginia schoolchildren under age 6 live in poor households and are at risk of falling significantly behind their classmates’ achievements.

The West Virginia KIDS COUNT’s annual report on children’s wellbeing says the vocabularies of children as young as 18 months from low-income families are already several months behind their peers, and that continues throughout their educations.

The report released Tuesday says there’s a 24 percent reading proficiency gap between low-income fourth-graders and their wealthier classmates, and a 23 gap in math proficiency for low-income eighth-graders.

The report suggests continued investments in high-quality child care can help close the achievement gap.

Overall, the report ranked West Virginia 37th in the nation for child wellbeing. That’s unchanged from a year ago.

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