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2022-01-28
Cambridge Community Foundation;
In this annual report we want to lift up the voices of our youth, the people who will one day inherit the new Cambridge. They often see inconvenient truths and have insights that can only come from the young. In some cases, they are already launching innovative solutions to the problems that they feel most deeply. In this way, they inspire us to discover and support social innovation wherever it exists, whether in our universities, our entrepreneurial culture, or in 10-year-old Aviana Dupee and other young people you will read about in this report.At our core we aspire to champion everyone who imagines a just and equitable city where we can all thrive. We fund grassroots leaders who use their lived experience to find solutions to local problems. We invest in innovative programs, like Cambridge RISE, which changes the lives of single parents and grandparents who are caring for children and struggling with everyday expenses. We form partnerships with nonprofits, civic leaders, universities, and donors to help good ideas take root.We exist to protect the qualities that make Cambridge the city you love. And, of course, we exist to create a better city for the young people who speak so eloquently on the following pages.
2022-06-29
James Bell Associates;
Pregnant and parenting adolescents* face the dual challenge of raising a child while navigating their own path to adulthood. Many encounter barriers related to child care, housing, and health care that can limit their job and educational opportunities. Some experience judgment and bias at home and in the community. Despite these setbacks, some adolescents view parenthood as a positive life event that bolsters their sense of responsibility and stability.** Many home visiting models support first-time parents or parents with complex needs. The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program identifies women under 21 as a priority service group. More can be done, however, to offer age-appropriate, engaging, and respectful home visiting services for adolescents.This Innovation Roundup Brief highlights home visiting models, affiliates, and initiatives serving young parents' needs:Teen Parent Connection: A Healthy Families America AffiliateFamily SpiritNurse-Family PartnershipShow Me Strong Families (SMSF): A Parents as Teachers InitiativeIt concludes with key service delivery features for consideration by other programs.
2022-06-09
Urban Institute;
More than a quarter of US children have at least one immigrant parent, but researchers and policymakers often do not have adequate data on these children's experiences in school. Information on the languages students speak at home can provide perspective on students' experiences and takes communities' unique strengths and challenges into account. States must report data on languages spoken at home to the federal government each year, yet district-level data are rarely published.Home language data have untapped value, with far-reaching implications for instruction, student support services, and policy. Better and more public data on student background can enhance our understanding of students' experiences and provide nuanced information to educators, researchers, and policymakers to better serve distinct student subgroups. Publishing district-level home language data could inform education policy decisions, providing much-needed nuance to public education data systems.
2022-06-13
Purposeful;
We have chosen the title 'Spouting Our Collective Wisdom' as an ode to the collective knowledge and learning that has emerged from different corners of the world during the pandemic. We draw inspiration from the natural world, the cycles of growth, of co-dependence, metamorphosis, and the connectivity across ecosystems in nature around us. Through our relationships across our work in the Global Resilience Fund (GRF), with activists and funders, we have created an environment for ongoing learning, unlearning, reflection and for sprouting new ideas and experimenting with care, love and friendship as our guide.This report gives an overview of the Global Resilience Fund's activist-led accompaniment with early reflections and observations. Our intention is to inspire others to center the vision and leadership of girls and young activists in providing accompaniment, and for others to learn from our experience.
2022-07-08
Kaiser Family Foundation;
Firearms recently became the number one cause of death for children in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries.We examine how gun violence and other types of firearm deaths among children and teens in the United States compares to rates in similarly large and wealthy countries. We select comparable large and wealthy countries by identifying Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member nations with above median GDP and above median GDP per capita in at least one year from 2010-2020. Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder database and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study data, we compare fatality rates and disability estimates for people ages 1 through 19. (Since estimates were not available for children ages 1-17 alone, young adults ages 18 and 19 are grouped with children for the purposes of this brief).We find that the United States is alone among peer nations in the number of child firearm deaths. In no other similarly large or wealthy country are firearm deaths in the top 4 causes of mortality let alone the number 1 cause of death among children.
2022-05-13
Maine Center for Economic Policy;
The improved and expanded monthly Child Tax Credit (CTC) has been one of the most successful and popular American Rescue Plan Act programs, providing flexibility to parents to buy food, make rent, afford child care, and other routine but essential family expenses. It dramatically lowered the number of U.S. children living in poverty -- and the ripple effect made our economy stronger by increasing spending in local economies and supporting jobs as families use the money to purchase food, pay bills, and cover school and childcare expenses.National studies confirm CTC payments succeeded in reducing adversity for kids and improving economic stability across the country. And in MECEP's report, How the Child Tax Credit was spent in Maine, we can now see specifically how it benefited Maine families as well.
2022-04-22
Urban Institute;
Gun violence, including that perpetrated by young people, is a pernicious problem for many communities, particularly those facing historically high levels of concentrated disadvantage and disinvestment. To effectively address youth gun violence and establish and maintain peace, communities need stable safety infrastructures and effective interventions.We developed a research-based practice guide to help local governments, law enforcement agencies, and antiviolence organizations determine how to shape their approaches to reducing gun violence perpetrated by young people ages 10 to 25 in gangs or groups. Here, we summarize the guide's recommendations on how to develop effective interventions and build a broader safety infrastructure that supports the success of different partners working to protect young people and communities from gun violence.
2022-02-02
National WIC Association;
The second State of WIC report – supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation – highlights the experience of WIC providers and participants throughout 2021. Effective program reforms, including the WIC benefit bump and remote WIC services, have upended longstanding trends and leave WIC better positioned to deliver quality nutrition support. This report documents the strong and growing evidence base for WIC's nutrition intervention and lays out a blueprint for how WIC can build healthier food environments by investing in the next generation.
2022-04-14
The Wallace Foundation;
This brief summarizes findings and ideas that emerged from a Wallace-commissioned literature review and set of interviews with experts in the field to identify major challenges to—and leading practices toward—equity in out-of-school-time programs. The effort was led by Bianca Baldridge, a researcher and former youth worker, now at Harvard University, who examines out-of-school-time programming and the intersection of race, class and power. The other research team members were Daniela K. DiGiacomo of the University of Kentucky, Ben Kirshner of the University of Colorado Boulder, Sam Mejias of Parsons School of Design, and Deepa S. Vasudevan of Wellesley College.Using a social justice perspective, Baldridge and her team conducted a review of pertinent research from the past 20 years; interviewed experts in out-of-school-time research, policy and practice; and conducted focus groups with professionals in the field. They also launched a research project, carried out by high school and college students, to examine young people's views of equity in and access to out-of-school-time programs. A summary of the youth-led research accompanies this brief. Baldridge and her colleagues divided their high-level conclusions about out-of-school-time programs into two categories—those regarding marginalized youth and those regarding frontline workers. For the former, the team found that although many out-of-school-time programs seek to address inequity, programs also can perpetuate a "deficit-oriented" approach, in which Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American and Pacific Islander youth are positioned as "at risk" and in need of being "fixed." The alternative, research suggests, is a "strengths-based, humanizing, and dignity-based approach." Practical measures that programs can take include ensuring the hiring and retention of program leaders and staff members who are more representative of the racial and cultural backgrounds of the program participants and engaging young people in actively addressing inequities in their communities. Additionally, the researchers found that out-of-school-time staffers, many of whom come from the same backgrounds as program participants, reported experiences of tokenization or marginalization on the job. Further, although they often care deeply about their work, they frequently struggle with remaining in their positions because of low wages, job instability and other unfavorable conditions. A number of steps could change this picture, from paying youth-field workers a livable wage to offering them a clear pathway to leadership positions.
2022-06-28
Kaiser Family Foundation;
Concerns about adolescent mental health and substance use have increased recently, particularly in light of gun violence and the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, many adolescents have experienced worsened emotional health, increased stress, and a lack of peer connection. Other mental health and substance use concerns are on the rise – including drug overdose deaths, self-harm, and eating disorders. Simultaneously, adolescents are spending more time on screens and many report adverse experiences such as parental abuse, hunger, and job loss – all of which can be linked to poor mental health outcomes.This brief explores the state of adolescent mental health and substance use in recent years, highlighting differences observed by sex, racial and ethnic groups, and sexual orientation. Throughout this analysis, we define adolescents as individuals ages 12 to 17. Although data on adolescent mental health is limited, where possible, we draw upon data from the 2020 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), which asks parents or guardians questions on behalf of their children and adolescents. We also include data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other surveys conducted during the pandemic.
2022-06-29
Urban Institute;
The pandemic and associated job losses threatened to reduce employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and increase uninsurance among American families. Though such risks were higher for adults because of the long-standing generosity of public coverage policies for children, the severity and novelty of the pandemic also had the potential to exacerbate children's coverage losses that had occurred between 2016 and 2019 and to jeopardize decades of progress in reducing their uninsurance rate. In this brief, we explore changes in coverage status and type among children from birth to age 17 from 2019 to 2021. To do so, we use data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement and administrative data on children's enrollment in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Marketplace coverage through early 2022. We examine (1) changes between early 2019 and early 2021 to reflect the first year of the pandemic and the first round of pandemic recovery legislation passed in March 2020 and (2) changes from early 2021 through late 2021 and early 2022 to reflect continuing trends and initial responses to the second major federal recovery effort in March 2021.
2022-06-14
The Sentencing Project;
Throughout the pandemic, a flurry of alarming news coverage and inflammatory rhetoric from politicians have appeared in national and local media highlighting serious violent crimes by youth. The issue has generated considerable political attention in Congress and across the country, and it has fueled calls to scale back youth justice reforms enacted in many states and to derail proposed reforms in others.This report explains why these calls for a return to get-tough youth justice policies are misguided, based on a false narrative regarding recent trends in youth crime and what actually works to prevent delinquency and promote youth success.Our nation must always take vigilant action steps to increase public safety, starting with common sense gun regulations to limit access to deadly weapons. But the nation must be clear-eyed about the nature and dimensions of youth violence and cannot allow media-fueled concerns over crime or election-year political posturing to distract attention from efforts to mobilize urgently needed social, emotional, and mental health support for young people in their schools and communities.The Sentencing Project's review of the available data about youth violence during the pandemic finds scarce evidence of a youth-led crime wave. Rather, most of the data suggest that youth violence has been flat or declining.
