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NYS Touchstones/KIDS COUNT Special Reports

• Identifying High Needs Communities in New York State: Young children’s well-being can be compromised by a range of risk factors associated with children, their families, the quality of schools they attend and their communities; it is also well-established that these risks can be offset by early supports to children and families.  Therefore, identifying communities where young children are disproportionately exposed to factors that can compromise their development enables us to align and mobilize resources that promote their well-being and offset factors that place them at risk.  This research brief describes the method used to identify high need communities in New York state, with particular emphasis on children from birth to age 5 years.  
• Nourishing New York's Children: Proper nutrition, the building blocks for children’s health, cognitive development and overall growth, is essential for children’s healthy development.  This brief describes the status of food insecurity in New York, provides an overview of programs intended to target this issue and presents county-level data on many of the factors that contribute to inadequate nourishment.
• Adverse Childhood Experiences Among New York Adults: Optimal child well-being is related to our ability to provide children with safe, nurturing, stable environments that support their development of sound cognitive, emotional and social skills. However, their development can be jeopardized when individuals are exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). This brief describes the types of adverse childhood events experienced by adults in New York state as well as their peer recovery and medical services.
• Children with Incarcerated Parents: This report provides an examination of issues related to parent incarceration from the perspective of children and young adults, caregivers, and formerly incarcerated parents. The report describes experiences at the point of arrest, the disclosure of parent’s incarceration, issues pertaining to parent-child communication during incarceration and family reunification.
• Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: It is estimated that nationally one child in 110 has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This research brief highlights factors associated with ASD, challenges with early diagnosis, and provides an overview of children in New York who are identified as having an ASD.
• Decision Markers in the Juvenile Justice System—Opportunities for Support and Intervention: The juvenile justice system is the means we use to respond to children who are in conflict with the law. The overarching goals of the system are to ensure community safety and make youth accountable for their actions. Equally important is the fundamental need to build youth competencies in order to reduce the possibility that youth will develop or increase behaviors that may move them further into the juvenile justice system. Given these multiple goals, an effective juvenile justice system is one in which there is a skillful balance between reparation and redemption.This brief focuses on the decision point when youth come into contact with probation departments and alternative strategies that could decrease youths’ further penetration into the juvenile justice system.
• A Conversation with Immigrant Mothers About Early Learning Programs: Benefits, Barriers & Work to be done: Approximately one in four of New York's four-year-old children lives with an immigrant mother and half of these children live at or below the 200 percent poverty level despite the fact that most of these mothers and their spouses are in the workforce. Fortunately, a widely recognized means to equalize opportunities for children in poverty is participation in early learning programs. The purposes of the focus groups were to learn about immigrant mothers' decision to either enroll or not enroll their children in early learning programs and gain a better understanding of the perceived barriers and benefits of such programs. Of particular interest was the identification of cultural factors that might contribute to differing enrollment rates.
• A Level Playing Field for New York's Children in Immigrant Families: Early learning programs play a critical role in equalizing opportunities, particularly for children in immigrant families who are often living in poverty. This research brief reviews the early learning enrollment rates among children in immigrant families, identifies differences in enrollment by mother's country of origin and examines a series of child, family, and economic factors that influence whether children are enrolled in early learning programs.

Please visit our archive section to view previous Touchstones/KIDS COUNT Special Reports.

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Annie E. Casey Foundation 2011 National KIDS COUNT Data Book

 

The AECF annual data book is a comprehensive resource on the status of U.S. children, featuring state-specific data on ten key indicators of child well-being. Please visit the Data Book home page to download the report and create maps, graphs, and charts at the national, state, and local level. The new mobile Data Center offers hundreds of measures of child well-being available on any smartphone: http://mobile.kidscount.org.

 

 

 

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Annie E. Casey KIDS COUNT 2010 Special Report: Learning to Read—Reading to Learn. This report focuses on effective strategies for achieving grade level reading proficiency for all children, emphasizing the importance of having children be able to read by grade 3 so they can use this skill to learn to read.

Executive Summary—Learning to Read— Reading to Learn.