Voices for Children in Nebraska

Access to quality child care is of paramount importance to the 56% of Nebraska families where all adults in the household are in the labor force (American Community Survey, 2011). LB 507 has taken steps toward ensuring the quality of child care and increasing affordability for the Nebraska families with low incomes. Quality, educational child care [...]

In 2011, about 2,000 kids dropped out of Nebraska high schools.   Also in 2011, a staggering 64% of Nebraska third graders weren’t reading at grade level.  What do these two things have to do with each other?  More and more research has found that the line that kids cross — or don’t cross — in [...]

Affordable child care is essential to keeping kids safe so parents can work. Without access to safe affordable child care, parents may be unable to work or children may be left in unsafe situations. Nebraska took a step backwards in helping parents afford child care when eligibility for child care assistance was cut in 2002. [...]

  While many remain on board in uniting efforts to eradicate child hunger, obesity, and poverty by 2015 it has become apparent that the recent Farm Bill proposal passed on May 16 by the House Agriculture Committee is not in tune with that goal. The current Farm Bill being proposed by the House of Representatives [...]

In the sixth post on the federal sequester’s impact on Nebraska’s kids we will investigates cuts to programs that assist low-income families on their path to economic self-sufficiency.  See the first five posts in the sequester series here: Sequester Overview, Head Start, Education, Public Health, and Child Care. We want all families to be able to meet the [...]

Kids are especially vulnerable during their first five years of life and this is also a time when research has concluded that significant and important brain development occurs.  The caregivers that children have during this time are important for keeping kids safe and the interactions that they have with kids can have a significant impact [...]

Nebraska’s kids need your voice!  Today, the state legislature will consider one of the most critical investments we can make in kids this year.  Child care is critical to ensuring that kids are safe and parents can work.  The child care subsidy program helps working parents access licensed care that would otherwise be unaffordable. In [...]

How we earn money is an important part of our lives  and many of our financial habits are learned in childhood.   How many of you got an allowance as a kid or worked an after-school job to pay for gas or save for college?  We may learn at a young age how to earn money, [...]

Today is April 15th, the annual deadline to file income taxes.  In the monotony of tax filing, it’s easy to forget that taxes have a purpose.  In the simplest terms, taxes are the collective investment we make in our community that it would be impossible for an individual to make alone. Without taxes, we wouldn’t [...]

March 15, 2013 To: Members of the Health and Human Services Committee From: Aubrey Mancuso, Policy Coordinator – Economic Stability and Health Re: Support for LB 236 – to Appropriate funds to establish an Individual Development Account Pilot Project   Voices for Children is in support of LB 236 and would like to thank Senator [...]