Voices for Children in Nebraska

Child welfare agencies across the country are responsible for the well-being of more than half a million children. Unfortunately, children and youth in foster care are the most educationally at-risk of all student populations. Due placement interruptions and the school transfers that tend to follow, only about 54% of foster care youth graduate from high [...]

When we think about children’s educational successes, there are a lot of factors that immediately come to mind.  Things like teacher quality and a child’s own intellectual abilities are obvious ones.  So it may come as a surprise to some that breakfast is another essential component to education. Facilitating and expanding school breakfast programs in [...]

As introduced: LB 507 adopts the Step Up to Quality Act, putting in place a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) with a scale of steps from one to five. The system is available to all child care and early childhood education programs voluntarily, but participation is required for programs that receive significant amounts of [...]

As introduced: LB 625 changes provisions relating to child care subsidies and requires the Department of Health and Human Services to provide child care assistance to families with incomes up to 185% of the federal poverty level. Introducing Senator(s): Conrad (priority); Nordquist Committee: Health and Human Services Committee Hearing Date: February 27, 2013 Current Status: [...]

Voices for Children in Nebraska is working with senators on an interim study looking into the school breakfast program in Nebraska.  Before we can encourage senators to increase participation of this program, it is important to know how many schools and districts offer a school breakfast program currently. As of 2011, Nebraska had 491 school [...]

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. [...]

At Voices for Children, our work focuses on bigger picture policy change for kids, but we know there are people on the ground doing amazing things for kids in our communities every day.  Their stories are the pieces that make up the whole story of children and youth.  The “Shout out” series highlights the groups [...]

This is the third post in the federal sequester’s impact on Nebraska’s kids.  See the first two post here: Sequester Overview and Head Start.  Today we will delve into the anticipated impacts of the sequester on teachers, schools, and education for children with disabilities. The White House states that Nebraska will lose approximately $2,988,000 in funding [...]