Voices for Children in Nebraska

On March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law.  Children have already benefited from the new law.  They can no longer be denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions, young adults have the security of staying on their parents’ health insurance plan up to the age of 26 and those with private insurance [...]

Cutting taxes limits Nebraska’s ability to fund important programs aimed at helping our children get the best possible start in life.  To give us a little perspective, here are 10 policy changes that benefit kids from before birth through their teen years, sized relative to Governor Heineman’s proposed tax cuts. All amounts are 3 year [...]

The Governor’s proposed tax cuts don’t amount to much for families just trying to get by. A more meaningful solution for lower- and middle-income families would be to increase the state Earned Income Tax Credit. State revenues could also support other programs impacting children and hard-working Nebraska families. Let’s not sell out our kids for [...]

  Medicaid provides an essential safety net for low-income children, the elderly and disabled.  The program is funded jointly by both federal and state government and covers over 200,000 Nebraskans. Many people walk a tight rope between health and illness.  Medicaid is an important safety net set to catch the poor and disabled when they [...]

  Child safety is about more than just physical safety. It’s about ensuring youth have the experiences and supports that support their healthy development. For children, this involves permanent, loving family connections. Unfortunately in Nebraska, many of the resources we have available to keep children safe, especially from the federal government, are used on the [...]

  Turns out, it is all about how their brain develops. In the past ten years, scientific research has revealed that the brain doesn’t finish developing until the mid-20s. A young person’s brain is actually different than an adult’s. What difference does that make? The Supreme Court has ruled that it makes youth less culpable [...]

Take a moment and step into the shoes of a child placed in out-of-home care. Imagine being taken away from your parents, friends, and home and placed into an unfamiliar situation, most likely surrounded by strangers. Every year since 1988, Nebraska has had over 8,000 children in out-of-home care at some point in the year. [...]

  Having access to health care is critical for the healthy development of children.  However, in the last decade, we’ve seen a general trend in kids losing employer-sponsored health care, making Medicaid increasingly important for child health.

Holy smokes. Remember last week when we promised a more in-depth look at poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau? Well, today, those data were released, and the look we promised isn’t going to be a very happy one. While the Omaha World-Herald led with a story touting Nebraska’s income growth, the takeaway here at Voices for Children has [...]

It’s slightly nerdy to be saying this, but here in the Voices for Children research department, we’ve been looking forward to today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) for awhile now. Today isn’t just a great excuse to make some charts and graphs, though. It’s also a day that we begin [...]