After a crazy couple of weeks of work on child welfare bills, this week is the first since legislative hearings started where I won’t be making the trip to the state capitol in Lincoln to testify. While I’ll get some extra hours in the office to work on some ongoing…...
Cutting Our Future: Medicaid Provider Rates
Medicaid is an important lifeline for kids whose families would otherwise be unable to afford health insurance. Having health insurance, especially when kids are young, is a critical component of ensuring healthy development. In 2010, 69% of all Medicaid participants in Nebraska were kids. But having health insurance alone isn’t…...
Cutting Our Future: Prenatal Care for Low-Income Mothers
As you might remember, during the last legislative session, a bill was passed to restore prenatal care coverage under Medicaid for all low-income mothers regardless of immigration status or other issues of the mother. A large and diverse coalition of groups came together to support the restoration of this care. …...
Legislature sets the stage for juvenile justice reform
A great deal of public attention has been focused on Nebraska’s child welfare system’s flaws over the past few years. Our juvenile justice system, which actually serves just as many vulnerable children and families, has received comparatively little. Yet data show that youth in our juvenile justice system are often…...
One giant leap for child welfare reform?
For over two years Nebraska’s vulnerable children and families, social workers, service providers, and court stakeholders have been stuck. They’ve been stuck in a constantly changing system, enduring sudden transition after sudden transition, newspaper story after newspaper story, contract amendment after contract amendment. Nebraska’s child welfare system was struggling long…...
Making Children a Priority at the Legislature
Each legislative session, our Nebraska state Senators have an opportunity to make children a priority. Let me amend that statement: Senators have lots of opportunities to make children a priority, ranging from introducing bills that specifically address children’s issues to ensuring that vital programs have the funding to reach the kids…...
Unwrapping the LR 37 Report
Just in time for the holidays, the Health and Human Services Committee delivered over 400 pages of research, reports, and recommendations relating to child welfare to stakeholders and advocates on December 15th. We’ve spent the past few days at Voices for Children in Nebraska digging into the report and seeing…...
