Session priorities

Children's Movement tries a few small steps

Perhaps it will be the year of the child, after all — even if that means being satisfied, even celebratory, over succeeding by reducing expectations.

In terms of Legislative largesse, however, the approach of child advocates this year may be better than asking for the moon and going away empty handed.

The Children's Movement on Monday launched a pragmatic 2012 legislative agenda. The nonprofit's focus is a 5-point, $30 million investment in the health and education of very young children, perchance to improve the futures of older children — and ultimately that much-talked-about educated "workforce" that will carry Florida into prosperity.

Also known as the Milk Party for its milk-and-cookies events statewide, the Children's Movement is on the same chapter, though perhaps on different pages than the nonprofit Children's Campaign coalition. In August, it set out goals for public policy supporting pre-natal infant and child health care and high quality child care.

We have no shortage of child advocates. Florida has created a Children's Cabinet to share information with other agencies about child welfare. Here in Leon County, Whole Child Leon is a wonderful program to connect parents with information and services for children, but it's local in scope.

Yet despite these and other champions of children — and despite political rhetoric that unfailingly favors children — our state is guilty of chronic child neglect.

Florida ranks 47th among the states and the District of Columbia in the access of children to affordable and preventative health care. Some 800,000 Florida children from infancy to age 18 are without health insurance.

During the economic downturn, even some children who had been covered by family insurance lost it when parents lost their jobs. To that end, one of the five points of the Children's Movement is to do a much better job of getting the word out to families about KidCare through school-based and community outreach efforts. Florida's low-cost insurance program for very low-income parents, KidCare has never been the success story it should have been because of complex application processes and low public awareness that it even exists.

The Movement is seeking $5 million to develop an online screening and diagnosis and treatment for children with special needs. It's seeking $4.2 million to do a better job of assessing how children are doing in the state's voluntary pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds, and $8.7 million to require an evidence-based curriculum for VPK. This kindergarten program was never intended to be child care alone.

Finally, the Children's Movement is after $10 million to build a parental skill-building system so parents can do a better job with the fundamentals.

The roughly $30 million that Children's Movement Founder Dave Lawrence says these incremental improvements would cost sounds like very little in the state's $69 billion budget. Yet on Tuesday Senate President Mike Haridopolos made it perfectly clear that tradeoffs will have to be made — and for him the $22 million in savings from prison privatization would be an excellent place to find the bucks, at least a portion of them.

The Legislature convenes on Jan. 10 and the games will begin. For children's advocates, positive pragmatism is what they're bringing to the arena, hoping to win a berth in this year's Priorities Championships.

We hold out modest hope that not too many more generations will come of age before children-and-families campaign rhetoric turns to reality.

Read the full article here.