Here are some useful reminders about children’s health and wellness during back-to-school season. Tuned In will be off next week and back on August 26.
Quotable & Notable
“Even if you can’t afford to go to college or go to school, like my daddy, if you can read, you can self-educate yourself... And so that’s kind of what we’re hoping to just teach kids -- to read and to learn to love books.”
who:
Dolly Parton, at a luncheon to promote Ohio’s Imagination Library, hosted by First Lady Fran DeWine
Newly released KIDS COUNT data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation show that Ohio ranks 31st in the nation for child well-being, down from 27th in 2019. The Dispatch has more takeaways from the data book that impact Ohio children.
Policy Radar
State
A new tool from The Ohio Poverty Law Center that tracks the distribution of federal coronavirus relief dollars in Ohio was recently unveiled. As a result, advocates are calling on Governor DeWine to increase investments into public assistance programs, such as food banks. This is in response to the potential “COVID cliff” for people who have received emergency benefits throughout the pandemic who will lose their benefits once the public health emergency ends.
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Federal
The U.S. Senate has passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which is expected to be voted upon and passed by the U.S. House soon. However, this budget reconciliation package – which has been in negotiations for months – was entirely stripped of the proposed child care and pre-K funding, as the First Five Years Fund describes.
This op-ed in The Hill describes the disappointment felt by early childhood advocates: “The Senate cannot turn their backs on the families struggling to afford care, the early educators living paycheck to paycheck, the women who left the workforce as the child care system collapsed during the pandemic, and all the young children who deserve quality early learning experiences during the critical first five years of development. As the bill stands currently, the Senate is slated to abandon the millions of voters who elected President Biden on the basis of a Build Back Better agenda that had early education and care at its core. Despite what some elected officials tout as victorious, $400 billion to $0 is not a compromise. It’s capitulation.”
Our partners at the Schoenbaum Family Center have a new website! Check it out here.
Beyond the Buckeye State
Here’s a fascinating look at decades-long efforts to build universal child care in New York City (based on a book written by several historians).
A brief by CLASP offers lessonson D.C.’s paid leave program, which was established in 2016 and became the fifth such program in the country.
What We're Reading
High-quality, affordable child care is critical for so many reasons – helping parents stay in the workforce, educating and socializing children, enhancing the economy – but here's one more. It helps end gender segregation in the workforce, especially in industries that predominantly employ men.
On a related note, Bipartisan Policy Center conducted and published a poll of working mothers earlier this year. Child care was among several policy solutions named that could have “outsized positive impacts on working moms,” alongside paid family leave, workplace flexibility, and emergency savings accounts.
More recently – and locally – the Workforce Development Board of Central Ohio commissioned focus groups and published a report on “women and work” in Franklin County. The Dispatch describes its findings here.
This edition written by: Jamie O'Leary and Caitlin Lennon
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