A New Hampshire coalition of child advocacy groups has released a five point agenda aimed at improving the welfare of children in the state. NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
A New Hampshire coalition of child advocacy groups has released a five point agenda aimed at improving the welfare of children in the state. NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
Last week, Ellen Shemitz, the Steering Committee Chair of the New Hampshire Child Advocacy Network, or NH CAN, was at a house children and family law committee hearing.
4:38 and he said we all seem to agree we have a problem, we have too many children in need, too many children not reaching their full potential, but we don’t have a plan…Well what you all have before you, the 2002 agenda is that plan.
Shemitz and other child advocates are advocating a plan that includes affordable housing, health insurance, early education and early intervention services funding.
Even though proposed legislation is currently in front of the lawmakers, Attorney Andy Volinsky, representing the Claremont Coalition towns in the school funding suit, says NH CAN won’t succeed until the state solves a well known problem. Education funding.
20:58 The legislature is mired in its efforts to deny the existence of the Claremont decisions. And b/c of that its finding it is difficult to go forward in other areas, particulary those areas that depend on funding…
And while NH CAN recognizes a solution to education funding is the most critical agenda item, they have pointed to 3.4 million for children’s health insurance and 650 thousand dollars for the distribution of vaccines as reasons for optimism.
But they also noted that one in five children live in communities without public kindergartens, one third of the people served by state funded homeless shelters are children and 54 thousand children live in homes where at least one adult works fifty weeks and still can’t meet basic family needs.
New Hampshire Health and Human Service Commissioner Donald Shumway:
2:00 60% of kids on Coos are on some sort of Medicaid, and that’s before the closing of the mills. We have sig number of kids growing up in poverty who are either uninsured or dependent of public insurance support. With the agenda of the child network, those issues need to be brought to the forefront.
Republican Representative Keith Herman from Milford said a part of the coalition’s plan is moving through the house. It takes the form of a provision that provides health insurers to cover treatment for substance abuse and adds to the list of mental health treatments. But Herman wouldn’t speculate on the success of other parts of the agenda.
4:12 I don’t know that simply b/c they put out agenda, I don’t know legislature will try to pass their plan, b/c it is their plan. The legislature will have a vote on their plan. Will vote individually, some will pass, some will not. It’s an issue of prioritizing.
Herman sees affordable housing legislation as high on the list. He says health insurance for childcare workers is the least likely because legislators feel that decision is best left to employers, not the state. For NHPR News, I’m DG
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