During 2021, the first year after the pandemic began, California managed to keep more than 96% of children insured, according to a new report from Georgetown University.
The authors credit a federal law which gave states extra money so no one would be dropped from Medicaid during COVID.
Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said the protections are slated to lapse when the national health emergency ends next spring, and she predicted the national child uninsured rate could double.
“Three out of every four children that may lose Medicaid coverage will still be eligible,” Alker pointed out. “Sometimes children lose coverage at Medicaid renewal, just because the letter gets lost in the mail. Families with limited English proficiency may have more trouble getting through the renewal process successfully.”
Next spring, Medi-Cal will likely resume its annual re-evaluations of recipients’ eligibility. Alker argued all states need to launch a massive outreach campaign to make sure no eligible child is dropped. And parents need to make sure Medi-Cal has their correct address.
Mayra Alvarez, president of the Children’s Partnership, noted California’s most recent budget included money to keep all children on Medi-Cal continuously covered until age five, but there’s a catch.
“The state is not slated to implement that provision until 2025,” Alvarez stressed. “We’re urging the state to move as quickly as possible with those protections so that our children don’t drop off of the rolls.”
Nationally, the child uninsured rate in the U.S. was 5.4% in 2021, down slightly from 2019, reversing a trend from the Trump years, when the rate of uninsured children went up.
Disclosure: The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families contributes to our fund for reporting on Children’s Issues, and Health Issues. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.
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According to a new report, a significant number of the state’s youths are institutionalized, not because of a need for intensive supervision but because kinship or foster families are not available.
The pandemic pushed Kentucky’s child welfare agencies and workforce to its limits, and after the recent deaths of children in the state’s residential facilities, advocates are calling for reforms. In 2020, more than 8,000 children in the Commonwealth were placed in foster care.
Tamara Vest, a University of Kentucky graduate student and intern for Kentucky Youth Advocates, said prevention is the best strategy.
“Catching things upstream so that you don’t have to remove children from their homes, but you’re able to help families get the resources that they need so that separation doesn’t occur,” Vest explained.
Roughly 10% of Kentucky’s foster care kids live in a group home or institution.
Elutan Dawson, a youth development specialist and former foster youth, said it is critical for young people to spend time with volunteers and mentors, to strengthen their network of support, help them gain skills and teach them life lessons.
“Mentorship and just the opportunities to engage with volunteers were very helpful for me,” Dawson recounted. “I’ve been able to learn some skills, went hiking and Boy Scouts when I was in residential, and I learned how to camp. I can go camp now.”
Cynthia Scheppers, peer coach coordinator for Kentucky Youth Advocates, said communities have a collective responsibility to support youths without kinship ties, especially during the holiday season.
“Whether that be in the form of getting presents or opening your home for the youths for the holidays,” Scheppers suggested.
The state’s network of social workers plays a critical role in ensuring foster youths have opportunities to forge healthy relationships. According to the report, the pandemic worsened staffing issues, and retaining direct-care workers in residential facilities is an ongoing challenge.
Disclosure: Kentucky Youth Advocates/Kids Count contributes to our fund for reporting on Budget Policy and Priorities, and Children’s Issues. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.
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Child-abuse prevention specialists in South Dakota and elsewhere say a new study underscores the need to protect kids from traumatic situations to avoid long-term physical health issues. International researchers have found a 14% increase in heart failure among adults who experienced one form of childhood maltreatment.
Those with three to five types of maltreatment had a 43% increased risk.
Brooke Jones, a child-abuse pediatrician based in Sioux Falls, said these events place stressors on the body.
“If you’ve heard of the term ‘fight or flight’ – if you’re having constant adversity in your childhood, you might be in a constant flight stage, meaning that you don’t have any down regulation or you’re not getting out of that constant stress environment,” Jones said.
And that constant stress can leave its mark in multiple ways, including cardiovascular disease, as these kids transition to adulthood. Jones said parents or caregivers can reduce the impact by providing a nurturing environment as the child grows.
She said it can involve simple things, such as reading to them or finding ways to let them know they are in a safe space.
Shakira Suglia, director of epidemiology at Emory University, chaired a 2017 American Heart Association report that tied adverse childhood experiences to adult health risks, including heart disease. She said the new study adds to evidence that the mental and physical health effect go hand-in-hand when peeling back the layers of trauma.
“There might be development of depression or anxiety disorders that may make someone more prone to then cope with substances,” she said. “For example, the uptake of smoking is also another thing that people tend to use to cope with stress.”
Suglia echoed calls for policymakers and community-level organizations to do anything that supports stronger family relationships, especially in situations where trauma has surfaced in a household. She said outside of the home, schools and care centers can be on alert for children who have dealt with trauma and should try to emphasize a welcoming environment in those settings.
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Ohio’s child-welfare system is plagued by a shortage of mental-health professionals. Experts said having consistent access to therapists, counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists could change the trajectory for kids who otherwise would be placed in institutions, increasingly lacking the space for them.
Theresa Lampl, CEO of The Ohio Council of Behavioral Health and Family Services Providers, said to offset the community consequences of lack of access to care, mental health should be viewed as a persistent health condition, and treated on par with heart health, diabetes or other chronic diseases. She said that requires creating value to attract more people to the profession.
“Really creating incentives for people to come in, because these jobs offer relatively low pay, yet require in many cases, bachelor’s or master’s degrees, in order to provide services,” Lampl said.
She said the state could implement tuition-reimbursement programs, paid internships and loan-forgiveness opportunities to jump start the behavioral health workforce pipeline. According to state data, more than 2-million Ohioans live in communities without enough behavioral-health professionals.
Melissa Flick, protective services manager of South Central Ohio Job and Family Services, said the state’s rural regions lack intensive behavioral health services that are more readily accessible in cities. She provided an example of a 12- year-old girl with a long history of trauma, and was hospitalized for several weeks.
“She’s doing some self harming by ingesting different items,” Flick said, “so whatever she can get her hands on, she will try to ingest to harm herself. And she is currently placed in an acute-care hospitalization type facility. Those types of facilities are supposed to be very short term.”
The agency has exhausted every resource in the state, and those facilities are either completely full or they are unable to meet her specific needs. Flick believes better resources early on may have addressed the trauma to set the child on a path toward healing.
Nationwide, mental-health crises among young kids are on the rise. According to the CDC, mental health-related Emergency Department visits jumped by 24% for children ages 5 to 11 and 31% for 12 to 17-year-olds in 2020, compared with the year prior.
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