CEO of The Children’s Initiative Speaks to SDSVP at First Friday

By Cathy Yarbrough

• More and more babies are born with low or very low birth weight in San Diego county (SD).
• A total of 27% of kindergarten to 5th grade students attended school in SD less than 95% of the time during 2006-07.
• Child abuse and neglect in SD remains higher than the state average, but the good news is the rate of substantiated reports has been slowly declining.
• Other good news for SD: in early childcare and education, our area is above the state and national averages, and the rate of domestic violence reports is declining. However, SD remains above the state average.
• For youth DUI related injuries and deaths, SD has the highest rate in California.

Sandy McBrayer, CEO of The Children’s Initiative, highlighted these and other findings from the 2007 San Diego County Report Card on Children and Families, at a recent SDSVP 1st Friday lunch meeting.

“Every good business uses data,” she said. “What is the data telling us about children?”

It tells us that while community and family indicators are generally improving in SD, there has been a “lack of substantial progress in reducing poverty and mortality,” as stated in the report. “These two broad indicators may point to underlying problems in the health and safety net of our community.”

The report also noted, “While the percent of San Diego County children living in poverty is lower than the state and the nation averages, we are not making substantial progress in reducing the proportion of our children who live in poverty."

Assessing the overall health and well being of SD’s children, youth and families is a new responsibility for the nonprofit Children’s Initiative (CI). SD’s Health and Human Services previously generated these reports.

For its first Report Card, which covered 2007, CI measured the health and well being of children and families through 25 indicators, ranging from prenatal care and breastfeeding initiation to juvenile arrests and childhood mortality.

The Report Card also identified national best practices for prevention and intervention as well as recommendations for action specific to SD.

For example, to increase the number of children who regularly attend school, supportive interventions should be instituted at the student’s fifth absence, and a countywide universal tracking system should be developed, according to the Report Card. It also calls for more family/community engagement through attendance programs and student connections to school through service learning and career academies.

To reduce the number of infants with low birth rate, the Report Card recommends prenatal care programs that expand not only parents’ participation in support groups and “parenting” classes but also programs that provide intensive in-home support and intervention.

To read the entire Report Card: http://www.thechildrensinitiative.org/