Congress Passes $1.5 Billion for Home Visiting

The health care reform legislation passed this week includes $1.5 billion for voluntary, evidence-based home visiting programs for new and expectant mothers. The bill was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010.

The $1.5 billion is available over five years for evidence-based home visiting programs for at-risk families. This funding marks the first time the federal government has recognized the importance of home visiting and put resources behind it. The funding is “mandatory,” meaning it does not have to go through the regular appropriations process in the Congress.

For more information, go to: http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=57904

Op-Ed: State Residents Benefiting Mightily from Tax Breaks in the Recovery Act

In their Sunday Crossroads section, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel yesterday published a column co-authored by Karen Royster of the Institute for Wisconsin's Future and WCCF Executive Director Ken Taylor. The column notes that those who argue for tax cuts as the best strategy for battling the recession, and yet complain about the ineffectiveness of the federal Recovery Act at creating jobs and stimulating the economy, need only look a little closer at the Act; it's chock full of tax breaks for just about everybody in the state. The piece outlines about $5 billion worth of tax cuts that are benefiting people in Wisconsin. This includes such breaks as the Making Work Pay credit, which is helping each of Wisconsin's 2.2 million workers. Because the money from this credit just shows up seemingly magically in their paychecks, the money tends to go unnoticed by a lot of recipients.

WCCF believes that the Recovery Act has done a lot of good things for the state's economy, perhaps none more important than the $2 billion in direct benefits state residents have already received. The tax cuts noted in this column are one of many channels through which the federal government is working to cushion the impact of the recession on people across Wisconsin and the rest of the country.

New Version of Health Care Reform Bill Contains Many Positive Measures for Kids and Families

The House of Representatives is expected to hold a vote Sunday on a final health reform package. This is likely to be the make or break test for the bill. As Paul Krugman said in a New York Times column (Why We Reform) Friday, “If House Democratic leaders find 216 votes, reform will almost immediately become the law of the land. If they don’t, reform may well be put off for many years — possibly a decade or more.”

Although the bill isn’t perfect, it’s a major victory for children and families because it delivers what families need: affordable, reliable health coverage that won’t disappear if they lose a job or get sick.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 32 million by 2019. The nonpartisan CBO also calculates that the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years.

The following are highlights of the portions of the bill relating to health care for children and families:

• Continues BadgerCare Plus, which has successfully worked in partnership with Medicaid to cover 438,000 kids in Wisconsin.
• Makes coverage more affordable for middle class families by boosting their bargaining power through new health insurance purchasing pools (“exchanges”) and providing tax credits to those who need extra help buying insurance.
• Extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through 2019, and includes funding for it through 2015.
• Increases Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care up to Medicare levels during 2013 and 2014, with the federal government covering the full cost of those rate increases.
• Significantly expands coverage of parents and childless adults in most states by expanding Medicaid up to 133 percent of the poverty level. (In Wisconsin, this would have little or no affect for parent coverage, but would improve the benefits package for many adults in the Core Plan and would cover most of the people on the waiting – though not for several years.)
• Ends insurance companies’ discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. Starting right away, children who have insurance can’t be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition.
• Ensures that losing a job no longer means families also have to worry about becoming uninsured.
• Requires insurance companies to provide pediatrician-recommended care for children so they can grow and thrive.
• Allows parents to keep their college-age children (up to age 26) on their family health plans.
• Extends Medicaid coverage to all foster youth below the age of 25 who were formerly in foster care for a period of six months.
• Establishes an oral health prevention campaign, dental carries disease management, school based dental sealant programs and cooperative agreements to improve infrastructure and surveillance systems.
• Streamlines enrollment under Medicaid, CHIP and the Exchange.
• Establishes a grant program to support school-based health centers.
• Provides funding to states to develop and implement evidence-based Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Visitation models.
• Establishes a Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund to fund and sustain prevention and public health programs.

An analysis released Friday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities does a nice job of summarizing the broad implications of the bill, including the insurance market place reforms, the expanded coverage, requirements for individuals and employers, and the cost-control measures.

In an upcoming blog, we’ll take a look at the improved fiscal assistance for states like Wisconsin that already cover parents and/or childless adults.

National Judges Group Endorses End of the Valid Court Order Exception

After careful consideration the Board of Trustees of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) has voted to endorse the elimination of the Valid Court Order (VCO) exception as it relates to holding some youth in secure custody. The VCO exception has allowed states to confine status offenders (under limited circumstances) in secure custody. While some states have modified their statutes already to prevent this, there are many states, including Wisconsin, in which status offenders can be held in secure detention. Through concerted and collaborative efforts, several jurisdictions in Wisconsin that have been using the VCO exception have steadily been reducing use. But, endorsement by NCJFCJ represents a significant step - as judges may struggle with some very difficult decisions related to youth, there is certainly a tendency to want to have as many options as possible. This endorsement has no legal or binding impact, but it represents what at least NCJFCJ believes is "best practice" and should be of help in passing a re-authorized JJDPA. For more information, you can refer to the WCCF Policy Brief on JJDPA Reauthorization.

Domestic Violence and the Economy - Signs of Change

Confirming anecdotal information over the past 6+ months, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence has released information highlighting the increases in domestic violence referrals - in part they believe due to the economic downturn and the additonal challenges that creates for families. All too often children are in the middle of domestic violence, and we know that being witness to domestic violence negatively impacts a child's development and places them at a much greater risk of problem behaviors, including delinquency. Just as a way to understand the frequency of the problem, on September 15, 2009 over 1,900 victims of domestic violence were receiving services from programs throughout Wisconsin. More information is available through the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Recovering Communities Webinar

Want an easy way to attend and check out some good information about supporting recovery for teens with AODA problems, then check out the webinar sponsored by the Dept. of Health to be held on Thursday, March 11. Presentations include:

•A Presentation by Insurers and Reaction by Treatment Providers (10-11:30)
•Implementing an Evidence Based Model in Outpatient Treatment (12:30-1:15)
•Can it really be done? Using all Public Funding Streams for Youth Services (1:15-2:00)
•Recovery High Schools- Combining Education and Recovery (2:15-3:00)
•Best Practices for Transition of Youth from In-patient/Residential Treatment to a Recovery Community (3:00-3:45)
•Youth Peer to Peer Recovery (3:45-4:15)

Listen in on March 11 or at a later date to one or more of these sessions.

New Resource for Understanding Juvenile DMC

One of the critical elements of a strong DMC initiative is ensuring that information about disparities is avaialable. The Haywood Burns Institute, the leading resource on reducing DMC, has just created and made available an interactive state-by-state map that displays critical DMC data - at this point the site relies on data reported by the core DMC reduction sites (Rock, Dane, Milwaukee, Brown, Kenosha, and Racine counties) through 2007. The creative construction of the site allows you to access raw data related to the various system decision-making points as well as utilizing concepts from the relative rate index to track each point relative to the preceding one.