Resilience building at its best!

Most people agree that going to the doctor is a good thing - especially for children. Yet for low-income families, having to choose between paying for health insurance and paying for shoes for a child to wear to school often means that children go without critical preventive health care.

Thanks to the inspired actions of numerous State Legislatures throughout the country, fewer families will have to make such a choice. Despite the recession, leading to tightening federal and state budgets, at least 13 states have invested millions of dollars over the past five months to expand health insurance coverage for 250,000 + low-income children.

In what seems to be a first step towards universal health coverage, President Obama and Congress recently reauthorized the federal State Child Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) legislation through 2013, providing almost $33 billion in new money to help states cover the costs of enrolling new children. A primary incentive for states to expand coverage is that the federal government will reimburse them at around 70% percent of the cost of CHIP.

This is resilience building at its best. The federal government is finally investing in preventive health care for children again. The SCHIP program, started during President Clinton's time in office, was slowly being whittled away by the Bush administration. For example, Bush enacted policies that barred states from increasing eligibility over certain levels, effectively eliminating the possibility for millions of children living right on the edge of poverty to receive preventive health care.

This renewed federal commitment to health insurance - both financially and politically - will mean the end, for millions of children, of suffering through childhood with problems like untreated and/or undiagnosed physical and mental illnesses.

Welcome to the RAP Blog!

This blog is designed to be an online community for those of us fighting to make the world better for vulnerable children. It is a space for sharing information, news stories, resources, advocacy tips, and more... anything and everything that will enable us to do our work better.

So let's start with this: What better way to strengthen children to move out of poverty than to help them see that their dreams are achievable? As Judge Sonia Sotomayor makes her way through the Senate Judiciary hearings this week, the children attending her elementary school alma mater are getting a first hand lesson in the power of resilience. Judge Sotomayor's life story - her ability to overcome the challenges and obstacles presented by a childhood of poverty - is a powerful testament to the importance of education and perserverance.

Her experience underscores the irony of what is going on in Albany right now. As the Legislature winds down and prepares to break for summer, it has left the critical issue of Mayor Bloomberg's control of NYC's schools unsettled. While the failure to pass a bill settling the issue leaves the status quo in place until September, it highlights a deeper - and more unsettling question: What is the long term impact on our education system, and our children, when the government allows politics to get in the way of decisionmaking about thigns as critical as the education of our children.