Blog posts -- Data

A review of kids’ well-being & roadmap for the future. The 2018 California Children’s Report Card grades the state on its ability to support better outcomes for kids, from birth to age 26, through early childhood to higher education systems. This year's grades range from an A on Health Insurance to a D in several areas including Academic Outcomes, Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention, and Youth Justice. Overall, the state’s grades show a disappointing lack of investment and progress in...

A product of the Essentials for Childhood Initiative (EfC), the Child Adversity and Well-Being Dashboards contain indicators of child adversity, health and well-being utilizing data available on kidsdata.org . For more information about the dashboards, please refer to the California Data Dashboards page. Links to all CA county Dashboards are below. If you don't see your community on the list, please contact Gail Kennedy: gkennedy@acesconnection.com Alpine County Alameda County Amador County...

Mental illness cases have risen in California, while treatment and funding have not kept up. Every Southern California county has experienced an upward trend in the rate at which children under 18 years are hospitalized for a mental health issue. “The mental health system has been plagued by gaps in services, access and funding,” says Dr.Clayton with St. Joseph Hoag Health. “People with severe mental health and substance abuse conditions struggle to receive needed care in their communities...

A product of the CA Essentials for Childhood Initiative, the California Data Dashboard contains indicators of child adversity, health and well-being, utilizing data available on Kidsdata.org. The dashboard below includes state-level indicators. We have also created data dashboards for California counties ( CLICK HERE ). For more information about this project please go here. The California Data Dashboard contains select indicators of child adversity and well-being. The dashboard is a product...

Do you want to know how kids in your area are really doing? Then the 2016–2017 California County Scorecard of Children’s Well-Being is the tool for you. The Scorecard evaluates children’s well-being across California’s 58 counties, and organizes the data into categories of health, education, and child welfare and economic well-being. The Scorecard has a number of features that local leaders find particularly useful, including: The County Comparison , which allows for county-to-county...

Sweeping changes to federal immigration policy could have a disproportionate effect on California, where 50 percent of children have at least one immigrant parent, compared to 25 percent nationwide, according to the latest data available on Kidsdata. That translates to 4.5 million children in California alone. In congressional districts 17, 34 and 46, which represent parts of greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 75 percent of children have at least one immigrant...

An invisible disease has been killing middle-aged white people throughout the southern San Joaquin Valley at higher rates than ever before. The disease can’t be detected by a blood test or remedied with a prescription. It’s been referred to as one of the country’s greatest unaddressed public health crises and a rising “epidemic of white death.” The disease is toxic stress, a result of childhood trauma and other environmental stressors like poverty, food insecurity and basic living needs not...

California, home to the largest foster care population in the country, has publicly declared its intention to pursue the use of so-called “predictive analytics” to foresee and presumably prevent child abuse. California Department of Social Services (CDSS) Deputy Director Greg Rose, who oversees the state’s foster care system, says that the state’s new predictive risk modeling project is designed to give social workers better information about past child welfare cases when they first field a...

Why is it that some of us are able to overcome childhood trauma while others are not? Resilience, the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, can curb the effects of trauma and adversity such as physical abuse, exposure to substance abuse, and unmet basic needs. In California, an estimated one third of children are not resilient when facing a challenge, according to parent-reported data from the National Survey of Children's Health, now available on Kidsdata. The data come from a...

A new report from Children Now details wide disparities in children’s well-being across California’s 58 counties. The 2016–2017 California County Scorecard of Children’s Well-Being looks at a series of indicators organized around the three domains of child welfare and economic well-being; health; and education. The report provides a comparison over time for each of 28 indicators, as well as a breakdown by ethnicity on each data point for every county in the state. Children Now, an advocacy...

For the first time, Kidsdata now has data that paint a unique picture of childhood trauma experienced by mothers of infants across California. 2011-2012 data from the California Department of Public Health's Maternal and Infant Health Assessment show two counties (among counties with data), Kern and Stanislaus, where more than 10 percent of postpartum mothers say they experienced four or more childhood hardships, from not having their basic needs met, to parental legal trouble or...

One out of five California adults with children living in their homes were beaten, kicked or physically abused when they were children, and one in ten were sexually abused, according to data released recently by a children’s health foundation “I think it’s probably a low estimate,” said Cassandra Joubert, director of the Central California Children’s Institute at California State University, Fresno. “I think these kinds of events within families are hush-hush, swept under the rug, not really...