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A Bailout Plan for North Carolina's Children
ACT NOW - Help protect America's greatest assets
In these times of economic uncertainty, our government has taken unprecedented steps to protect the American people's financial holdings. But lost amidst all the political disputes over a bailout plan is the fact that our country's greatest assets, our children, are being forgotten.
Did you know that 45 percent of children in North Carolina are living in low-income households?
Did you know that 22 percent of children in North Carolina are living in poverty?
Did you know that more than a quarter million children in
North Carolina have no health insurance?
(enough to stretch from Greensboro to Wilmington, if holding hands)
Did you know that more than 36,000 North Carolina families are currently on a waiting list for childcare subsidies
so they can work and know their children are in safe care?
Action for Children North Carolina has a Bailout Plan for
North Carolina's Children. To provide our children with the assistance they require, we must:
Implement strategies to break intergenerational poverty and create wealth through savings. Mandatory financial education in the public schools is a crucial first step to breaking the cycle of poverty.
Assure health insurance for every child up to age 21 to reduce health care costs.
Eliminate the childcare subsidy waiting list so parents can work.
Reform the juvenile justice system. Today, any 16- or 17- year old in North Carolina can be sent to adult prison for any offense. North Carolina is one of only three states in the U.S. with such an antiquated law. Let's raise the age to 18 so that youthful offenders receive the services so critically needed in the juvenile justice system.
Action for Children has a 25-year history of achieving measurable results for children through public policy change.
Help bring change to the lives of the 2.6 million children in North Carolina.
Help Action for Children get to work on the Bailout Plan for North Carolina's Children.
This fact sheet provides an overview of Tamar R. Birckhead's research on the history of resistance to juvenile court jurisdiction reform in North Carolina. Birckhead, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
argues that lawmakers must seek a historical perspective and address this issue with a greater sense of urgency in order to join the national consensus and raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction in
North Carolina.
Among Birckhead's key findings:
Currently, 37 states cap juvenile court jurisdiction at 18, while 10 do so at 17, leaving North Carolina in the bottom rung with New York and Connecticut.
North Carolina has not only been out of step with the majority of states, but it has been and continues to be at variance with the American Bar Association Standards Relating to Juvenile Delinquency, which recommend 18 as the upper age limit of juvenile court jurisdiction.
According to international treaties and instruments, many nations of the world consider 18 to be the most appropriate age for delineating between juvenile and adult court jurisdiction.
The approximately 33,000 16- and 17-year-olds who were processed in 2004 in North Carolina’s criminal court system encounter significant barriers when attempting to secure employment or access higher education.
Data has shown that 16- and 17-year-old offenders sentenced either to adult probation or adult prison had higher re-arrest rates than the entire sample of youthful offenders ages 13 to 21.
Providing intensive probationary supervision and rehabilitation to young offenders, rather than incarcerating them with adults, is consistent with recent findings in the areas of brain development and adolescent psychology.
Approximately 20 percent of North Carolina's 2.2 million children (age 0-17) continue to live in poverty and 13.1 percent remain uninsured.
Access to dental care continues to be a major problem with 1-in-5 kindergartners suffering from untreated tooth decay.
The percentage of children who are overweight continues to worsen at an alarming pace. Today, almost 1-in-4 children (age 2-18) in
North Carolina are overweight.
The use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit substances remains alarmingly high. For example, 19 percent of high school students reported using marijuana and 38 percent reported using alcohol in the past month.
Though infant and child death rates remain close to historic lows, they are showing signs of increasing and warrant careful attention. Child abuse homicide remains a particularly tragic indicator of the need to provide more support for families.
Racial disparities remain disturbingly wide across several indicators.
Data on child deaths in
North Carolina is available from the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force. The data, gathered by the
StateCenter for Health Statistics and the Child Fatality Staff in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, show a slight increase in child deaths over last year’s historic low. Despite the uptick, child deaths have decreased 13 percent over the last decade and 29 percent since the inception of the Child Fatality Task Force in 1991.
“These sorts of data is critical to making sound public policy decisions. As a legislator, I need accurate information, and I often need it quickly so that I can make decisions that create the best results for the people in my district and across the state. The North Carolina Children’s Index is an invaluable resource.”
–Tony Rand, N.C. Senator
