“Medical experts have warned that our children are on track to be less healthy than we are.” – First Lady Michelle Obama

We should be ashamed of that fact.

Michelle Obama is leading the charge against childhood obesity. We’ve already seen her tending the White House vegetable garden and encouraging children to participate in the growing process. Now she’s taking that enthusiasm to a whole new level, with a national campaign.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 12.4 percent of 2-5 year olds are obese; for 6-11 year-olds it’s 17.0 percent; and for the 12-19 year-old crowd, it’s 17.6 percent.

Health risks as a result of obesity include heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and sleep apnea.

Link to the Article.

…Children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in the general population. The researchers also found that the longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the more likely their children were to have difficulties in school and at home.

Those difficulties included things like missing school activities, feeling that people did not understand their problems, having to take care of siblings and struggling to deal with parents returning from deployment.

Here’s a link to the National Military Family Association’s website. They are the non-profit organization who orignally commissioned the study.

WASHINGTON – A child witnessed violence in 22 percent of intimate partner violence cases filed in state courts, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, announced today. In another 14 percent of intimate partner violence cases, a child was present at the time of the incident but did not directly witness the violence.

Intimate partner violence includes violence between spouses, ex-spouses, common-law spouses and current or former boyfriends or girlfriends. Forty-six percent of intimate partner violence cases involved a defendant with a prior history of abuse toward the same victim, and the victim had reported prior violence to police in 24 percent of all cases. A direct witness to the violence was present in more than 40 percent of intimate partner violence cases.

Most intimate partner violence cases involved either aggravated (12 percent) or simple (78 percent) assault. Defendants were charged with intimidation (including stalking) in five percent of intimate partner violence cases, and another two percent were charged with rape or sexual assault. Most offenses occurred either at the victim’s own residence (21 percent) or at a residence shared with the defendant (58 percent).

Twenty-six percent of defendants used a weapon during the incident. Female defendants (41 percent) were more likely than male defendants (24 percent) to use a weapon during an incident of intimate partner violence.

Eighty-nine percent of victims sustained an injury during the incident. Most injuries were of a less severe nature, while nine percent sustained severe injuries, such as gunshot and stab wounds, rape, severe lacerations and broken bones.

The majority of intimate partner violence cases (84 percent) involved a male defendant and a female victim, while twelve percent involved a female defendant and a male victim. The defendant and victim were the same gender in four percent of intimate partner violence cases. Cases with a male defendant and female victim were more likely than others to involve a history of abuse between victim and defendant. A child was also more likely to have witnessed the violence in these cases.

More than half of defendants charged with intimate partner violence were convicted. Cases in which the defendant made a formal statement for the record were twice as likely to result in conviction as those in which no statement was made. Other characteristics that increased the probability of conviction were the presence of a third-party witness to the incident and a documented history of abuse between the victim and the defendant.

This information comes from the BJS study, Processing of Domestic Violence Cases in State Courts, which used prosecutor files and courts records to analyze 3,750 intimate partner violence cases. Case characteristics and outcomes of felony and misdemeanor intimate partner violence cases filed in state courts of 16 large urban counties during May 2002 were examined. Cases were tracked for one year following the defendant’s first appearance in court.

The complete report, Profile of Intimate Partner Violence Cases in Large Urban Counties (NCJ-228193), was written by BJS Statisticians Erica L. Smith and Donald J. Farole, Jr. and can be found here (PDF).

Here are some of the findings:

Child deaths attributed to abuse or neglect vary significantly by state.

Kentucky had the highest rate of death due to child abuse and neglect in 2007 – 41 deaths, or a rate of 4.09 per 100,000 children in the state. Other states topping the list include South Dakota (4.08), Florida (3.79), Nebraska (3.59) and Missouri (3.51). States with the lowest rate of child death from abuse or neglect in 2007 are Delaware Rhode Island, Idaho, Maine and Montana.

“About half of all children who die from abuse and neglect were previously brought to the attention of authorities – either by another family member, a teacher, physician, neighbor or someone else who cared about their safety and well-being,” said Teresa Huizar, executive director, National Children’s Alliance. “But case workers are routinely stretched too thin, and funding levels are too low. The result is often too little action that is taken too late, and kids die as a result.”

There is nearly a 13-fold difference in the amount that states spend per person to address abuse and neglect.

While there is no funding level or formula that guarantees a reduction in child deaths, states that invest in a strong social safety net for children – including health, social services, education, plus child protection – experience fewer child abuse/neglect deaths, on average. Experts suggest that this is because fewer families experience difficulties in the first place, and that if child abuse does occur, case workers can investigate more cases more thoroughly, thus protecting more children from potential harm.

The report finds that Rhode Island spends the most per capita – spending $181.34 per person to protect children. Other states that make significant investments in comparison with their counterparts include Pennsylvania ($137.89), Alaska ($129.02), Vermont ($126.31), and California ($121.16). The five states spending the lowest amount on child protection per person include South Carolina ($14.72), Mississippi ($28.82), Maine ($31.88), Nevada ($34.02) and Arkansas ($35.99).

“We need a bigger investment in case workers, whether it is number of staff or additional training,” said Rebecca Myers, L.S.W., director, external relations at the National Association of Social Workers. “Child protection workers are often the first line of defense in protecting children living in high-risk situations, but caseloads in some jurisdictions are as high as 60 or more, even though national standards recommend 12 or fewer cases per worker.”

Poverty is closely associated with child abuse and neglect.

Experts say stopping deaths due to child abuse and neglect requires addressing poverty, particularly during challenging economic times. While no level of household income or educational level makes a family immune to this issue, a child living in poverty is 22 times more likely to be abused than children living in families with an annual income of $30,000 or more.

Recent Census figures show that states with the highest levels of children living in poverty are Arizona (26%), New Mexico (26%), Kentucky (24%), Alabama (24%) and Mississippi (24%). States with the lowest levels of child poverty are New Hampshire (9%), Utah (9%), Alaska (10%), Vermont (10%), Maryland (10%) and Connecticut (10%).

The report comes as Congress works to reauthorize the Child Abuse and Treatment Act. Let’s hope they do the right thing and increase funding for this very important program.

From today’s New York Times

By and large, mothers from Latin American countries take care of their health during their pregnancies and give birth to robust children, but those children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older.

The new Berkeley study suggests the shortfall may start even before the children enter preschool, supporting calls in Washington to spend more on programs that coach parents to stimulate their children with books, drills and games earlier in their lives.

“Our results show a very significant gap even at age 3,” said Bruce Fuller, one of the study’s authors and a professor of education at Berkeley. “If we don’t attack this disparity early on, these kids are headed quickly for a pretty dismal future in elementary school.

Link to complete NYT artlice

How do states qualify for this new funding? From the Times story:

To qualify for grants, states would have to demonstrate that they have established or improved what the bill calls a “governance structure” for their networks of child care centers and prekindergarten programs.

The structure would include quality standards; a curriculum of sorts, appropriate for young children; a mechanism for reviewing programs and assigning quality ratings; minimum training requirements for providers; a plan for reaching out to parents; and a system for collecting data on children and families. The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services would jointly administer the Challenge Fund.