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New Faces Perhaps the biggest news at the Council is that we have a new executive director coming on board. WCCF is pleased to welcome Ken Taylor to the organization. Ken comes to the Council from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, where he has served since November 2007 as a policy analyst working primarily on policy and practice reforms to child and family services in the state. Prior to that, he spent several years directing the American operation of the Dartington Social Research Unit, a UK-based international policy and research agency that works to improve outcomes for children. Taylor’s background also includes several years of work on research and design of children’s services systems for the State of Illinois. The Taylor era at WCCF officially begins in mid-December. There are other new faces at WCCF as well. One of them is an old face returning to the fold. Daithi Wolfe has rejoined the staff as an early education policy analyst, working in collaboration with the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association on a project aimed at enhancing the qualifications of the state’s early education workforce. Pnina Goldfarb has come on board as a research associate, engaged in an evaluation of Wraparound Milwaukee. “Laugh Out Loud” Event and Scholarships A major highlight of the fall was our “Laugh Out Loud” fundraiser, at which the Council awarded four scholarships to high school students. You can read more about “Laugh Out Loud” and see a few pictures of the event in Wenona’s article elsewhere in this issue of WisKids Journal. Analysis of Census Bureau Data Over the course of the fall, the U.S. Census Bureau released in batches a variety of new data from their Current Population Survey and American Community Survey on a range of topics of interest to the Council, including poverty, health insurance coverage, state and local government spending and revenue, and the size of the public workforce. WCCF published several analyses of this new data. Of particular interest perhaps is our analysis of Wisconsin’s ranking on state and local spending, which shows our state below the national average on per capita state and local spending. This probably comes as a surprise to a lot of people, who have long been fed the mantra that they live in a very high tax state. They will probably also be surprised to learn that Wisconsin’s public sector workforce is actually fairly lean compared to the rest of the country, as you can read in this Wisconsin Budget Project analysis of the new Census Bureau data. You can browse our takes on the other Census Bureau releases by checking out the recent press releases and recent publications pages of our website. Other Publications The Council has been busy publishing stuff on other topics as well. We have been particularly prolific on the health care front, producing briefs on such topics as which categories of immigrants are eligible for BadgerCare Plus, and major provisions in the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. Again, you can access all of these and many other publications via the publications section of our website, which we urge you to visit with a frequency bordering on the compulsive. Please Read Our Blog While we are very happy that you have read this “What’s New at WCCF” column all the way to the bottom, there is a way you can make us (and yourself, we hope) even happier: Did you know that the Council provides a constant barrage of breaking news and updates on key issues via our blog? We urge you to become a regular reader of our blog in order to stay on top of current developments in juvenile justice, health care, early education, fiscal policy, and all the other topics related to the well-being of kids and families in Wisconsin.
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