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The first part of 2010 has been an incredibly busy period at the Council. At the beginning of the year, we welcomed a new staff member, Tamarine Cornelius, to the organization. Tamarine is a research analyst working primarily on fiscal analysis initiative, the Wisconsin Budget Project. Before coming to WCCF, Tamarine worked for seven years as program evaluation coordinator for Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center, where she measured child maltreatment intervention outcomes and helped develop a framework for a state chapter of child advocacy centers. She has also spent time as a legislative analyst the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau. Tamarine’s background is a great fit for the Council’s analytical work related to budget and revenue, and we’re delighted to have her on board. On January 21, WCCF hosted a panel discussion on employment challenges facing the Milwaukee area. The event, which took place at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee, focused on both the barriers brought about the recession and those that have been in place for longer and must be addressed on an ongoing basis. The discussion featured Julie Kerksick, administrator of the Division of Family and Economic Security at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families; Michele Bria, executive director of Journey House; and John Pawasarat, of the UW-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute. We took the opportunity of our workforce forum in Milwaukee to unveil our 2009-10 WisKids Count Data Book, Jobs Count: Helping Wisconsin Families Thrive Through New Opportunities, which features an essay covered many of the same workforce issues, as well as the usual assortment of county-level data on a wide range of indicators related to the well-being of Wisconsin’s kids and families. Just a week and a half later, on Feb. 1, we released another WisKids Count publication, an issue brief called “Moving Toward Health Outcome Equity in Wisconsin,” which examines Wisconsin’s significant racial and ethnic disparities in child health outcomes. On the legislative front, there were important developments on two issues the Council has been very active on in recent years. On January 22, Gov. Doyle and the Department of Children and Families announce a proposal for a child care quality rating and improvement system. WCCF has long supported implementation of such a system, and is working with policymakers to make it happen in the best way possible. A week later, Rep. Fred Kessler of Milwaukee announced that he was introducing legislation to return 17-year-olds to the juvenile justice system, a policy change we have been promoting for some time. As most of you know, we have had a changing of the guard in our organization’s leadership, with the arrival of Ken Taylor as executive director of WCCF. Well, another, less visible changing of the guard has taken place in our leadership as well: Marcia Engen has stepped down from her post has president of the WCCF Board of Directors after four years in that role. We thank Marcia—who remains a board member--for her hard work and dedication to the Council’s mission, and salute her years of leadership and commitment. Long-time board member Joy Tapper has succeeded Marcia as president.
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