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On January 24, WCCF celebrated its 125th birthday. Our theme was "Raising Voices to Make Every Kid Count." The event served as a reminder of two things to the 550 friends and supporters who attended. In order to be successful, we need many voices speaking out on behalf of children and families. And we need to take the long view on how we work to improve conditions for kids. As we look to the future, a couple of important recent successes confirm the importance of those elements in successful advocacy for children. We need many voices: Working in coalitions makes a big difference In this issue of the WisKids Journal, Dave Edie shares information on the elements of Gov. Doyle's proposals for the Wisconsin Shares tuition assistance program. The program has been, in some regard, a victim of its own success. Its no waiting list policy, its policies to give providers rates and rate increases that recognize different market realities in different regions of the state, and its attendance rate policies that mirror what parents paying tuition experience have all been held up as national models for other states to emulate. Gov. Doyle proposed in his budget a combination of measures that would generate $69.6 million in savings. These measures are at the expense of both families and child care providers, reducing the number of working families who would receive the assistance, increasing their out-of-pocket costs, and reducing funding for child care providers by millions of dollars. Since 2006, WCCF has been working with the Early Learning Coalition, a collection of 14 organizations committed to improving the quality of and access to early care and education (see http://readysetgrowwi.org). While the coalition was pleased with some of the provisions in the Governor's budget to improve the quality of early care and education, and is committed to protecting those provisions, we were disappointed with the proposals on Wisconsin Shares, and we immediately started meeting with the Governor's staff and members of Joint Finance to discuss the effects of the proposal. Meetings between the Governor's budget staff and the coalition resulted in a promise by the Governor to eliminate an increase in the co-payments and a commitment to allocate an additional $14 million over the biennium to partially fill the funding gap. While we realize we have more to do, this was an important victory, and one that came out of the strength of the Early Learning Coalition. We need to take the long view: It takes time to lay groundwork for real change For the past four years, WCCF has been working diligently to lay the groundwork for changing the age of jurisdiction so that 17-year-olds are once again treated as juveniles for purposes of legal prosecution. For those of you who follow our work in this area, you know that Wendy Henderson and Nan Brien issued a report last year examining new insights gained from recent research on adolescent brain development. The report explored the issue of which settings are most appropriate and effective for adolescents who get into trouble with the law and need intervention services. In addition to the report, WCCF hosted a conference, "Open Minds," to help educate and inform the 450 attendees on the science behind the question of what makes youth different from adults. WCCF has organized public forums on the issue; worked with legislators to call for an audit on the costs, benefits and outcomes associated with the change; and, most recently, joined with eight other statewide organizations that support legislation to make the change. If you would like to receive action alerts on this issue, you can sign up for Justice for Wisconsin Youth at http://capwiz.com/wccf/mlm/signup/. Throughout this work, we've also focused on engaging legislators and the Governor to support the change. The Governor has consistently opposed it. However, last week, in a small but significant step, officials from the Office of Justice Assistance, the Governor's Juvenile Justice Commission and the Department of Corrections testified to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee that they supported the audit of the measure. The Legislative Audit Committee endorsed the audit recommendation 16 to 0. True, it's an audit and not legislation, but the audit is an important step toward providing state policy-makers with Wisconsin data on outcomes for juveniles. We're hopeful that it will help move this critical dialogue forward. As we prepared for the 125th birthday celebration and looked back over WCCF's history, we came across many examples of how important both of these elements--working in coalitions and laying groundwork for long-range success-- are to accomplishing our goals. At times, I long for instantaneous results. And because it's a challenge to get many people and organizations to agree on an agenda, and then to act together on it, I also think life would be easier if we were able to get what we wanted without having to collaborate with others. But when we do see results and see things tipping in children's favor as a result of the work that so many people are doing, it feels like we're being paid back in spades for all the effort. | ||||
