Nearly 95% of California youth report experiencing mental health concerns during an average month, according to the newly released 2026 California Children’s Report Card from our KIDS COUNT partner @childrennow.bsky.social.

“Youth thrive when their iden­ti­ties are hon­ored, their expe­ri­ences are under­stood and their com­mu­ni­ties are part of the solu­tion.”

Child care workers are one of the lowest-paid professions in the country — their median wage is just $13.07/hour, and an estimated 43% of child care workers have to rely on public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps to make ends meet.

When children don’t have health insurance, they’re more likely to delay both necessary and routine medical care, which can mean diagnosis is also delayed. In the case of pediatric cancers, early detection can be a matter of life and death.

“When our care providers receive their class of students for the day, those babies still eat, even if [the providers] haven't been paid from the state for a month or more. This really manifests itself in housing, food, and health insecurity for the very caregivers that our communities depend on.”

Children’s mental and behavioral healthcare costs have begun to take up a significantly larger portion of U.S. families’ spending on children’s health over the past 15 years.

“There is plenty of evidence that shows walking and cycling to school is associated with many health benefits. States that support active commuting for children through state-level policies, plans, funding, and infrastructure have better child health outcomes.”

A national survey—conducted by Child Trends and funded by @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social and Casey Family Programs—found that spending by child welfare agencies increased slightly over the past decade to a total of $34.3 billion in state fiscal year (SFY) 2022. www.childtrends.org/publications...

Despite improvements in recent years, 1 in 5 Kentucky children still live in poverty, according to the newly released KIDS COUNT Data Dashboard from our grantee Kentucky Youth Advocates.

Increased salaries, better benefits and expanded mental health support could help schools improve their early-career teacher retention rates.

“We are seeing a much larger shift of students to career and technical education because of the practicality of the content and the correlation to direct careers.”

Service and conservation corps programs play a vital role in helping youth get hands-on training and valuable skills as well as creating pathways to meaningful and well-paying careers. Corps programs also help essential industries like energy or disaster response fill gaps in their workforce.

“Access to information drives trust in the systems charged with serving students… I think districts and schools and anyone that seeks to serve students need to understand that when families are left in the dark, trust declines.”

In 2023, nearly 1 in 6 children in the U.S. lived in households that experienced food insecurity.

“There’s a type of instability in not being able to predict when your hours are. And if you’re an early childhood education provider and have children of your own, it’s difficult for you to afford child care and even more difficult to meet the work requirements to get SNAP benefits.”

Early college programs help families save an average of $13,000 on the cost of a bachelor’s degree, and students in these programs are more likely to graduate high school and earn a college degree within two years.

The younger a child is when they receive their first smartphone, the more likely they are to start to show signs of depression or suffer from sleep issues.

The majority of U.S. public school superintendents say that the largest issue hindering their job effectiveness is the inadequate funding of schools.

“Shared reading does predict child vocabulary prior to school entry, and vocabulary predicts later emerging literacy skills. We also find that the quantity or frequency of parent-child book reading predicted... the words they understand, their reading comprehension skills and their desire to read.”

Owning a smartphone as a preteen or child is associated with increased risks of developing mental health issues, including depression and insufficient sleep.

Pregnant women who have a doula are nearly 30% less likely to have a preterm delivery.

“Mean­ing­ful, last­ing behav­ior change is dif­fi­cult to sus­tain beyond pro­ba­tion with­out the active involve­ment of par­ents and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, which makes part­ner­ing with fam­i­lies crit­i­cal.” – Dante Green, Casey’s Juve­nile Jus­tice Strat­e­gy Group

Baltimore’s substantial investment in early childhood education earlier this month aims to improve access to child care programs and set up more young kids to be kindergarten-ready, which improves the chances a child succeeds academically later in life.

“All children deserve to get all of their personal needs met. Foster parents, whether they are family or not, should be trained to understand that support. This means more than the food and shelter that’s supposed to be checked off on a piece of paper.”

When families received increased SNAP benefits in 2021, the number of children living in poverty across the country decreased notably — in some states, child poverty was reduced by up to 14%.

“It’s play with a purpose. They’re just being introduced to the numbers, the colors, writing. But again, we’re not doing worksheets.”

Over 1 million older teens in the U.S. are disconnected from work or school, which increases the likelihood that they experience challenges related to employment, finances or health later in their life.

“When you give your kid a phone, you need to think of it as something that is significant for the kid’s health — and behave accordingly.”

The typical U.S. college is actually accepting more students now than it was a decade ago — an increase from about 50% to about 60%.

“While high-profile threats are often what grab headlines, many parents seem to agree that real safety [in school] starts with relationships, belonging and early mental health support.”

In 2026, Pell Grant Eligibility will be expanded, allowing students to use the federal aid for high-quality, shorter-term credential and training programs that will lead directly to good jobs in fields including skilled trades and health care.

“No matter what color the kid is, if [kids’ learning disabilities] are unidentified, misidentified or late identified, you start to see all those behavioral manifestations. …There’s always that phenomenon where a kid would rather be perceived as bad than to be perceived as dumb.”

Michigan’s free preschool program enrolled a record number of young children this year! However, there are still numerous open seats at child care programs across the state, leaving state officials worried that many Michigan families aren't aware the program is available.

Students in foster care attending New York City Public schools were issued long-term suspensions six times more often than students not in foster care during the 2024–25 school year.

About half of all K–12 students in the U.S. rely on a school bus to get to school, yet many school districts across states are still struggling to hire enough school bus drivers to address the national shortage.

“Young peo­ple 18 and old­er — espe­cial­ly those who are respon­si­ble for sup­port­ing them­selves or their fam­i­lies — are expect­ed to be self-suf­fi­cient. Yet in today’s world, many still need finan­cial and oth­er assis­tance to meet their basic needs and plan for their futures.”

Nearly 60% of U.S. parents with children under the age of 18 are extremely or very confident that childhood vaccines are highly effective at preventing serious illness, found a recent @pewresearch.org analysis.

Texas's newly streamlined kinship caregiver licensing process makes it easier for relatives taking in their young family members to get formally licensed as foster parents — which allows them to access financial support, mental health services and other resources from the state.

Around 15% of special education teachers leave their jobs each year, many of them choosing to stay educators but switch to a different speciality because of the general lack of mentoring, resources and professional development opportunities for new special education teachers.

“A lot of times, when I see patients who are second and third trimester, I always ask, ‘What kept you from getting [care earlier]? What was your barrier?’ They often tell me, ‘I had trouble getting my Medicaid,’ or ‘I was moving around a lot,’ or ‘I had housing insecurity or food insecurity.’”

Despite common misconceptions that foster care and adoption are the same, foster care is actually a temporary arrangement during which efforts are made to reunite children with their families of origin, while adoption is a permanent legal process where a child joins their adoptive family.

“YouTube is kids’ favorite playground right now. We have to ask whether it’s being maintained in the right ways, if the equipment is safe and giving kids freedom to explore and have positive experiences? Or are they being steered towards experiences that... don’t support their developmental growth?”

Leslie Boissiere, our vice president for external affairs, recently joined @econofact.bsky.social to discuss the Foundation’s new report examining child poverty in the U.S. over the past decade. Listen to the full podcast:

“The chronic absenteeism numbers in high school suggest that kids are really voting with their feet. And so one way to get them back would be to invite them in to be part of the solution, to say, ‘What is it that is not meeting your needs? How can we include your voice in the process...?’”

Juvenile justice systems across the country are trying out non-traditional alternatives to probation and incarceration that emphasize how support, rather than punishment, can help youth get their lives back on track.

“The cost of child care is not only a low-income family problem.”

The percentage of Minnesota foster children being taken in by their relatives has doubled in the past decade — and Keeping Families Connected Minnesota, a new non-profit providing free or low-cost legal consults to kinship caregivers, aims to help ease that transition for children and caregivers.

Children in foster care are frequently moved between placements, increasing the chances that they’re chronically absent from school and making it more likely they have to repeat a grade or drop out of school.

An increasing percentage of college students are choosing to double major in hopes that having knowledge across multiple areas will make it easier to find secure and well-paid jobs after graduation.

Children experiencing food insecurity are more likely to have anxiety or depression and to develop behavioral issues than their peers.