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For over four years, I was a CPS caseworker. My time at Child Protective Services has had an impact on my personal life, professional interests, and the passion that now drives my work as an advocate.

I talked about my CPS experience this week while testifying in hearings at the Capitol, one on a new initiative to redesign the foster care system in our state and one on what Texas can do to ensure CPS caseworkers have what they need to help children. 

Texas had made progress in recent years in how we protect and care for kids in our state systems. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to be done, as some disturbing recent news stories, about children with mental health challenges in state hospitals and the foster care system, suggest.

Texans on SNAP, formerly food stamps, are mostly working families with children. The program allows children to have better, more reliable diets than they would otherwise, and that is something essential to kids' long-term health and success. Unfortunately, families participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program stand to lose an average of $53 per month in their food budget, if a plan pending in Congress right now to "block grant" the program, instead of basing it on need, is enacted. By contrast, a strong SNAP program would help Texas reverse a trend as the state with one of the nation's highest food-insecurity rates for children. Last fall, our Health Policy Coordinator Lauren Dimitry participated in the last days of the Texas Food Bank Network's Food Stamp Challenge, when volunteers were asked to try eating, not on the current individual SNAP allowance of $4.50 per day, but on the budget once the cuts are enacted: just $3.70 per day. This post contains Lauren's account of that experience.

Children's mental health doesn't get the same attention as physical health for children. That is part of the reason for this week's Children's Mental Health Awareness Week. After a string of highly publicized suicides by young bullying victims, this year's event felt especially important--as though this particular awareness has life-and-death importance.

Most of us don't know where our tax dollars go. In polls, taxpayers guess wildly off the mark about how their tax dollars are spent. Although the White House just started offering an itemized receipt for each tax filer's contribution to Uncle Sam, there isn't one big agency to explain all your taxes—federal, state, and local. We set out to remedy that, with a little analysis of where your tax dollars go and roughly what portion gets allocated to children.

For kids and their supporters, 2010 was a mixed year,. Still, there were some big steps forward in the policy arena when it comes to children, over the last 12 months. Those wins are worth remembering--especially as we head into a year that promises a roller-coaster ride on the policy front. What follows are my personal Top 5's for biggest policy wins for children in 2010 and top issues to watch in 2011.

A vote at the ballot box can help make millions of children healthier, better off, safer, and more secure, says the national advocacy organization Voices for America's Children. That's why Voices, our national affiliate, is asking bloggers across the country to share a "Vote Kids First" message today: spreading the word that all the adults headed into voting booths this week can also claim responsibility for those who are too young to cast a ballot. In addition to the Voices challenge, we remind you what your Representative in the U.S. House needs to hear from you right now about child hunger and nutrition, and we provide our weekly round-up of the news.

Do school bullies belong in jail? What does bullying itself do to children's mental health? When kids make other kids' lives miserable, is it time for the state to respond? These are the questions media outlets are raising in the wake of a series of high-profile suicides by children and teenagers in Texas and elsewhere.

Today health insurance for Texas children and their families begins working a little better. More children who are sick will get coverage they need, even if they have a so-called "pre-existing condition," something like asthma or even cancer, which led insurers previously to deny them care. More insurance plans will fully cover preventative care, like vaccines and screenings, for the youngest Texans, mothers-to-be, and others. More families will be able to keep their college-aged and young adult children on the family health care plan. In short, some of the things that were making children in this country less healthy than their counterparts in other well-off nations get addressed today through protections that go into effect under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

"From Our Clarity in Choices Department" will be a new recurring feature on our blog. We'll use it to highlight some of the tradeoffsTexas faces as decision-makers cope with a financial crisis. Our goal is to move from the fuzzy jargon of politics (like "10% budget reduction") to something a little easier to understand (like "vaccines for 112,000 children"). In these posts, we'll also puzzle through the costs for Texas in a way seems warranted (for example: "If it costs more in unnecessary health spending due to sicknesses and hospitalizations, does eliminating vaccines for kids to save money really make sense?")

First up are two issues our policy staff members have recently testified about at the Capitol: early childhood services and childhood obesity prevention.

For many, 2003 is remembered as an especially ugly year. The economy had taken its post-September 11th dive, and top leaders responded with severe cuts to services and programs that many Texans relied on. Hundreds of thousands of Texas children lost their health coverage, tragedies followed deep cuts to the state's Child Protective Services, and politicians still nurse battle wounds from the elections that followed.

So it took me aback yesterday morning, at a meeting for all the coalitions for children that Texans Care convenes, when the Center for Public Policy Priorities' senior fiscal analyst Dick Lavine said, "2003 was minor compared to what next year will be like, I'm afraid. The better comparison is the eighties..."

If you have followed the news on kids this week, you might have heard by now that the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its annual rankings of child wellbeing in the states, The 2010 KIDS COUNT Data Book. Once again, Texas performed worse than most other states. Our partners and friends at the Center for Public Policy Priorities coordinate the data for Texas, and I got to attend the release event Tuesday. Some important lessons lie in both Dr. Frances Deviney's presentation and the larger report.

Are doctors overprescribing psychotropic drugs to kids on Medicaid? Are children getting a fair share of the federal budget? After making it over one hurdle this week, will Child Nutrition reauthorization continue to advance in Congress? These are just a few of the questions our report and research round-up this week examines. Also, we step back to get your input on how this blog works for you.

Important news out this week includes coverage of still more proposed budget cuts, which would fall disproportionately on mental health programs around the state. There is also emerging research that finds more children socially and emotionally unprepared for school, poor rankings for Texas in both child food security and child obesity, and ongoing opportunity gaps for kids of color. In each disheartening piece of news, though, you also will find promising nuggets about how policy improvements can help turn poor conditions around.

A state hearing on foster kids, poverty's lasting power, an upcoming call-in day for juvenile justice reform, and a proposed ban on corporal punishment in schools are among the features in our round-up of news and reports on children. Also, if you missed our last round-up, you may not have seen an important report on the future of Texas.

College attendance = better-paying job. It's a simple equation that many know to be true, but just how much of a difference post-secondary education has on income can be surprising. According to US Census data, Texas high school graduates earn approximately 41% more than those without a high school diploma or GED, and employees with bachelor's degrees earn an average of 84% more than high school graduates. A report last week from Georgetown University further underscored the importance of continuing education, with more and more employers requiring more than a high school degree of those they hire. Meanwhile, new research out this week from a former state demographer says improving high school graduation, reducing poverty, and increasing college-going are all essential for Texas's future success.

What do proposed cuts to health and human services really mean for Texans? That was the subject of a great Austin American Statesman report, which explained that programs slated to receive fewer dollars in the latest round of budget cuts include one that connects children with special health care needs such as cystic fibrosis with life-saving medical assistance, inspection programs that prevent child abuse and food contamination, and payments to medical providers who serve low-income children (thereby reducing kids' access to health care). A Twitter post from the news website the day the front-page article appeared asked, "Is that where the waste is? What would you cut instead?" No one from the feed's tens of thousands of followers responded with any suggestions other than that these cuts were a bad idea and the state needs more revenue. . .

Can Texas get by with 10 percent less? Our thoughts on that proposal--the latest from state leadership, who have asked all agencies, with limited exception, to plan for operating with much less, even as the need for services reaches an all-time high--appear in this Friday blog post, along with our usual round-up of news and reports about children that you need to read.

The $1.2 billion in state budget cuts announced this week are bad news for the wellbeing of Texas children and families, and states throughout the country are taking actions that, advocates fear, will set back child wellbeing for years to come, our latest round-up reports. In the good news department, though, a win from last session for children who need an alternative to foster care goes into effect, the Supreme Court followed a Texas lead by barring life sentences for minors (at least in most instances), and Big Food declares a plan to get Americans to consume 1.5 trillion fewer calories....

A new plan to address child obesity, a burgeoning foster care population in Texas, several pieces of new research about how the right environments early in life affect kids years down the road, and more about how to keep children out of the juvenile justice system are among the highlights from a week packed with news and new reports about children's issues.

With budget battles looming for Texas as our state copes with the consequences of the recession, news agencies have started to ask how our leaders might handle the more than $11 billion shortfall. Many past proposals haven't actually shrunk the budget, the Austin American Statesman reported. Others have been costly to children, as the Dallas Morning News notes today. Unfortunately, too few leaders are speaking out about the clear need for a balanced approach that not only focuses on getting the books straight in 2011, but also ensures future sustainability for Texas.

State grants to fight obesity, an audit of the Texas food stamp eligibility system, covering preexisting conditions in children, and much more are featured in our round-up of the week's news. Also, with the beginning of Child Abuse Awareness Month came word that national efforts to combat child abuse and neglect continue to make a difference...

In this week's round-up, we feature news of a new federal approach to understanding poverty, insights about the adolescent mind, new research on child obesity, and more.

School nutrition, a policy shift at TYC, a big national health reform summit, and disheartening news about child abuse dominated the week's news. All are featured in our weekly round-up. We also invite your thoughts on a letter to the editor published this week--our response to an editorial in Monday's Dallas Morning-News . . . .

Poor infant health outcomes, particularly prematurity and low birth-weight, were the topic of this month's meeting of the Texas Infant Health Alliance. Claudia Rodas of Smoke-Free Texas presented information about the negative consequences of maternal exposure to secondhand smoke, with emphasis on recent efforts at local and statewide levels to reduce smoking in public spaces. Morgan Sanders of March of Dimes discussed the prevalence of low birth-weight in Texas and highlighted promising practices for providing expectant mothers with culturally competent, effective prenatal care and support.

Perhaps the most startling and heartening lesson in the forum came in a presentation by Dr. Michael Nix from the Seton Family of Hospitals, concerning a hospital model program to eliminate elective childbirth inductions before 39 weeks. Seton Hospital has found amazing improvements in health outcomes and reduction of need for critical care interventions for infants by simply eliminating this option. He also discussed a program in Ohio where, just by making doctors and hospitals accountable for reporting their number of elective inductions, the number dropped dramatically. In both cases, the solution was easy to administer and cost-effective. It turns out the right thing to do for infants, letting them be born on their own timetable whenever possible, results not only in better health outcomes, but also in incredible savings.

Advocacy in its simplest form is about people speaking their truths to public servants whose job it is to listen. Every day, the mounds of paper we call laws are affected by actions as simple as a one-minute phone call. . . .

[Gov. Rick Perry] said he has the experience to handle a budget shortfall, having already led the state through a similar situation in 2003. "We've already done this," Perry said. "We will cut it, just like we did in 2003. We have the experience."

The 2003 [Children's Health Insurance Program] cuts . . . caused enrollment to drop by more than 215,000 children at the lowest point--more than 42%. As a result of drops in coverage in CHIP and Children's Medicaid, Texas' uninsured rate for children got worse from 2004 to 2006.