Calling all lawyers:
Raise Your Voices for Children

January 25, 2005

By Ellen Shemitz
President
Children's Alliance of NH

Powerless children need powerful friends. The Children’s Alliance of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Child Advocacy Network (NH CAN) believe lawyers can become more involved as friends of children, helping us to raise a strong voice to make children a priority in New Hampshire.

2005 promises to be one of the most challenging years ever for children and families across New Hampshire — with significant threats and opportunities at both the state and federal level. As child advocates, we need to build support for strategic investments in children’s programs — to connect the dots between healthy children and strong families today and a thriving economy tomorrow.

In support of this goal, the New Hampshire Child Advocacy Network (NH CAN) has released a nonpartisan plan of action — the 2005 Children’s Agenda. We look now to our friends in the legal community to help make this plan of action into a reality. You know that investing in children isn’t just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. And as leaders in your communities, each of you has the ability to raise the volume for children.

The 2005 Children’s Agenda sets public investment priorities across multiple areas of child and family life:

In health, we focus on strategic investments in preventive health care. In his inaugural address, Gov. Lynch rightly noted that preventive health care is less expensive than remedial care. He pledged to enroll every eligible New Hampshire child in the Healthy Kids health insurance program. Healthy Kids NH is a national success story. Replacing that success story with an untried experiment such as Health Services Accounts is not wise. The Children’s Agenda calls both for the enrollment of all eligible children in Healthy Kids and for the preservation of Medicaid health insurance coverage for poor children and families. Raise your voice for preventive health care, including support for physical activity in schools and healthy food choices for all students.

Public education is another key area in need of more strategic public investment. Quality education today produces valuable workers and citizens tomorrow. In his inaugural address, Gov. Lynch called for improvements in public education, kindergarten through college, as a means to strengthen the state economy and invest in our economic future. The 2005 Children’s Agenda sets forth two steps to improve public education. First, we need to define — as a state — what we expect from our public education system. We must create a benchmark of excellence that extends to all children in all public schools — including our youngest children entering kindergarten.

For too long, New Hampshire has stood out as the only state in the nation to fail to support universal public kindergarten. We need to cast off that dishonorable distinction and engage in strategic investments in early childhood education, from a child’s earliest years through entry to elementary school. Second, we must approach school funding from the perspective of workforce development. If New Hampshire is to enjoy a strong economy in the future, we must improve the supply and skill level of future workers graduating from our schools. We cannot afford to see one quarter of our ninth graders drop out of school before graduation. Let’s connect the dots and set state education funding at a baseline that supports quality — with supplemental targeted aid to address differences in the costs of education.

We also need to help connect the dots between children and decent jobs. Children need to grow up without the instability that poverty brings. Children do better when their families are strong, and families are stronger when they don't have the stresses that accompany poverty. The Children’s Agenda seeks to help low-income parents work by raising state reimbursements to child care providers at a level that enables them to pay decent wages and by increasing the stock of affordable housing.

And of course, children need safety and security. Abused and neglected children are among the most vulnerable people in our state, but the people whose job it is to respond to them have too long lacked the tools, time and training they need to do the job. The Children's Agenda calls for accreditation of New Hampshire's child protection system to ensure that those who respond to child abuse have what they need to make children safe. We also call for a ban on concealed firearms in all schools and safe school zones, reducing the need for high cost emergency responses and enhancing community security.

Toddlers delight in connect-the-dot coloring pages — linking seemingly unrelated points to reveal a bigger picture. It’s time for NH’s leaders to do the same: to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated public investments in quality education, healthy children and strong families to the bigger picture — a thriving New Hampshire. As informed community leaders, there are many ways that you can help promote public understanding of the need for state policies that make children a priority.

Here are a few examples:

-- Join our Child Advocacy Update email list to stay informed on issues affecting children.
-- Check our online Legislative Action Center to learn even more about key issues.
-- Write a letter to the editor to show your support for strategic public investments in children.
-- Attend a hearing to learn about or speak out on an issue affecting children.
-- Contact your elected officials regarding key policies or decisions affecting children.