7: Children and Youth
Improve the stability and healthy development of our Nation's children and youth Other Information:
While trends in the well-being of our nation’s children and youth are positive, additional effort needs to be made. Data illustrate
the difficulties and the challenges. The numbers of substantiated victims of child maltreatment remain high–over 900,000 cases
in 2001. Too many children are living in single parent households–28 percent in the year 2002, and an estimated 534,000 children
were in foster care the last day of calendar year 2002. Research is rife with evidence of the positive effects that marriage
has on the stability and sound development of children, as well as the importance of fathers’ involvement with children’s
lives on a daily basis. Also, more needs to be done to ensure that non-custodial parents are meeting their financial obligations.
In 2002, although over 70 percent of parents who came to the child support enforcement program for help have child support
orders in place, 32 percent of those parents did not receive child support payments. Finally, while an increasing number of
children age three to five are enrolled in center-based early learning programs, children below the poverty line are lagging
behind. In 2001, 56 percent of all three to five year-olds were enrolled, while only 47 percent of children in poverty were
enrolled.
Objective(s):
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