Kentucky Youth Advocates Inc

Programs: Child welfare: kentucky youth advocates works to strengthen and keep families safely together by ensuring access to services like counseling and needed supports. When removal from the home is necessary, kya works to ensure children can be placed with relatives or with foster families so that the children are able to stay in a home setting. Kya supports policies that focus on prevention and effective responses to child abuse and trauma by child-serving professionals, including child care providers, schools, and health care providers. Face it movement to end child abuse: kentucky youth advocates coordinates the kosair charities face it movement to end child abuse across kentucky. The movement focuses on community education, best practices in intervention and prevention of abuse, and improving policies to better protect children from abuse. Recent successes include ensuring professionals who interact with children are trained to recognize abuse and increased community awareness of the issue of child abuse.

oral health: kentucky youth advocates provides staff support for the kentucky oral health coalition, which aims to promote positive oral health of all kentuckians. In addition, kya works to promote oral health literacy and increase preventive care such as sealants to improve oral health of children. Kya completed a statewide study of children's oral health with delta dental of kentucky and launched regional oral health networks to improve oral health outcomes statewide.

kids count: kids count provides a detailed picture of child well-being in order to strengthen public action on behalf of children and families. Kentucky youth produces the kentucky kids count county data book, which includes county level data and rankings for all 120 counties. Recent accomplishments include disseminating 2,000 kids count county data books across the state to key community leaders and decision makers.

health: kentucky youth advocates promotes health solutions that ensure children have their physical, mental, and oral health needs met. Current priorities include ensuring access to affordable health coverage for families and children to support preventive care and address health needs. Juvenile justice: kentucky youth advocates supports a system of justice that holds youth accountable for their actions while using effective, evidence-based interventions to help those children on a path to becoming productive citizens of our commonwealth. After years of kya's advocacy work on youth justice, sb 200, which reformed kentucky's juvenile justice system passed in 2014 and took effect in 2015. The bill refocuses kentucky's system on what works in juvenile justice for youth and families while maintaining public safety. Kya supports further reforms that would end the practice of locking up children in detention centers for behaviors that do not pose a risk to public safety; implement appropriate interventions for children under the age of 10 out of the court system; and ensure all children receive fair and equitable treatment regardless of their race, ethnicity, or gender. Economic security: kentucky youth advocates promotes policies to ensure that all families are economically secure and that children have the best opportunity to thrive. Current priorities include reducing the number of children living in poverty and in areas of concentrated poverty; enacting a state level earned income tax credit (eitc); assisting families in accessing benefits for which they are eligible and simplifying the application process to receive those benefits; and ensuring families have access to responsible lending and financial services and are not harmed by high-interest loans. Recent successes include bi-partisan support for the earned income tax credit in the kentucky general assembly. Policy collaboratives: kentucky youth advocates works with several partner organizations and trains and mobilizes advocates to promote positive policies for children. Kya coordinates several coalitions including a statewide coalition with over 100 partners - the blueprint for kentucky's children - which promotes a unified policy agenda to help children. Recent successes including nearly 1,000 attendees at children's advocacy day at the capitol and mobilizing blueprint partners to speak up about policies that impact children. Case advocacy - kentucky youth advocates provides help to families who contact us after they have exhausted all typical resources and supports. Families often face challenges with systems that children interact with such as the child welfare, juvenile justice, and education. Kya helps families deal with often complex situations to come to solutions that all parties can agree to. Kya helped nearly 1,800 individuals in fy 2017 and analyzed trends in cases to identify policy implications and solutions. Youth engagement - kya educates youth about issues and systems that impact them such as education, youth justice and child welfare. Kya provides advocacy and leadership training to empower youth leaders to speak with local and state elected leaders on policies and issues important to them and create positive change.