“The unfortunate reality is that [child care] costs are so high that they’re forcing families to make major sacrifices to handle them. That’s not how it should be.”
06.03.2026 15:17
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“The unfortunate reality is that [child care] costs are so high that they’re forcing families to make major sacrifices to handle them. That’s not how it should be.”
Since 1990, youth crime has dropped significantly across all metrics, including the number of juvenile arrests per year. One major factor behind this change was juvenile justice systems investing in and prioritizing diversion and rehabilitation efforts while also relying less on incarceration.
“A lot of social workers and judges don’t understand the culture around Indigenous people, which is more of an extended family, extended kinship, and isn’t nuclear. It should really signal to individual social workers… that Indigenous culture and family relations [can] look different.”
Programs like the Foundation’s Generation Work aim to connect youth to meaningful employment and set them up for long-term career success through partnerships with local businesses that help provide young people with opportunities like skills-based training and mentorship.
“How can we still meet the [federal] guidelines [for school meals] while also giving students a bit more flavor, a bit more spice, more seasoning, and just a chance to have control over what they eat?”
The introduction of high-impact tutoring — frequent tutoring in small groups — has been highly successful in San Francisco schools. In less than six months, the share of K–12 students in the district reading at grade level increased from 24% to 54%.
The Ohio-based pediatric hospital Nationwide Children’s Hospital is working to improve children’s reading skills and kindergarten readiness by incorporating literacy screenings into their pediatric healthcare for kids as young as three years old.
High-quality early education is strongly linked to later academic success and positive health outcomes, yet barriers like affordability and availability have put child care out of reach for the families of more than half of the 3 and 4-year-olds across the country.
Youth in foster care are more than twice as likely as other young people to experience a non-fatal drug overdose.
The economic background of the student bodies of “highly selective” colleges still heavily favors wealthier students. Since 2019, selective colleges have seen a bigger increase in the number of students coming from the highest-income areas than from the lowest-income areas.
20% of youth and young adults in New Mexico are not in school or employed — the highest of any U.S. state. The Northern New Mexico Youth Fund aims to engage these youth by helping them access career and technical education as well as work-based learning opportunities.
It’s become easier to get accepted into college over the past decade, with the median college acceptance rate 7.6% higher in 2022 than in 2012.
“It is incredibly troubling to learn that these children are not receiving the care and attention they need. [Mentally ill] children need counseling and treatment to help them address their struggles and grow into healthy, functioning members of society.”
Despite the barriers young people in foster care often experience around finding and keeping jobs, new data from @childtrends.bsky.social shows that nearly 60% of foster youth were employed at the age of 21.
“We’re struggling with kids being able to talk to each other and talk to adults in a respectful manner, and say, ‘I need a new pencil. That’s why I’m angry.’ It’s a lack of understanding how to interact with others.”
Nearly 4.7 million children — 6% of kids in the U.S. — did not have health insurance in 2024.
“If at night you look out your window and there’s still the blur of police lights and sirens, are you having a good night’s sleep? When they get [to] school and someone says... ‘Why you not paying attention?’, do you think the child could [say], ‘Hey... it was a shooting on my block last night?’"
“School [mental health] support was always important to us, but it became more of a priority to the state after Covid. And a lot of our growth has come by having the students drive the program, because ultimately they know the needs of the community.”
Fourth grade marks a critical transition period in children’s education, when understanding the fundamentals of reading starts to become important to a child’s learning across all subjects.
“Adolescents naturally develop a delayed circadian rhythm, meaning they want to sleep later and wake later... Teens might compensate with [extra sleep on weekends], which can look inconsistent, but really reflects their attempts to cope with a schedule that doesn’t match their biological clock.”
Women who have access to prenatal have better health outcomes for themselves and their babies.
“There’s this focus on K-3 without a lot of resources dedicated to helping the kids in secondary school that fell through the cracks. Starting early makes [sense] in a lot of ways, but there's also all these kids in the school system that didn’t benefit from that and do need intervention as well.”
Our latest blog—based on a decade of work funded by the @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social—explores how positive youth development principles apply in workforce development settings for young adults.
www.childtrends.org/publications...
Young children from the poorest families in the U.S. are on average 20% less likely to be on-track for kindergarten when compared to children from the wealthiest families.
“Every hour a child spends watching a show or an app comes at the expense of time spent doing something else — being physically active, being cared for and played with by a loved one. There are developmental costs associated with that. [Kids] that age need laps, not apps, to develop appropriately.”
The teen birth rate in the U.S. has decreased notably over the past two decades.
“Too many families are struggling financially to cover basic necessities. We found that the most common indicator of energy insecurity – reported by over 20% of surveyed parents – was cutting expenses for other needs, such as rent, food, medicine, or transportation, to pay their energy bill.”
Two-thirds of youth who were in foster care at the age of 17 were in a stable housing situation through the age of 21, which is welcome news given the high rates of foster youth experiencing homelessness.
“[English-learners] may very well need opportunities to have really good, targeted English language instruction in a more sheltered environment. But they also need and deserve opportunities to be fully integrated with non-English learners in their regular academic coursework.”
The Foundation is proud to have invested $3 million in the New Mexico nonprofit Homewise, which is working to increase homeownership amongst low and moderate income families in the state by offering services such as financial coaching, access to realtors and down payment assistance.