MAKING SURE KIDS GET THE HELP THEY NEED

Large numbers of Henderson County children need help that the community
should be providing, but there are gaps in service some children are
falling through.

Good thing a group of civic-minded people are evaluating where those gaps
are and developing a plan for filling them.

Such a plan is necessary to assure that Henderson County is doing all it
can to give children a chance to succeed in life.

The Strategic Plan for Children was requested by the Henderson County
commissioners earlier this year. A committee formed of members from The
Children and Family Resource Center board, Juvenile Crime Prevention
Council and the community is putting the plan together.

The committee has done a good job of forming a picture of the problems
facing the county:

1. One third of the county's children under 17 come from homes in need of
public assistance.

2. Teen pregnancies in this county are increasing at a time when the
national rate is falling.

3. Twenty-five percent of the county's middle and high school students
served an out-of-school suspension during the 1999-2000 school year.

4. More young adolescents are being arrested for crimes, and the number of
youths under 16 being arrested on drug charges is increasing.

Obviously, children and teens are having behavioral and emotional problems
that get them in trouble in school and with the law. If the problems
continue into later life, these same people will have trouble holding down
jobs. They will be more likely to have criminal records and be on welfare
rolls.

The Strategic Plan committee is looking at what resources the county is
already making available to children and determining what gaps exist. One
disturbing gap is the lack of money for the mental health services that
committee members say children need.

The major burden for raising children falls where it should, on the
shoulders of the parents. Yet, while we insist that people wanting to drive
have proper training, we expect people to instinctively know how to be
parents. Some parents need help, and this community has tried to provide
that help by establishing The Children and Family Resource Center.

The center offers free parent education classes and special programs for
new mothers, Hispanic families, pregnant adolescents and families with
serious problems. The center also has a behavioral interventionist on staff
to serve child care centers and homes.

But more programs are needed if this county is going to keep children with
problems from becoming drains on community resources when they are adults.

Figuring what those programs should be is the next job for the Strategic
Plan for Children committee. It is now incumbent on the committee to craft
some realistic strategies that the rest of the community can get behind.