Meeting Notes: August 24, 2004
The August Keiki Caucus Meeting was convened by Sen Chun Oakland and Rep Arakaki at the State Capitol, Room 325, at noon on Tuesday, August 24th. A large number of agency and departmental representatives were present to hear and discuss the presentations. The purpose of these presentations is to review the status of youth in the State at this time.
1. Office of Youth Services. There are 131,000 children age 10 to 17 yrs old in our State. Federal mandate requires that OYS focus on those ethnic groups over represented in involvement with the law. These are Black, Filipino, Samoan and Hawaiian/part-Hawaiian. Approximately 18,000 children are served. Services include alternate education and diversion. Diversion attempts to steer individuals into programs which are less regimented than the State programs and more adapted to individual needs. Along these lines, the Department is moving to "decentralization" with representatives assigned to communities on Oahu and Neighbor Islands .
The Hawaiian Youth Correctional Facility has approximately 250 children in their care. Most are there for assault or theft. Over 43% are Hawaiian/part-Hawaiian ethnicity.
2. Safe Route to Schools (SR2S) This is a project just starting under the Injury Prevention Program, Emergency Medical Services, DOH. At the present time less than 17% of children walk to school. The purpose of SR2S is to increase this percentage and thus increase physical fitness and develop a lifelong habit of walking for exercise. It is a community program revolving about a specific school with parents, teachers, children and community representatives working together to establish safe routes for walking to school. In pilot projects it has been shown that walking and physical fitness have been improved. It is a low tech and effective program.
3. The Hawaii Uninsured Project and Hawaii Covering Kids. There are approximately 25,000 uninsured children in Hawaii (10% of 17 yrs. and under). This number seems to be increasing. Approximately half of these children can be qualified for one or another insurance program: Med-Quest, Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Immigrant Children's Program and the HMSA Children's Plan. The programs provide services for pregnant women as well as for children under 18 yrs. Funding for these programs in Hawaii has actually increased while in most other States funds have been cut. Hawaii Covering Kids carries on extensive outreach to get kids enrolled and keep them enrolled. The forms have been simplified, outreach workers and agency people are being trained and workers go into the neighborhoods. Runaway and homeless kids are being enrolled. The Keiki Caucus felt that this report is something of a success story; something that doesn't get reported too often in this line of work.
So far the Keiki Caucus has considered the following issues:
- Reproductive services for teens
- Child safety; booster seats, SR2S
- Poverty; jobs, childcare, self-sufficiency, housing, homeless families
- Childhood obesity
- Uninsured children
- Childhood immunizations
The next Keiki Caucus Meeting will be on Tuesday, September 21st, noon to 2:00 p.m. in Room 325 at the Capitol.
The October meeting will be on Saturday, October 23rd - Morning and afternoon. This is the Children's Summit . There will be summary presentations in the morning. Last year in the afternoon we divided into small groups for selected areas. The groups identified issues within their areas and named their three top priorities. From these, the legislative agenda for the 2004 session was developed.
If you only attend one Keiki Caucus meeting a year, this is the one to attend.
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