DOES MISSOURI STATE GOVERNMENT REALLY BELIEVE KIDS COUNT?

The first priority of state government in Missouri should be which of the following:

1. Living within its means and operating under a balanced budget that regularly reduces tax revenues.

2. Efficiently operating 16 constitutional departments and providing as many services as possible without burdensome tax levies.

3. Improving the lives and public services of 1.41 million children who constitute one-fourth of the state's total population.

Choosing from such a list of desirable first priorities may not be as easy as first imagined, particularly for any Missourian who keeps abreast of the affairs of state in Jefferson City who is mature enough to know that any of the three would qualify as responsible governing of 5.5 million citizens of the state.

Regardless of where Missourians live and irrespective of their interests, knowledge and involvement in the political process, a recent annual report of the advocacy organization known as Citizens for Missouri's Children should provoke both optimism and consternation about how well our youngest citizens are doing and how effectively our state is preparing them for their future in a new age of technology.

First the basic findings of this year's Kids Count report:

• Some 28,258 of the children born in 1998 were low birth weight infants, signaling they entered the world with a higher-than-average chance of suffering from later crippling and fatal diseases. Missouri ranks 25th in the U.S. in this category, with the percentage actually increasing over the previous year despite some effort to reduce the number.
• Last year the state moved 6,749 children from their families and placed them in out- of-home surroundings because of harmful family environments. This represents an increase of 531 transfers from the previous year.
• More than 19,000 children came to the attention of juvenile and welfare offices because of suspected child abuse, while another 13,363 children dropped out of high school last year, placing Missouri 38th in the nation in this category.
• Nearly 19 percent (18.9) of all children in Missouri are living in homes below the poverty level, while 24.1 percent are enrolled in Medicaid.

Reading these statistics can hardly be encouraging for those Missourians who have children and are concerned about their future or for those citizens who want to live in a state that does not consistently rank below its population percentile in child development and services. Missouri fails to achieve even this assessment in a wide variety of social service fields ranging from undereducated mothers to infant fatalities to teenage births and violent juvenile deaths.

In all of these categories, our state ranks below both the U.S. average and below those states in our population range.

Missouri's longstanding and hopefully sincere motto says the public welfare will be the supreme law of the state, but obviously our children only count as members of the public; we place them in a collective category that includes those whose welfare is more afterthought than highest priority.

This consistent indifference to the welfare of tomorrow's adult population is not readily apparent in Jefferson City, and allegations of uncaring political leaders are more often than not vehemently denied. Let there be no misunderstanding, there are numerous state programs devoted to improving the lives of our kids, and, yes, kids do count when officials propose specific and even progressive reforms.

This problem is not in the number of programs but in their diffusion, their hit-or-miss assignment to agencies making remedial proposals or to departments that have traditionally overseen some aspect of children lives.

The number of constitutional departments engaged in some area of children's services is mind-boggling: Departments of Elementary and Secondary Education, Social Services, Health, Mental Health, Higher Education, Corrections, Public Safety and Labor & Industrial Relations are the principal providers of such services, representing half of all such departments, and in addition, there is the full-scale involvement of the Missouri State Court System.

Additionally, the General Assembly is involved in legislation dealing with children, although the state Senate has no committee specifically assigned to consider children's services, and the House has one panel Children, Youth and Families to deal with related programs, but there is no single committee with proprietary oversight. Indeed, legislative responsibility is as diffused as that found in the executive branch.

Everyone seems to be in charge, when in effect, no one is.

The planning, augmentation and delivery of children's services in our state will not deliver signs of significant progress until there is one, single agency with proprietary responsibility for the citizens of Missouri who need it the most. Achieving such a goal will be virtually impossible without major political support in Jefferson City, and, more importantly major public support from throughout the state.

If Missouri is to improve its children's lives, we must stop diffusing programs that can achieve this goal. It should be self-evident that diluting children's services by scattering them throughout the state government will prolong, even postpone, remedial programs for our most important citizens.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.