The main event will be held on Wednesday,  October 13th at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond.  Child advocates will meet for a day-long session to discuss the recent  severe budget cuts and their impact on critical services for children.  In addition to briefings by state leaders and policy experts (including yours truly), participants will develop guiding principles that policymakers can use to measure how legislation might affect Oklahoma’s children. Registration for the Forum is $75; you can register online here.

The Children’s Legislative Forum will be preceded by two events on Tuesday, October 12th:

• In the afternoon (time and location TBA), OICA will host offer a briefing on the 2010 Kids Count databook providing the latest data on child well-being in Oklahoma.  This event will be free but pre-registration is required.
• At 7:00 p.m., OICA will co-host a debate featuring the State Schools Superintendent candidates along with the UCO College of Education and Professional Studies, the Early Childhood Association of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Child Care Resource and Referral Association, and the Oklahoma Afterschool Network.   The program will be held at UCO; room to be announced.  Free of charge.

Anyone who wants to better understand the challenges facing Oklahoma children and families and make a difference in shaping future policy decisions should be sure to attend the Fall Forum.

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A partnership between OICA and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the KIDS COUNT data center provides comprehensive online national, state, and community level data and information on the well-being of children.  The site tracks 82 indicators of child well-being in such categories as education, health and safety, economic well-being, family and community, risky behaviors, and general demographics. It allows for easy comparisons of Oklahoma to other states and of each of the state’s 77 counties. From the main Oklahoma page, you can generate ranking tables, maps and trend graphs for each of the indicators that can then be incorporated into reports, presentations and grant applications. Here is one example, a map displaying the Change in Teen Birth Rates, by county, between 2005 and 2007:

In addition to introducing the Data Center website, OICA also made available the 2009 Oklahoma KidsCount factbook, which can be read and downloaded online. The factbook spotlights twelve key indicators of child well-being, including birthweight, birth to teens, child abuse and neglect, high school dropouts, violent crime arrests, and child and youth deaths. This year’s data found that Oklahoma has made progress compared to the mid- or late-1990s on nine of the twelve indicators, most notably in a nearly 50 percent drop in the rate of youth violent crime arrests.

The KIDS COUNT data center offers an invaluable resource to help us identify where we are doing well and where the most significant problems remain. In these times of growing needs and scarce resources, the importance of good data has never been greater.

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What will make this year’s Fall Forum different is that it will be orchestrated for the last time by OICA’s Executive Director, Anne Roberts, who is departing after 20 years at the helm of OICA to take a position as director of legislative affairs for Integris Health. OICA is currently in the process of conducting a search to identify a successor (update: OICA has announced that Linda Terrell, currently the director of the Center for Children and Families in Norman, will be their new Executive Director).

Anne joined OICA in 1989, six years after the organization was created, after serving as community director for the Oklahoma Alliance against Drugs. For two decades, she has truly exemplified the title of “child advocate”, representing the interests of  the children of Oklahoma, especially low-income and disadvantaged children, who don’t have paid lobbyists working for them at the State Capitol. Each legislative session sees Anne working tirelessly to fight for the agenda developed at the Fall Forum, identifying legislative champions, pulling together data and personal stories to sway lawmakers, mobilizing her grassroots network, pleading and cajoling. A trained  singer, she has even been known to break into song to sway the vote of a wavering legislator! And even if her favorite epitaph is usually an embarrassed-sounding “oh my!”, she is a lot tougher and a little less sweet than she appears when the interests of kids are at stake.

I recently asked Anne what she considered to be her proudest achievements as the head of OICA. From the many legislative victories in which OICA played an active role,  she identified two that were especially notable. One was the effort to enact a large increase in the tobacco tax in 2004 that has allowed for the expansion of health insurance coverage and progress on children’s health. The other was last year’s comprehensive rewrite of the Children’s Code, an achievement that will have far-reaching implications for how vulnerable children are treated by the justice system, but which attracted little, if any, public notice.

Yet without hesitation, Anne cited as her single proudest achievement not a piece of legislation but the creation of a strong network of child advocates across the state. That network will be severely tested by her departure, especially at a moment when the combination of the recession and the state budget crisis is placing severe strains on families and children.  She has taught us the song; it will now be up to all the rest of us to lift our voices on behalf of children a little more loudly and with a little more urgency.

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Early bird registration ends this Friday, October 2 and all registration ends next Tuesday, October 6. For directions, an agenda, and online registration, see OICA’s web site.

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