Reports and Fact Sheets

Kinship care is the full-time care, nurturing, and protection of a child by a relative, either by blood or marriage, and can include informal connections that are not legally related but have a positive, supportive relationship with the child or family.

Our 13th annual State of Child Welfare report provides a 5-year analysis of how Pennsylvania fares with practices around child safety, placement, and permanency and includes county-level data and statewide and geographic trends to improve the child welfare system. We continue to analyze racial disparity and disproportionality across the child welfare system’s population (age 0-20).

Transition age youth—age 14 to 21—are older youth in the foster care system transitioning to permanency with a caregiver or aging out of the system to adulthood. Transition age youth often struggle with this life transition due to unique circumstances with being a foster child.

Pennsylvania’s comprehensive early care and education system spans a child’s formative years, from birth-to-age-5. This report looks deeper at Pennsylvania’s child care and pre-k system complexities and recommends the improvements necessary to ensure the system functions equitably and increases access and affordability for all families in the commonwealth.

Infant and Toddler EI services are structured to identify and meet the needs of young children in five developmental areas: physical development; cognitive development; communication development(language); social or emotional development; and adaptive skills. Infant and Toddler EI depends on state funding support to ensure that every child needing services is referred to and receiving them.

Start Strong PA is a statewide campaign of partners advocating for increased access to high-quality, affordable child care, beginning with infants and toddlers. The campaign is concerned with the current workforce crisis facing child care providers and families looking for high-quality care.

The Childhood Begins at Home campaign released new fact sheets that show the number of young children and their families receiving publicly funded, evidence-based home visiting services statewide and in each county. While a historic level of increased funding in last year’s state budget helped serve more Pennsylvania low-income families—moving from 5% to 7% served—it still represents only a fraction of those most in need of services.

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program strengthens communities by improving outcomes for children and their families. A cornerstone of evidence-based public policy, MIECHV provides funds for developing and implementing voluntary, evidence-based home visiting programs. Programs must meet at least four of six evidence-based benchmarks to satisfy the law’s rigorous requirements for demonstrated effectiveness. MIECHV is an essential source of funding; however, it is set to expire on September 30th. Congress must act to reauthorize MIECHV before this deadline to ensure families across Pennsylvania can continue to receive vital home visiting services. 

Each day, families struggle with food security and the ability to provide their children with healthy meals that fuel their minds and bodies. Lack of nutrient-rich food impacts child development, overall health outcomes, mental and behavioral health and academic achievement, performance, and participation. Free school breakfast has been one initiative provided to Pennsylvania school-aged children to combat child hunger and ensure students succeed.

Career and technical education (CTE) combines academic, technical and hands-on skill-building that prepares students to immediately enter high-priority occupations or better define career plans, including post-secondary education. Each year thousands of Pennsylvania students will have already earned higher education credits, completed a pre-apprenticeship program or gained on-the-job skills before graduation because of the CTE path they chose in high school. Unfortunately, not all students get to participate in CTE due to the lack of sustained state investments in funding to support programming.

Career and technical education (CTE) provides a unique combination of academic, technical, and hands-on skill-building that prepares students to either immediately enter the workforce or better define career plans to enter post-secondary education. Funding for CTE is complex, with several streams from federal, state and local funding. Funding sources vary.

During the past three years, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have been a lifeline for families by providing continuous health insurance coverage throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 1.4 million Pennsylvania children enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP, these programs connect kids to health care in every community across the commonwealth.

Beginning April 17th, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services will determine eligibility for CHIP families and new enrollees, not CHIP insurance plans. This change means County Assistance Offices will process all renewals and new applications.

The 2022 State of Children’s Health Report shows the factors that contribute to a child’s likelihood of being uninsured include family income, race and ethnicity, geography, and age. It uses the most recent Census data and examines the role of public health insurance programs as comprehensive coverage options and how Medicaid continues to provide a safety net of coverage during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Children need access to nutrition for their growing bodies and minds to be healthy and develop as they should. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a critical component in ensuring infants and toddlers, as well as pregnant and postpartum mothers, have access to healthy nutrition. See WIC coverage rates statewide and at the county level.

Do you know what Pennsylvania looks like when it comes to child welfare, health insurance coverage, educational opportunities and other important measures of child well-being?

To help you get answers, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children has created the “State of the Child” profile that provides statewide data and information.