Enough South Dakota children live below the poverty line to fill the Minnesota Twins baseball stadium. That’s just one of the revelations child advocates present at the first of more than a dozen meetings around South Dakota. The talks are meant to update communities about the state’s children.
Carole Cochran likes her numbers. She launches her dialogue on the status of children in South Dakota with a geeky joke about presenting data on Pi Day: 3.14. The information she presents, however, isn’t likely to evoke chuckles.
"The new stuff is that the trends are not going in a positive direction as we would like to see," Cochran says.
Cochran shows numbers specific to problems South Dakota kids face. She’s the project director for South
Dakota Kids Count, and she explains that the latest data from 2011 show that nine percent of the state’s children live below the poverty line. That’s 390,000 kids in impoverished families.
"It’s never just one thing, but there are a lot of things that play off of one another. There are a lot of families that are working," Cochran says. "There are a lot of kids before their parents get home."
And there are a lot of little kids in day care. Cochran notes South Dakota ranks highest in the country for the number of households where both mom and dad have jobs, and child care is expensive.
This is Cochran’s seventeenth year with Kids Count, but she says she hasn’t seen much positive movement during her tenure.
That’s where South Dakota Voices for Children wants to make an impact. Jennifer Kline calls herself the “new” director, but she’s been on the job for a year.
"We really have to be experts on everything from infant mortality to high school dropout rates to daycare deaths and everything in between," Kline says. "In South Dakota, some to rise to the top through the data that Carole pointed out. Obesity is an issue. Children living in poverty is an issue. And, like I talked about, the one that we’re dealing with now that we’re really pushing is trying to keep our teens safer."
Kline details bills presented to lawmakers she says could help prevent teen deaths through safe driving… and talks about their failures. A major focus of her presentation revolves around the legislative session: which bills affect South Dakota’s youth, what happened to the legislation, and who supported the initiatives.
"I think what we try to do best is really remind legislators and all policy makers that they’re passing laws for the entire state, not just the people who are in their backyard," Kline says. "And yes those are the people that voted for them and elected them, but they really need to think of South Dakota’s 225,000 kids, not just the five or six that they see on a regular basis.
Kline says not enough people advocate for South Dakota children; she says many take passive perspectives on kids’ challenges, so it’s even more important someone shows up in Pierre to raise children’s issues.
"All the other lobbying groups have somebody there. The sheriff’s association and the police chiefs and the beer people, the beer distributors. I mean, everyone has someone making sure that their issue is taken care of, and that’s my organization’s job," Kline says. "But I don’t think it can be just us. It has to be all the people in South Dakota. We all care about kids. We all say it, so…"
Kline says hurdles to safe, happy, healthy kids are substantial, but South Dakota’s numbers aren’t all bad.
"We focus so much on the things we need to fix! What good things? There are many, actually. The rate of housing is high for South Dakota’s kids. The cost of housing is really low in South Dakota compared to other states, so our housing is good. Our education is good," Kline says.
"I think looking at some of the health trends, over time, a lot of those are going down, and that’s good," Carole Cochran of South Dakota Kids Count says. "So infant mortality, low birth weight, teen birth rate were all kind of trending down, so I think that bodes well."
Carole Cochran, the woman swimming in data, says she can’t work for change in every county, but she knows South Dakotans want to help kids.
"I really hope that people can take a look at this and look at that data and bring some pressure in their county or in their region and eventually in the state to try to change some things," Cochran says.
That’s why Kids Count and South Dakota Voices for Children have fifteen more meetings on the calendar… to present to and hear from people across the state.
South Dakota Voices for Children and Kids Count want to hear your questions about children’s issues and the problems you see. Click here for the complete list of meetings around the state.
You can view in-depth statistics that apply to your county online through Kids Count.