This is the third installment in a three-part series on the child welfare system in Arkansas.

This legislative session, like many others before it, had its ups and downs. The children and families of Arkansas won some, but suffered some major losses as well. The Private Option, Arkansas’s version of Medicaid expansion, will continue to provide health coverage for low-income Arkansans, at least through 2016. However, changes are likely on the horizon. Our state’s […]

Even during relatively “good” economic times in Northwest Arkansas, child poverty has grown faster than the overall population. As our region has grown more successful, many of our children have fallen behind. While the region’s poverty percentage is lower than that of most of the state, the number of children living in poverty in both Washington and Benton counties is higher […]

Every year, the Annie E. Casey Foundation releases the Kids Count Data Book, a comprehensive, 50-state look at child welfare. Arkansas made gains in health coverage and education over the last year, but the child poverty rate went up to 29 percent. Those ups and downs are consistent with national trends, but what would it […]

Any discussion of Arkansas’s future is incomplete without understanding the challenges faced by children in immigrant families. They account for the majority of growth in Arkansas’ child population in the last decade. This new population, mostly Hispanic and almost all U.S. citizens, presents new opportunities in our effort to ensure that all children in Arkansas […]

The child poverty rate in Arkansas, now at 26.8 percent, is higher than the national average and shows a disturbing upward trend that’s likely to continue as the state experiences the effects of the recession. Over the last ten years for which data is available, the poverty rate has increased by just over two percent. […]

More than 400 children in Arkansas are waiting to find an adoptive family. They are in the custody of the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) and their parents’ rights have been terminated because they were unable or unwilling to care for them. Many of these children wait a long time for a family, especially […]

In the last two decades, during a time when Northwest Arkansas has grown more prosperous and gained a national reputation for its booming economy and quality of life, poverty has taken a stronger foothold. In Northwest Arkansas, the number of people in poverty is growing faster than the population, and the number of children in […]