Voices for Utah Children

Did you know?

· There has been a 19% increase in the child population between 2000

   and 2010

· There are 48,000 single moms in Utah with kids under the age of 18

· Over 18,000 Grandparents are responsible for their grandchildren

· Almost 50,000 more children in Utah lived in poverty in 2010 than in 2007

· Between 2007 and 2009, 56,000 children were affected by foreclosure

· 73% of Utah moms-to-be receive adequate prenatal care

· Utah student population is projected to rise by over 166,000 by the

   year 2021

Find out more in our annual KIDS COUNT data book, Measures of Child Well-Being in Utah.

Press Release:

Utah KIDS COUNT Project Releases Annual Data (5-14-12)

Related Articles:

 Child poverty on the rise in Utah (The Spectrum, 5-15-12)

 Study: Children in Utah better off than many other states (Salt Lake Tribune, 5-14-12)

 Study tries to make Utah's KIDS COUNT, pushes for improvements (Standard Examiner, 5-14-12)

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Pew Center on the States shows that Utah lags in basic information on the effectiveness of costly programs

Voices for Utah Children welcomes a comprehensive new study that rates Utah’s economic development efforts in a national context and suggests ways that they can be improved. Evidence Counts: Evaluating State Tax Incentives for Jobs and Growth, will be released on April 12 by the Pew Center on the States. The report echoes the recommendations that Voices for Utah Children has made over the years about creating accountability for the use of taxpayer monies on business incentives.

 Statement: Pew Center Report Evidence Counts (4-12-12)

Study • Utah among many that need regular evaluation to see if incentives spur job growth.

Most states, including Utah, could do a better job tracking whether their tax breaks for businesses are actually spurring job growth, including some that have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into corporate incentive programs even while grappling with record deficits, according to a new report.

 Report: Few states effectively measure benefit of tax breaks (Salt Lake Tribune, 4-12-12)

Technology • Medicaid breach also punches holes in consumers’ confidence that their info is safe.

The hacking of a Utah server containing Medicaid data has exposed a weakness — and a double-standard — in how the state handles sensitive health information.

Officials blame the March 30 pilfering on human error. A state Department of Technology Services employee didn’t follow protocol when placing a test server online and hackers exploited a weak password, they said.

 Did Utahs falure to protect health data violate federal law (Salt Lake Tribune, 4-13-12)

Cyber invasion • Number of victims has risen to 181,604; some Social Security numbers compromised.

A huge proportion of the state’s Medicaid clients — two-thirds of them children — are victims of hackers who broke into an inadequately protected computer server at the Utah Department of Health, officials said Friday.

 Medicaid data breach far worse than reported (Salt Lake Tribune, 4-6-12)