Project and Publications Link

KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children. By providing policy-makers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being, KIDS COUNT seeks to enrich local, state, and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all children.

At the national level, the principal activity of the initiative is the publication of the annual KIDS COUNT data book. The Foundation also funds a nationwide network of state-level KIDS COUNT projects that provide a more community-by-community picture of the condition of children.

The Utah KIDS COUNT Project produces the annual publication Measures of Child Well-Being in Utah, a compilation of statistics that measure child well-being in the state. The publication contains selected indicators that profile the well-being of children in Utah. These indicators include quantifiable measures of child, family, and community functioning that provide a snapshot of certain elements of the lives of our young people. A picture emerges over time that shows progress-or the lack of it--for our most vulnerable children. The guide is used for a variety of important purposes that including, 1) Identifying positive and negative trends in the state to allow policy-makers and service providers to ascertain where programs are effective and where changes need to be made; 2) Consolidating and analyzing data relevant to children that can be used as a resource for those applying for grants; 3) Providing the media with ready access to the most recent data on children; and 4) Providing a resource for all interested individuals who want to make child advocacy a part of their lives.

There is no more important task for us than to address the educational, social, economic, and physical needs of our children. We must use our increasingly limited resources to, first, maintain the standard of care we now provide for our children and, second, help them to thrive and reach full potential. Part of accomplishing this is having reliable data to measure the status of children. The KIDS COUNT data book organizes reliable data on children in Utah and is an important resource toward understanding what services are needed, where children are in need, and how children are faring throughout Utah. KIDS COUNT urges all citizens to use the information to make more informed policy decisions about our most valuable resource, our children.