2017 County Data Cards
May 2017
How do children in your community fare? The county data cards below provide local snapshots of child well-being.
NC Child produces publications that document trends in child well-being and the impact of public policy decisions on children and families.
How do children in your community fare? The county data cards below provide local snapshots of child well-being.
The North Carolina Child Health Report Card tracks key indicators on access to care, healthy births, safe homes and neighborhoods, and health risk factors over time and by race and ethnicity.
2017 Legislative Policy Agenda: end the unfair prosecution of youth as adults for minor crimes, protecting health coverage for children, prevent youth suicide, reduce infant mortality, increase investment in NC's early childhood education, and improve the NC child welfare system
In 2015, we expanded our partnerships, added highly qualified staff to help us carry out our mission, changed the dialogue in our state to focus on our most important priority -- our children, and influenced policies to ensure their wellbeing, their safety and their access to services. This work was only possible because caring supporters like you believed in and invested in children. Thank you.
Your support allowed children to benefit from policy victories such as restoring access to affordable child care, increasing funding for infant mortality prevention and setting new safety regulations to prevent poisoning from e-cigarettes.
Higher education is an important ladder to financial success and stability for children. College graduates earn more, are more likely to be employed, and are less likely to live in poverty than those with a high school diploma. In North Carolina, 4 percent of adults who have a bachelor’s degree or higher live in poverty, compared to 21 percent of adults who have a high school diploma or less.
One promising approach to expand educational and economic opportunity for low- income children and strengthen their college-bound identity is Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs)
This session legislators took some positive, incremental steps toward safeguarding child well-being, particularly in the areas of child health and safety. While we applaud those actions, we must also point out that the policies and budget decisions approved by legislators in 2016 were largely insufficient to meet the myriad challenges faced by North Carolina’s children and families.
Every child deserves a strong start in life and a chance to become a happy, healthy, and productive adult. Unfortunately, data show too many babies in North Carolina are born too small or too soon, placing them at risk for long-term health challenges or death within the first year of life.
State budgets for children give a glimpse of a state’s future—over a period of not so very many years, the strength and viability of a state will mirror the health and wellbeing of its youngest people. As the primary instrument of state policy, North Carolina’s budget for its 2.3 million children is a strong indicator of the quality of life that will unfold around us, whether or not we are parents ourselves.
In 1985, the NC General Assembly formally affirmed the authority of local boards of education to determine whether corporal punishment would be allowed as a measure of student discipline. At the time, all 115 local districts used the practice.
To this day, the legislature has declined to prohibit corporal punishment statewide. Thus, NC Child and a coalition of professional and advocacy organizations have worked locally on the issue. Now, just three districts–Robeson, Graham and Macon–use the practice.