Children slipping back into poverty, By Rachel Williams, November 3, 2009, The Guardian: “Children in affluent areas are sinking into poverty after a third of the gains made over the last eleven years in getting families into work were wiped out in just 12 months, a new study warned today. One in five - two million - British children now live in households where neither parent has a job, a rise of 170,000 since 2008, the Campaign to End Child Poverty said. If unemployment continued to rise as forecast, the number could return to levels of a decade ago, when Tony Blair made his flagship pledge to eradicate child poverty by 2020 and halve it by 2010. The number of children in jobless households, two thirds of whom face poverty, had fallen by a half a million - nearly a quarter - between 1997 and 2008…”

Wisconsin failing to approve Medicaid and food stamps applications in timely manner, By Jason Stein, November 2, 2009, Wisconsin State Journal: “Socked by tens of thousands of childless adults applying for a new state health plan, Wisconsin is failing to meet requirements in federal law for timely approvals of applications for both the Medicaid health coverage and food stamps. Since June 15, more than two-thirds of childless applicants with virtually no income - the highest priority cases - haven’t received food stamps within the federally required seven days, state figures show. Nearly two-thirds of all the childless adults seeking food stamps haven’t received them within the required 30 days. The same process is used to check whether applicants are eligible for both Medicaid and the federal FoodShare, or food stamps, program. Officials from the state Department of Health Services met Monday with federal officials to brief them on the delays and said they would seek to resolve the most pressing backlogged food stamp cases by the end of this week…”

More districts use income, not race, as basis for busing, By Jordan Schrader, November 2, 2009, USA Today: “Struggling to improve schools that have large populations of poor and minority students and under legal pressure to avoid racial busing, a small but growing group of school districts are integrating schools by income. More than 60 school systems now use socioeconomic status as a factor in school assignments, says Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, which studies income inequality. Students in Champaign, Ill.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Louisville have returned this year to income-based assignments…”

Ky. increases number of kids in health programs, By Beth Musgrave, November 3, 2009, Lexington Herald-Leader: “State officials said Monday that they are on target to enroll 35,000 children in two key public health programs by the end of 2009, six months ahead of schedule. In November 2008, Gov. Steve Beshear pledged to increase the number of children in Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program or Medicaid programs by decreasing some of the road blocks to the government health insurance program for low-income families. Currently, there are 32,000 new children enrolled in the two programs, Beshear said at a press conference Monday at Second Street School in Frankfort. But both programs combined have enrolled on average 2,600 children a month. Current rates indicate that the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which oversees the health insurance programs, will meet the 35,000 goal by December instead of June 2010, as originally projected…”