Children advocates met with lawmakers Thursday to discuss issues ranging from education funding to pre-school services to foster care.
The Children’s Advocacy Day began with a rally in the rotunda.
Governor Matt Bevin addressed advocates, urging them to ask lawmakers to back his budget allocations for social workers, foster care, and adoption.
“We’ve given a lot of talk to this for a lot of years and a lot of good effort has been made by a lot of good people and yet, it seems, at best we’ve gone sideways, sometimes backwards. And we are going to make forward progress, it’s as simple as that,” said Bevin.
Kentucky has a network of 15 children’s advocacy centers. Lexington Center Director Winn Stephens said those facilities see over 7,000 children who are suspected of having been abused. He said his agency’s priorities include maintaining funding for the 15 center network and support of a new crime victims’ bill of right.
“We’re also working on a couple of things with the judicial branch to get some of our interviews and things like that admitted as rules of evidence,” said Stephens.
Also attending the kids lobby day event was Jane Herms, director of Northern Kentucky’s Family Nurturing Center. She said changes in state policy can make the biggest difference for abused children.
