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Home> News Room> Press Releases> Prominent Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Women Conduct May 8th New Orleans Katrina Child Watch™ Visit Sponsored by Children's Defense Fund For Immediate Release: Prominent Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Women Conduct May 8th New Orleans Katrina Child Watch™ Visit Sponsored by Children's Defense FundUrge Action on Critical Mental Health, Health and Education Needs of Katrina's ChildrenContact: David Ruffin, (202) 662-3613, druffin@childrensdefense.org, or New Orleans A delegation of prominent Hollywood and Washington, DC women including New Orleans native and Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Board Member Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Cicely Tyson, Regina King, and Deborah Santana will travel to New Orleans May 8th to shine a light on the acute mental health, health and education crises of children traumatized by Katrina’s storm over eight months ago. Also joining the trip will be over a dozen prominent entertainment, cultural, media, and community leaders including three Los Angeles CDF Board members: Carol Biondi, Ruth-Ann Huvane and Katie McGrath (see attached list). The delegation will see New Orleans’ devastated Lower Ninth Ward; visit a trailer camp to talk with Katrina survivors about their living conditions; meet with children and parents at the opening of the first of thirteen planned CDF Freedom Schools™ sites in Louisiana to provide children summer educational and cultural enrichment, mental health and health supports; talk with doctors operating a mobile medical van; and meet with women leaders from Gulf Coast states, including Women of the Storm, to hear their concerns about the struggles of Katrina families and communities. “I am deeply grateful that these powerful and caring women are traveling to New Orleans to shine a bright light on the tragic plight of hundreds of thousands of Katrina children not high enough on the radar screen of our political leaders and citizens. Katrina’s children desperately need hope, emergency mental health and health care, and educational enrichment to make up for lost time and longstanding educational neglect. They also need better housing than the shelters, trailer parks and unstable living conditions so many currently face,” CDF President Marian Wright Edelman said. An April 4th CDF report, Katrina’s Children: A Call to Conscience and Action (PDF 1.25 MB), described the emergency and long-term needs of Katrina children and what can be done to prevent irreversible child damage and provide Katrina children a better life. CDF calls for immediate national leadership to enact Disaster Relief Medicaid for 24 months to cut through the complex 50 state bureaucracies and different eligibility requirements for Katrina survivors still scattered across 50 states and to prevent similar suffering in future disasters. These children and families have suffered enough and need health and mental health care now (see attached action agenda). CDF says “the May 8th Katrina Child Watch™ visit will be the first of many to the Gulf Coast states and to the doors of our political leaders until they act to prevent irreversible harm to Katrina children and provide comprehensive national coverage to the nine million children denied the basic right to health and mental health care in the richest nation on earth.” “All Americans have a self interest in ensuring preventive and effective disaster emergency procedures, systems and competent personnel before the next disaster which could affect any of us. Katrina children are our siren call to wake up, be prepared and act compassionately now. We must not let our children down.” Edelman said. The Children’s Defense Fund’s Leave No Child Behind ® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For a copy of CDF’s Katrina’s Children: A Call to Conscience and Action report and to learn more about the CDF Freedom Schools™ program, visit http://www.childrensdefense.org/. # # # Katrina Child Watch™ Participants
CDF’s Call to Action for Katrina’s Children(1) Provide immediate emergency mental health and health services to children and their families struggling to cope with the trauma of Katrina including: an Emergency Children’s Health and Mental Health Corps; School-based Health Clinics with easy access for children; Mobile Health Vans with trained personnel every day of the week to help traumatized children and families; Emergency Medicaid for 24 months, including the full federal funding proposed in the bipartisan Grassley-Baucus Bill; Increasing Community Outreach and Rebuilding Community Health Centers and Hospitals that serve the poor in areas where the health infrastructure and personnel have been decimated. (2) Ensure every child in Katrina-affected states a quality public education and after school and summer educational supports to help them make up for lost time and overcome previous and continuing school disparities. (3) Join CDF’s campaign to ensure every Katrina evacuee child and every uninsured child in the United States— from birth to adulthood—comprehensive health and mental health coverage now with a national benefit floor with full federal funding. (4) Join Katrina Child Watch™ visits to let these children and families know that we care and have not forgotten them, and to let our leaders know that we will not cease until they act. (5) Demand that our leaders at all levels and sectors pay as much attention to constructing strong health, mental health, education and family support levees for Katrina’s children in school, after school and in summer months as they pay to constructing levees strong enough to withstand another Katrina level hurricane. And demand that our leaders prepare better to prevent and respond competently to future disasters. (6) Organize a Wednesdays in Washington® and Wednesdays At Home® witness, phone, letter writing and email campaigns and visits to your political leaders demanding mental health and health care for Katrina children now and a comprehensive health system for all children as a condition of your vote in November 2006. Also demand they stop and reverse the revenue hemorrhage from massive tax cuts for the top 2 percent of Americans, and all budget cuts in safety net programs for children and the poor that increase our nation’s human and budget deficits. (7) Pray for Katrina children and families and for leaders of integrity who will work for justice for children and the whole community rather than for themselves and partisan political interests. Lift up the needs of children in your regular prayer meetings and prayer circles and through participation in CDF’s annual National Observance of Children’s Sabbath® celebrations, October 20-22, 2006, with an action witness for child health coverage. (8) Demand investment in a quality integrated early childhood development system to help break the cycle of poverty, get every child ready to learn, and provide them the comprehensive support they need to avoid the Cradle to Prison Pipeline™ Crisis. (9) Vote. Vote. Vote. Organize. Organize. Organize. Hold yourself and your political leaders accountable for how they vote for children. |
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