OKLAHOMA CITY – In October, the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (OICA) held our Fall Forum, a conference which annually assembles delegates for sharing ideas and brainstorming solutions for the many issues facing the children of our state.
The theme this year tied in with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Report, a review of state statistics which uniformly look at how well states are performing on 16 different metrics under four different categories – Economic Well-being, Education, Health, and Family & Community assessments. Overall, Oklahoma ranks 46th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in child well-being.
The delegates looked at ideas previously proposed by lawmakers, along with shaping creative solutions for problematic youth issues through policy. Experts presented on subjects associated with the four categories and shared their data about where the state is succeeding or falling short on addressing difficulties.
In Economic Well-Being, the delegates suggested improvements for affordable housing policies to increase family stability and reduce homelessness and chronic absenteeism in school attendance, designed to improve educational outcomes. Another aspect was to support lawmakers’ efforts to expand paid family leave programs to help parents – those who are biological, foster, or adoptive – to better acclimate parents to the responsibilities in raising children. A third point was to enhance the child tax credit, allowing it to be refundable with reasonable income phase-outs.
In the area of Education, a hotly debated category in recent years, advocates suggested the establishment and expansion of quality, affordable afterschool programs statewide for all grades. There was also the desire to require trauma-based education for future teachers and in continuing development requirements. Another conversation was to establish and adequately fund reading improvement programs to help ensure students are able to read at grade level and not be held back a grade.
With Health, suggestions included that the state mandate child-safe laws to protect young Oklahomans by ensuring packaging and marketing of edible marijuana products is age-appropriate, and to provide access to prescription lockboxes for families at an affordable price. Further, advocates recommended expanding the “Food is Medicine Act” to support those with chronic diseases and other health concerns. They further promoted the adoption of a dental therapist program to help expand care throughout Oklahoma where there is limited access to care, with oversight provided by a dentist.
The Family and Community category encouraged the creation of “Child Protection Courts” like the model in Texas, which would reduce the timeframe of issues in the courts involving children and also give judges specialized training and access to resources to help resolve concerns involving custody and other family-related cases. Another point suggested was to fund and sustain “family resource centers” which have been created to increase access to local supports such as referrals, transportation, and other vital services which are barriers to success.
Other recommendations were for improving nutrition programs to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables, accepting federal funds to provide summer feeding opportunities for youth directly, and to add further interventions for pre-arrest community programs for both youth and parents in partnership with local businesses and civic organizations.
These items and the many others included canbefoundonourwebsite at https://tinyurl. com/2026OICACLA. We will work with lawmakers to draft legislation and seek funding support for those which are taken up as bills or agency policies in the 2026 session.
OICA will also assist other organizations to ensure that legislation seeking to enhance beneficial youth-based policies move through the state capitol successfully. Please follow along with our weekly Thursday newsletter, to which you can subscribe for free, at https://www. oica.org.
