Care For Children

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has created the first new health-care program in decades with the passage of the Children's Health Initiative. This program will bring more than $60 million to Maryland next month, which could be matched with $30 million in state dollars for extending health care to Maryland's approximately 170,000 children without health insurance.This opportunity for Maryland must not be lost because of poor planning and conflicting programs. But that could happen.Maryland's efforts to provide adequate health care for indigent children have been well intentioned, but sporadic.

Thank you for placing John Fritze's article on children's dental insurance on your front page ("Concerns rise over cost of child dental insurance," March 22). I applaud U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin and his continued focus on the importance of oral health care access for our children. As reported by the Surgeon General 13 years ago, tooth decay is the most common chronic childhood disease. Nearly 80 percent of the disease is borne by about 25 percent of our population. These are the children who need the essential health benefits the most, and they are the ones most likely to be vulnerable to delays in enrollment and inability to utilize dental services if their parents cannot afford to pay for coverage.

Thousands of Maryland's working poor are rushing to enroll in a new state program that makes it possible to take their children to the doctor without getting sick over the bill.In the first five months, the state has extended government-paid health coverage to as many as 30,946 children and 74 pregnant women from low-income households. Families have flooded a state hot line with calls, snapped up brochures at schools and churches and surprised state officials with their dash to sign up."We were prepared for a big turnout, but the acceptance of the program was faster and more widespread than we had anticipated," said Ned Wollman, eligibility director for the Children's Health Program for the state Health Department.

We want to thank reporter John Fritze for his article laying out the issue of out-of-pocket costs for child dental care insurance through the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange ("Advocates, insurers duel over cost of child dental coverage," March 21). The new rules by the Obama administration perhaps unintentionally eliminate the general principle of the Affordable Care Act that dental care is an essential health benefit for children. The new rule will permit pediatric dental insurance plans to charge a maximum of $1,000 per child in out-of-pocket costs and up to $2,000 for a family.

The new sanctuary at Faith Baptist Church will echo voices all week long, as day care programs for young and old share the space.Under the same roof, the different generations will interact and learn tounderstand each other better, said the Rev. Bert Benz."

A few children whose drug-addicted homeless mothers have begun treatment and can't be proper parents can now live temporarily at Dayspring Children's Place, designed to give them skilled and loving care in an East Baltimore rowhouse.The small two-story home on North Glover Street is the first of its kind in the city, according to the coordinating Young Women's Christian Association. Six children up to 10 years old will live there with trained staffers for about two months. Their mothers can visit but live elsewhere until their treatment allows more normal child-caring and transitional family housing.

It was a typical problem for working parents.As Lisa Zelinsky's maternity leave came to an end, the Ellicott City mother and her husband, James, knew they would need day care for their 10-month-old son, Matthew. With older son Eric beginning first grade at Rockburn Elementary school this fall, a home-based care provider near the school would be ideal, they decided.Instead of flipping through the Yellow Pages, the Zelinskys turned to Howard County Locate: Child Care, a free counseling service that refers parents and parents-to-be to day care centers and people licensed to care for children in their homes.

Andrea Torchia, a coordinator of nursing care for homebound children, died of cancer Sunday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Towson resident was 38. Born and raised in Lewisberry, Pa., Ms. Torchia earned a degree in medical technology from the Johns Hopkins University, where she worked in nuclear medicine in the 1980s. An employee of Medical Staffing Services in Catonsville, she coordinated the home nursing care for children with cerebral palsy and other conditions. "Andrea loved working the difficult cases," said Jennifer Barkas, a colleague.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican-led Congress might be about to balance the budget and cut taxes, but the era of big government doesn't seem quite over yet.Included in the budget legislation entering the final stages of negotiation with President Clinton is a major new spending program that would provide health care for up to 6 million uninsured children of the working poor.Sharp disputes remain over the structure of the program and over whether the cigarette tax should be raised to help pay for it. But Congress and the White House have long agreed that at least $16 billion worth of new federal help for uninsured poor children is on the way."

The Kennedy Krieger Institute, which annually serves more than 8,000 children who have developmental disabilities, is about to construct a $5 million expansion of its headquarters in East Baltimore.As designed by Gaudreau Inc. of Baltimore, the 35,000-square-foot addition will rise just west of the current five-story building at 707 N. Broadway. The seven-story building will provide additional office and conference space for the growing staff of the institute, which conducts research and provides specialized rehabilitation care for disabled children.

Four years ago, a 12-year-old boy from Prince George's County named Deamonte Driver died from complications of an untreated dental infection. Lacking access to routine dental care that could have prevented the problem, and to basic treatment that could have contained it, Deamonte finally came to medical attention after the infection had spread to his brain. Deamonte's death was a shocking call to action. Elected officials, led by Congressman Elijah Cummings, called Deamonte's death a moral failure as well as a policy failure.

Raymond P. Srsic, a longtime Anne Arundel County pediatrician and professor of medicine whose practice spanned 50 years, died Thursday of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 81 and lived in Queenstown. Dr. Srsic, the son of a saloonkeeper and a homemaker, was born and raised in Pittsburgh. He was allowed to skip his senior year at North Catholic High School and enrolled at the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1948.

Oakley Henry Saunders Jr., a retired pediatrician who had been president of the old Provident Hospital and later worked in medical accreditation, died of cancer Tuesday at his Forest Park home. He was 81. Born in Baltimore and raised in West Baltimore, he attended Frederick Douglass High School and served in the Army. He earned a degree from Howard University and was a 1957 Meharry Medical College graduate. After an internship at Provident Hospital and a residency at what is now the University of Maryland Medical Center, he established a private pediatric practice in 1960 on Madison Avenue.

Barbara Schuyler-Haas Elder, an advocate of day care for school-age children and the first director of Baltimore's Office of Children and Youth, died of lung cancer Thursday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Bolton Hill resident was 83. "She was passionate about her work. Children were her life," said her daughter, Cynthia Lindsay Haas-Pundel of Bolton Hill. Ms. Elder was born in Trenton, N.J., and raised in nearby Burlington. She graduated from her hometown high school in 1939 and earned a bachelor's degree from Trenton State Teachers College in 1945.

ATLANTA -- In Sicko, Michael Moore resurrects a fascinating bit of history. He found an old recording by Ronald Reagan, who was hired by the American Medical Association in the early 1960s to denounce a fledgling plan for Medicare, health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, health insurance for the poor, as "socialized medicine." If the plans were to pass, Mr. Reagan warned darkly, "One of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

Astudy showing that keeping children at home, even if there are problems, is better than putting them in foster care reinforces the importance of family ties and the need to view foster care as the exception, not the norm, when dealing with troubled families. That's a lesson that Maryland is now trying to apply - and wisely so - after too many years of bad practices. The recently released study, by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, examined 15,000 cases in Illinois from 1990 to 2002, one of the largest studies of the effects of foster care.

A CHIEF concern of the working poor is health care.Those with jobs that offer little in the way of wages and benefits, and who do not qualify for Medicaid, do not get the kind of preventive medical care necessary to keep themselves, and their children, healthy.Fortunately, help is available. A federal program, called Healthy Start, extends Medicaid benefits to the working poor. It provides prenatal care to expectant mothers, care following birth and health care for children up to age 6.Unfortunately, people are not taking advantage of it.Healthy Start can help make sure that babies are born healthy, and that they stay healthy.

Inflexible funding extends foster care The column "Maryland's foster kids need help now" (Opinion * Commentary, Feb. 7) made a compelling case for immediate foster care reform. But no state should have to undertake this reform project alone. Instead, the nation needs to modernize the federal-state partnership established a generation ago to serve all abused or neglected children. For instance, as the column made clear, children and families in Maryland and nationwide can benefit from programs such as family counseling, drug treatment and guardianship programs, which help keep families together or limit a child's time in foster care.

This month all across America, working parents will face the familiar challenges of summer - most important, keeping their children safe and occupied during the long school break. Schools, after all, are the major provider of care for children of working parents. And when schools close for the summer, parents must scramble. Two-thirds of American children live with two working parents or a single working parent. Yet most schools are open only 30 hours a week, 180 days a year, and they usually don't serve children under age 5. In fact, between the birth of a child and the child's 18th birthday, schools cover only one-third of the hours that a parent working full-time is at work or commuting.