Needy Children

Tamara Lee spends her days trying to fix broken families. As a state foster-care caseworker in Baltimore, she spends hours talking with abused and neglected children and asking gentle but probing questions to gauge health, happiness and healing. She is a human face in an enormous state agency tasked with caring for more than 10,000 children who have been removed from dysfunctional living conditions. In recent years, the Maryland Department of Human Resources has been criticized for mishandling implementation of a mammoth computer system, housing foster children in a downtown office building overnight and failing to provide proper medical and dental care.

Is President Bush a liar who hates children? That's what many of his critics now are asking. Why else, they say, would he refuse to sign a bill providing health insurance to poor kids? Specifically, the president has vetoed a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was designed to provide health coverage to lower-income children. One nationally syndicated columnist went so far as to call Mr. Bush's rationale in vetoing the bill a "pack of flat-out lies."

The Harford County Health Department will open a dental clinic early next year that will provide care for some of the 7,000 children who are eligible for medical assistance but have little access to a dentist. The number of children receiving medical assistance has increased by 238 percent since 2000 and there could be many other eligible youths who are not enrolled in the program, said Dr. Andrew Bernstein, Harford County's health officer. "There is a real need for this service," Bernstein said.

HOW WELL-OFF does a family have to be before Democrats will stop throwing government subsidies at them? That's the question to ask when considering the complaints that new federal regulations will prevent New Hampshire from offering subsidized health insurance to as many middle-class families as it can do now. The new rules would require the state to provide subsidized insurance through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to 95 percent of eligible children in families that earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level before enrolling additional children in families that earn more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level.

There were no fancy decorations, no carolers, no tree. But the week before Christmas, there was a Santa Claus, who handed out toys out of the back of a black sport utility vehicle. And there was a pair of helpers - a working-class couple who run a small, mom-and-pop nonprofit to help inner-city kids. Together, they brought the spirit of the season and some surprising, if fleeting, moments of joy to a bleak street near the vacant American Brewery building in East Baltimore, one of the most distressed areas of the city.

The 36 children participating in the Head Start program at the Harriet Tubman Center in Columbia receive two meals a day, Monday through Friday, during the school year. But the Howard County chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women felt something more could be done. "No one looks after the children over the weekend," said Marcia Frezza. "A lot of parents work or they go to school. We want to make sure that the children are getting something nutritional over the weekend." So Frezza and the NCJW, along with the Maryland Food Bank, are providing healthy foods on the weekend for the 36 children and their siblings through a program called Backpack Buddies.

The federal government awarded Maryland $25 million yesterday for showing one of the nation's largest declines in births to unwed mothers. Part of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act provided for bonus payments to states that reduce out-of-wedlock births without increasing the abortion rate. Between 1999 and 2002, the most recent years for which Centers for Disease Control and Prevention birth statistics are available, the percentage of births to unwed mothers declined from 34.73 percent of all births to 34.62 percent, which amounts to 245 births out of about 146,000 for that period.

It started as an idea for a simple geometry project, but it became a yearlong endeavor that turned 21 pupils into quilters, historians and curators. Two Carroll County teachers wanted pupils in their extended enrichment programs to make quilts as a way of applying math skills, such as measuring, and understanding geometrical concepts, such as shapes and sizes. Ivy Allgeier, a fifth-grade teacher at Winfield Elementary School in Westminster, teamed with Deb Lemieux, a fifth-grade teacher who worked last year at Spring Garden Elementary in Hampstead, for the project.

Reading has always been a part of Molly Frantz's life. Books by C.S. Lewis and the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine were among the 16-year-old sophomore's favorites as she grew up. Reading, she says, is not only a great way to only increase your vocabulary, but it's also a great hobby. So, when Molly had the chance to help other children develop a passion for books, she jumped at the chance. Through participation in SHOP - Students Helping Other People - an organization at Atholton High School in Columbia that meets weekly and performs 20 hours of volunteer service annually, Molly is making a difference.

Thanks to some friendly competition between two Carroll County schools, volunteers at Shepherd's Staff outreach ministry won't be running out of cranberry sauce today when they serve their traditional turkey dinner at St. John Catholic Church in Westminster. It all started with a challenge: New Windsor Middle School pupils asked members of a special education resource class at Northwest Middle School in Taneytown to match a can of sauce for every napkin holder made at New Windsor. When the contest was over, Northwest Middle pupils had collected 356 cans of sauce and New Windsor pupils had made 350 napkins holders and 300 favors for the tables, said Ellen Bower, a Northwest Middle School special education instructional assistant.