Children's Health

With funding from the California Wellness Foundation and the Solano Coalition for Better Health, the Children's Network in coordination with Solano Children's Alliance, was commissioned to develop a master plan for the goal:  "All Children Will Be Healthy and Ready To Learn."  An intensive and broadly collaborative planning process ensued, and a copy of the plan may be downloaded from this site.  Currently, with support from Sacramento State MSW intern Jeff Hebron, the Network is moving forward with implementation of this plan.

In the planning process, several key concerns for children's health emerged:

Solano County is in a period of rapid transition.  Although the closing of the Mare Island base was associated with an overall decrease in population, there is evidence that this trend has reversed.  Solano's population and especially it's population of young children has begun to grow and is projected to grow significantly in the next 10 years.  With this growth is coming an increase in the diversity of the population with the largest growth occurring in the Asian and Latino populations many of whom are foreign born.  These families are also more likely to be living in poverty or near poverty.  The implementation of welfare reform can also be expected to drive more families into the ranks of the working poor.  This increase in poor minority families with children will create significant needs for culturally competent services, especially in the areas of health care and child care.

Although Solano County has an extensive network of health care providers and two well established managed care plans, there is convincing evidence that access to care is a major problem.  The percent of pregnant women with first trimester entry into prenatal care, a well-recognized proxy for access, has been getting progressively lower.  This is most marked in the Medi-Cal population and in ethnic minority women.  This same trend can be seen in adequacy of immunization among two-year-olds.  In addition, those eligible for subsidized services such as Medi-Cal and CHDP are not being enrolled in adequate numbers.

Subsidized housing and childcare, the two critical needs of low income working families are not adequate to meet current needs.  This will become even more critical with the further implementation of welfare reform and the influx of new poor minority families.