Health & Development
Health and Development
- Adopt Continuous Medicaid Coverage for Children Under Age 6
- End Waiting Lists for Early Intervention
- Establish an Early Childhood IDEA Task Force, Birth – K entry
- Save First Connections Newborn Family Home Visiting
- Update Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health services
Pass the Act to Stabilize Health Coverage for Young Children (Slater/Lauria)
- Join 12 other leading states and DC by adopting continuous Medicaid coverage for all children under age 6. Ensure babies and young children with Medicaid insurance (about 50% of all young children in RI) have consistent access to preventive, specialized, and emergency health care.
End Waiting Lists for Early Intervention (Cotter/Valverde, Governor’s FY25 budget)
- Provide a 25% Medicaid rate increase to fully staff Early Intervention programs to end waiting lists and serve all children in need.
- Establish an annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for rates.
- Add Early Intervention staff to the Child Care for Child Care Educators program (and remove household income limit). See this also under “Solve the Early Educator Staffing Crisis above).
Establish an Early Childhood IDEA Task Force, Birth – K Entry (Carson/Valverde)
- Create a public-private task force to develop a comprehensive financing and staffing plan to ensure all children from birth to Kindergarten entry receive high-quality Early Childhood IDEA services (across both Early Intervention and Preschool Special Education).
Save First Connections Newborn Family Home Visiting (Giraldo/Valverde – Full Fact Sheet)
- Make the long-needed (22 years!) rate increase permanent for the Rhode Island First Connections home visiting program to prevent substantial rate cuts scheduled for July 1.
- Establish an annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for home visiting rates.
- Develop a plan to sustain and expand voluntary family home visiting services, including meeting the new state funding requirements, so that high-quality home visiting programs are offered to all families who could benefit.
Meet Maternal and Young Children’s Mental Health Needs
- Develop a Rhode Island Early Childhood Mental Health Professional Hub to train and support professionals to better treat mental health challenges of children under age 6. (Fogarty/DiMario)
- Sustain the MomsPRN and PediPRN consultation programs that are helping perinatal and pediatric care providers effectively manage maternal and pediatric mental health challenges. (Shallcross Smith/DiMario)
