Child Well-Being Shows Some Improvement

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Oklahoma is showing improvement in seven of 12 child well-being benchmarks tracked by the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy. <br/><br/>But the annual <a href="http://www.odl.state.ok.us/kids/factbook/kidscount2006-2007/intro.html"

Thursday, January 25th 2007, 8:25 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Oklahoma is showing improvement in seven of 12 child well-being benchmarks tracked by the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy.

But the annual Kids Count Factbook shows the state worsened in the areas of low birthweight and confirmed child abuse and neglect cases.

Kids Count has been published since 1994 to give Oklahomans a guide on performance in key areas affecting children and teenagers. The book examines the data by each county and gives a rank by county for each benchmark.

The state reported that there were nearly 15 confirmed child abuse or neglect cases per 1,000 children from 2003 to 2005, which is about 3 percent worse than the baseline data collected from 1995 to 1997.

Oklahoma's low infant birth-weights worsened by 11.6 percent. Babies born weighing less than three pounds and six ounces, which is considered very low birthweight, worsened by 8 percent.