Local Agencies Hope To Get More Children Insured In U.S.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The rate of uninsured children has fallen to an all-time low: Less than five percent nationally. Two local agencies hope to take it even lower, with the help of one-and-a-half Million dollars in federal grants.
The Pennsylvania Health Law Project received half-a-million dollars to help get children in twelve Pennsylvania counties enrolled in health insurance. That includes some 20-thousand in Philadelphia, six-thousand in Montgomery County, 45-hundred in Delaware County and nearly four-thousand in Bucks.
Executive director Laval Miller-Wilson says they're targeting teenagers who got disconnected from services because they're in the child welfare or juvenile justice system.
"Each of those systems can put families and kids in situations where they're moving from household to household, and you know when you move from household to household, disruption occurs and that disruption includes sometimes a loss of health insurance," Miller-Wilson said.
The Chester County Maternal and Child Health Consortium got a one-Million dollar grant. They'll focus on children in families with immigration issues.