How the opioid crisis and child poverty are hurting Southeast Indiana kids

It’s the age-old dilemma of deciding which to give you first: The good news or the bad news. The 2018 Indiana KIDS COUNT Data Book released this morning by Indiana Youth Institute has plenty of both when it comes to the state of Southeast Indiana’s children. Each year the institute reviews thousands of numbers as part of a national effort to gauge the well-being of children at the local, state and national level. Organizations across the country examine information related to health, education, economics, safety and family with the results from different states coming out at different times throughout the year. WCPO decided to focus on two aspects of the Indiana report: childhood poverty and how the opioid crisis is impacting kids in Dearborn, Ohio, Ripley and Switzerland counties. That’s where the good news-bad news comes into the picture. The good news is that childhood poverty rates decreased in three of those four counties. Ripley County was the exception, with its percentage of children living in poverty going from 15.1 percent in 2013 to 17.9 percent in 2016, the most recent data available for the study.