Child advocates in Utah are not surprised by the state's average showing in the new study of best places to raise children.
What they find alarming is the the trend.
Family Specialist Shelley Osterloh has details.
Utah has not only slipped from last year, but the year before.
In fact look at these rankings from the same organization.
This year the Children's Rights Council rates Utah as the 22nd best place in the country to raise children.
But that's down from 9th last year.
And way down from 1996 when we were ranked #1 -- the best place in the country.
Now, we need to mention that this year the criteria changed a bit, but still it doesn't look good for Utah children.
Terry Haven, the Utah Children Kids Count Coordinator, says, "It should make you outraged. If you see that we went from 1 to 22, if you aren't outraged you are not paying attention."
Terry Haven tracks statistics about the the health and wellbeing of Utah kids.
She says there are several areas in which Utah children suffer.
For example, Utah is dead last when it comes to the percentage of kids who are immunized by age two.
While the rest of the country's teen pregnancy rate has dropped, Utah's has remained the same for years.
Also fewer Utah women are getting pre-natal care and that affects birth weight and infant mortality.
And in some areas, Haven says conditions for Utah children are likely to get even worse because so many children are left unsupervised by working parents who cannot find or afford child care.
"If you leave children alone, they are going to get into trouble," she says.
"In five years these numbers are going to look a lot different because we are not dealing with the issues that are going to make them look better five years from now," Haven adds.
Haven says improving day care for children will help kids in many ways.
"That one thing, after-school care, can affect the child death rate, the juvenile crime statistics, the teenage pregnancy figure.. all of those things can be affected and improved by quality after-school programs. And it's not something we are addressing on a policy level."
One other interesting statistic-- the percentage of Utah children who live in poverty is lower than in most states, but because we have so many kids the number is high.
70-thousand kids in Utah live below the poverty level.
