Kentucky Youth Advocates recently released the Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children 2026 priority agenda, featuring state policy changes and budget investments that will impact kids and families across the Commonwealth.
The Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children speaks with a common voice to create brighter futures for all Kentucky kids and their families. The coalition is comprised of non-profit, public, and private organizations that stands on three pillars: thriving communities launch strong families, strong families launch successful kids, and successful kids launch a prosperous future for Kentucky.
This year, the Blueprint’s priorities focus on various gaps and challenges in the lives of the Commonwealth’s children, including keeping kids safer while they learn and socialize, protecting kids from the harmful effects of vaping, ensuring that children with special needs have access to high quality child care, promoting family housing stability, investing in programming to keep families connected, and much more.
The Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children 2026 state policy priorities include:
• Reduce the risk of sexual abuse and exploitation and increase the safety of students by ensuring appropriate disclosures, checks, and training are complete for potential public and private school employees.
• Support the development of young children with special needs by requiring training for child care providers on strategies to support children with disabilities.
• Uphold the basic legal rights of children by requiring minors to speak with a juvenile attorney before they waive their Miranda rights.
• Promote family housing stability by expunging filings that are dismissed and prohibiting minors from being named on eviction filings.
• Place common sense standards around utility disconnections during extreme weather events.
• Support youth mental health by creating mechanisms to direct social media settlement dollars to positive youth development programs.
• Define child and family impact statements and create a process for analyzing proposed legislation to determine impacts on kids and families.
During the 2026 legislative session, the Kentucky General Assembly will vote on a two-year state budget. Kentucky kids need a balanced state budget that sustains investments in vital programs that promote child and family well-being.
The Blueprint’s 2026 budget priorities include:
• Ensure JUUL settlement dollars are used to address youth nicotine dependence, including cessation programming support and initiatives to reduce youth initiation.
• Support the basic needs of families by investing in addressing diaper need.
• Improve child safety and support independent living by automatically issuing state IDs at no cost for youth in foster care.
• Ensure state employees have access to paid family leave every three years in order to support healthy families and allow them to stay financially stable after the birth or adoption of a child.
• Strengthen family legal representation and improve outcomes by creating a statewide office for family representation.
• Expand investments in Parent Engagement Meetings (PEMs) to support families at risk of educational neglect by connecting them with services and preventing unnecessary referrals to DCBS or the courts.
• Ensure families have access to supervised parenting time services that maintain critical connections between children and their parents or siblings during child welfare involvement.
• Prioritize investments for children who have experienced abuse and neglect by dedicating funds to support kinship caregivers.
For more information on each of the priorities, view the 2026 Blueprint fact sheets coming soon at kyyouth.org/blueprintky/.