I have visited many after-school and summer programs across Wisconsin, from large urban sites to small rural schools, and what I’ve seen has stayed with me. I’ve watched students immersed in creative writing, acting and robotics. I’ve observed staff working one-on-one with kids navigating intense emotional challenges. And I’ve seen the smiles on middle schoolers’ faces as they reconnect with trusted mentors at the end of the school day. These programs are not “extras”; they provide crucial support to kids, families and entire communities.

The access gap

And yet, for far too many Wisconsin families, these opportunities remain out of reach. According to the latest America After 3PM report, nearly 275,000 Wisconsin children who would participate in after-school programs are not enrolled because none are available. Four in five children who could benefit from these supports are missing out. Parents cite cost, lack of transportation and a simple lack of local programming as the biggest barriers.

The benefits are clear

The impact of these programs is undeniable. Parents overwhelmingly rate their children’s after-school programs as excellent or very good, reporting that they keep kids safe, build social skills and support mental wellness. Research in Wisconsin shows that students who participate in extracurricular activities are less likely to report anxiety or depression and more likely to feel a sense of belonging.

Out-of-school-time programs often provide the space for deep, long-term mentoring, a powerful protective factor in a young person’s life. While teachers are often stretched thin during the academic day, out-of-school-time staff can focus on the relational side of development.

The cost of instability

When funding is unstable, it undermines the very connections that make these programs transformative. Recently, a Boys & Girls Club director shared the human cost of budget constraints: They were forced to reduce a veteran staff member to part-time. This didn’t just trim a budget; it severed a multi-year mentorship. When that bond was broken, several youths stopped attending entirely.

Wisconsin lags behind national trends

Across the country, after-school and summer programs are increasingly viewed as essential to youth development. Twenty-seven states provide dedicated state funding for these programs; Wisconsin provides none. States as different as Alabama and Texas recognize that federal funding alone is not enough. So do our Midwestern neighbors.

• Minnesota and Illinois have invested in these programs for years.
• Michigan established a $73 million grant program to expand before-school, after-school and summer learning statewide.
• Pennsylvania created the $11.5 million Building Opportunity through Out-of-School Time (BOOST) program.

The opportunity to act

Public support for these programs is strong and bipartisan. Families across Wisconsin want safe, enriching opportunities for their children. With a significant budget surplus, Wisconsin is uniquely positioned to invest in its future.

State leaders should view out-of-school programming as a foundation for safety, mental health and long-term economic opportunity. We have the resources; now we need the will. By committing to consistent state funding, we can ensure that every young person in Wisconsin has a place to belong when the school bell rings.

Daniel Gage is a consultant with the Afterschool Alliance and Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance, focusing on advocacy and outreach. He co-founded the Wisconsin Partnership for Children and Youth, a coalition that promotes after-school and summer programs as vital for healthy youth development and future citizenship.

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Opinion: After-school programs are essential. Wisconsin should fund them that way. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The sun sets over a playground across the street from a group of apartments where many Somali people live in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

Our church stands one short block from where an ICE agent took the life of Renee Good. A few days later, the violence ICE is perpetrating in our city arrived, literally, on our doorstep: Armed masked men raided our neighbors’ homes, remaining at our corner for two long hours. As we prayed and cared for those around us, several of our pastors and staff were among those who were pepper-bombed.

Our city is under siege, and when we asked the children in our congregation how they are feeling, they told us, unsurprisingly, that they feel scared. One youth, the child of an immigrant, texted his grandmother in the middle of the night: “I’m scared every day i live in fear and I don’t know what to do if your awake please call me.”

How can we comfort our children? We feel scared too.

And so, in this climate of fear, we turn to that life-affirming work. Immigrant families are afraid to venture outside. We’ve had to cancel our children’s choir practice until we can confidently gather the children safely.

Yet a few children and their moms still rallied to go grocery shopping for immigrant families, delivering boxes to a local McDonald’s where many immigrants work. In distributing Happy Meals to the appreciative children, the assistant manager offered a lesson in how mutual care strengthens the bonds of community. “When you share,” he explained in his accented English, “we share.”

We wish that feeding one another during these terrible times would be enough. But our young people tell us it is not. As one of our youth said, “I want to make sure my friends are not stolen from their families.” Another child asked, “Could you make ICE disappear? They hurt people.”

Jesus understood what it meant to live under an occupying force — in his case, the Roman Empire. He understood the helplessness. He understood the stakes, and yet he persisted in showing us, before ultimately dying from the violence, that another way — a way of love — is possible.

So we will continue to deliver groceries. We will make arrangements so that, if the unfathomable happens, the children can stay with other families. And from the epicenter of this occupation, we send out the children’s plea: Please. Make the people who are hurting people disappear.

Two Wisconsin hospital systems have paused gender-affirming medication and hormone care for minors. (Getty Creative)

Two Wisconsin hospital systems have paused providing gender-affirming health care for minors, according to a published report, prompting state lawmakers to urge them to reconsider.

“Wisconsin values include fairness, compassion and looking out for one another,” said state Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) and state Reps. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), Margaret Arney (D-Wauwatosa) and Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) in a joint statement Monday afternoon.

“This decision moves us away from those values by placing additional burdens on families who are already navigating complex medical health needs. Parents should be able to make informed decisions in consultation with qualified health care providers without political interference or fear,” the lawmakers said.  

The statement was issued under the umbrella of the Legislature’s Transgender Parent and Nonbinary Advocacy Caucus.

The group responded to reporting Monday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Children’s Wisconsin, a children’s hospital and health system in suburban Milwaukee, and UW Health, in Madison had both paused prescribing gender-affirming medication such as puberty blockers and hormones for minors.

The news story initially attributed word of the changes to anonymous sources. Representatives of both hospital systems subsequently confirmed the facilities had taken action to stop providing care, except in the area of behavioral health.

On Dec. 18, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced that the federal government would stop all Medicaid and Medicare payments to hospitals and clinics that provide gender-affirming care for patients under the age of 18.

“At Children’s Wisconsin, we strongly believe everyone, including LGBTQ+ kids, should be treated with the support, respect, dignity and compassion they deserve,” a Children’s spokesperson told the Journal Sentinel. “We are communicating to patients that due to escalating legal and federal regulatory risk facing systems and providers across the nation, we are currently unable to provide gender affirming pharmacologic care.” Children’s Wisconsin will continue mental health and behavioral health services, the spokesperson said.

A UW Health spokesperson told the newspaper in a statement that the system “is committed to providing high-quality, compassionate and patient-centered care to our patients and families, including LGBTQ+ patients.”

The statement acknowledged that because of federal actions, “UW Health is pausing prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy as part of gender-affirming care for patients under 18 years of age.”

The lawmakers’ caucus statement, which did not name the medical systems, said that halting care could harm the mental health of young people receiving that care.

“Removing access to this care increases the risk of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts among young people who already are facing disproportionate mental health challenges,” the caucus statement said. It urged the health systems “to reconsider their decision.”

Abigail Swetz, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Fair Wisconsin, said in a statement that the Trump administration has been engaged in “disgusting” attacks on trans people since before taking office.

In pausing care the hospital systems made “an awful decision, and I believe it is the wrong decision — it’s a decision that is putting young patients, their families, and even their own providers in a very tough place,” Swetz said. “And at the same time, these clinics should never have been bullied by this federal administration into making any kind of decision in the first place, especially one that reduces access to this life-affirming care.”

Swetz said Fair Wisconsin was organizing public comment opposing the federal proposed rule and urged Wisconsinites to join the effort.

A sign advertises the availability of flu and COVID-19 vaccines at a pharmacy in Madison, Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Vaccination rates for influenza and COVID-19 are low in Wisconsin, and on Thursday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced that two children have died within the last month: one from the flu in northeast Wisconsin and one from COVID-19 in the western part of the state.

Citing concerns for family privacy, DHS is not releasing the ages of the children. At a media briefing, Tom Haupt, the DHS respiratory epidemiologist, said they were the first deaths of people under 18 from those illnesses since the start of the flu season Oct. 1.

Although year-to-year comparisons in mid-season are difficult, “we are definitely seeing an increase in influenza and COVID-19 at this particular point,” Haupt said.

Haupt said DHS has not yet verified whether either of the two children were vaccinated. Both had “some underlying conditions that would increase their risk” for more serious illness, he said.

Five people under 18 died from flu in January and early February 2025, Haupt said. DHS monitors certain illnesses, including flu and COVID-19, through data from hospital emergency rooms, lab tests and studying municipal wastewater for evidence of the viruses responsible.

Vaccination is the best tool for preventing serious illness from both flu and COVID-19, Haupt said.

“Our vaccination status for children for both COVID-19 and influenza are very low,” he said. “We want them to be increased significantly.”

Across all ages, about 28% of Wisconsinites have been vaccinated against the flu and 10.6% against COVID-19. “These numbers are lower than what we’ve seen over the past few years and that’s very unfortunate,” Haupt said.

DHS recommends both vaccines for everyone 6 months or older. The COVID-19 and the flu shots can both be given at the same time.

Flu can have outcomes much worse than its usual symptoms.

“Influenza could lead to cardiac problems for both children and adults. It can lead to encephalitis,” Haupt said. “So, it’s not only the acute acute part of influenza, it’s what can happen later on.” With vaccination people are “protecting yourself and protecting those people who are around you.

For a third serious respiratory illness, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, DHS recommends the maternal RSV vaccine for expectant mothers who are 32 to 36 weeks pregnant, to protect their infants after they’re born.

DHS recommends the RSV vaccine for infants younger than 8 months if they were born to mothers who did not get the vaccine during pregnancy. DHS also recommends the vaccine for children 8 to 19 months old with a higher risk of RSV, as well as for adults 75 and older and for adults 50 to 74 years old who have an increased risk for the virus.

Haupt said doctors have told DHS that they’re encountering more vaccine hesitancy in the general public than in the past. One cause appears to be confusion about shifting recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC advisory council that makes recommendations on vaccines, he said.

Haupt said that for people hesitating about getting vaccines for themselves or their children, the “most accurate sources” for information are the state health department, local public health departments, community clinics, pharmacies and primary care doctors.

Gov. Tony Evers meets with children at a Fitchburg child care center in September 2023. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers approved an administrative rule change Thursday meant to make it easier to place children, who are in foster care because they are unable to safely remain in their home, with relatives or “like-kin” caregivers.

“We know that kids do better when they have supportive and loving people around them, and they’re in settings where they feel safe and can be their best and full selves. Keeping adults in kids’ lives who know and love them can go a long way toward making sure a kid has the stability they need so they can be focused on being a kid,” Evers said in a statement. “This is about doing what’s best for our kids and helping increase the likelihood of youth being in an environment with their family and loved ones, especially during difficult, chaotic times in their lives.”

According to the Evers administration, the rule change will help by providing a separate, streamlined licensing pathway for relative and “like-kin” caregivers as well as ensure that there is fair financial support available for them.

The rule change is a continuation of work on the issue. In 2024, the state Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 119 which expanded the definition of those eligible to be kinship caregivers to include first cousins once removed and adults with a “like-kin” relationship with the child, meaning people with a significant emotional relationship with a child.

According to the Department of Children and Families, in 2024, 39% of children in Wisconsin who entered out-of-home care were initially placed with relatives, increasing the likelihood that they would be placed with their siblings, experience more stability during their placement and help them achieve permanency with family.

“We know kids do better when they’re with family — however they define it. And families do better when they can spend less time running up against unnecessary administrative and financial barriers and more time together, being a family,” DCF Secretary Jeff Pertl said in a statement.

The Madison Social Security Administration field office. The federal Administration for Children and Families is calling on states, including Wisconsin, to stop diverting Social Security and other federal benefits that are supposed to be made available to foster children. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Federal officials are urging 39 states, including Wisconsin, to quit hoarding federal benefits that are supposed to go to children in foster care, but that agencies instead take to help pay for their foster care expenses.

The practice has been going on in various states for two decades or more, according to advocates who have been calling to ban it for nearly as long.

Wisconsin is among the states that received letters last week from the federal Administration for Children and Families, calling on them to stop diverting Social Security survivor’s benefits that are supposed to go to foster children.

“Every earned benefit dollar belongs to these foster youth, not the government agencies or bureaucrats,” said Alex J. Adams, the ACF assistant secretary, in a press release from ACF and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“ACF has notified all 39 governors who allow this practice and aims to work with states to end it,” the press release stated. “The goal is to ensure these earned benefits are no longer taken from foster youth and are instead preserved to support them as they transition out of state care.”

In Wisconsin, the office of Gov. Tony Evers pointed to a provision Evers included in his proposed 2025-27 state budget to end the practice, but that Republican lawmakers removed without comment at the start of budget deliberations.

“It’s been a long-time issue now, but unfortunately it has been largely under the radar,” said Daniel Hatcher, a University of Baltimore law professor and an early critic of the practice. Hatcher has advocated on behalf of affected foster children for more than two decades and written extensively about the issue, including in the Wisconsin Law Review.

A Marshall Project-National Public Radio project in 2021 found that 49 states at the time were rerouting foster children’s federal benefits to cover some of their costs. Hatcher said that has helped raise more attention to the issue.

“I think most people, when you talk to them about this practice, when they  understand what’s going on, they’re outraged,” Hatcher told the Wisconsin Examiner.

Foster children who would qualify for Social Security survivors’ benefits or veterans’ survivor benefits because their parents have died, as well as foster children who themselves have disabilities and qualify for Social Security disability payments (SSI) have all been affected, Hatcher said.

Hatcher first publicized the practice in a 2006 law review article that documented how state and local child welfare agencies, or the private contractors that they engage to manage their programs, were intercepting federal benefits that are supposed to go to foster children.

“The agencies identify foster children who are disabled or have deceased or disabled parents, apply for Social Security benefits on the children’s behalf, and then take the children’s benefits to reimburse foster care costs for which the children have no legal obligation,” Hatcher wrote.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003 upheld the practice, but advocates have been fighting to end it ever since.

In Wisconsin, Hatcher wrote in a 2018 op-ed article for the CapTimes, the administration of then-Gov. Scott Walker signed a contract in 2011 with Maximus Inc. that the management company used to “increase the number of children classified as disabled and to locate children with deceased birth parents — not to provide more services to the children, but so the state can take their resources.”

Drawing on public records, Hatcher estimated that the contract yielded at least $3 million “in survivor and disability benefits from foster children each year” in Milwaukee County alone, “and the state has been taking millions more from foster children in other jurisdictions.”

Earlier this year the Evers administration estimated that about $3.2 million each year was being diverted from foster children’s SSI or Social Security survivors’ benefits, with about 95% going to fund the foster care system. The figures were cited in a Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s March summary of Evers’ proposed 2025-27 budget.

The governor’s budget proposal included a provision to end the diversion and instead deposit the benefits in trust funds for each child in foster care.

The proposal also included language to prohibit the Department of Children and Families or county child welfare agencies from using those funds to pay for foster care. DCF officials said the department would seek additional funding in the state budget to replace what counties lost as a result, according to the fiscal bureau’s summary.

The proposal to stop diverting the benefits was one of more than 600 items in Evers’ draft budget that the Republican majority on the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee deleted on the first day of budget deliberations.

Asked whether the Evers administration had any comment on the federal notice last week, the governor’s communications director, Britt Cudaback, replied in an email message, “Nothing beyond the fact we already tried to address this, but Republican lawmakers rejected the effort.”

Before his confirmation as ACF assistant secretary, Adams was director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. In May, he directed the department to stop diverting foster children’s survivor benefits, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

Idaho is one of 11 states that have ended the diversion of survivor benefits, according to the DHS/ACF press release.

The Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego has identified at least eight states and the District of Columbia that have completely banned the diversion of all benefits designated for foster children. A number of other states have attempted to stop the diversion of selected benefits.

The federal notice marks an important step in the campaign to end the practice, said Amy Harfeld, the institute’s national policy director.

“We’re very excited about what this does,” Harfeld told the Wisconsin Examiner. “It doesn’t fix the whole problem but it sets a really solid marker in the ground that not only keeps states moving forward but leads toward the next changes that need to be made to actually put an end to it.”

The Children’s Advocacy Institute acknowledges Wisconsin’s unsuccessful attempt to curb the practice in the 2025 budget.

With the failure of that effort, however, “Wisconsin isn’t looking so good right now,” Harfeld said. “It’s one of only 11 states that haven’t done anything.”