So yesterday, we were on the phone with Katie Couric...

No, she didn't butt dial us.

It was a conference call with bloggers from SVMoms Group and the purpose was to have a conversation about children and the recession. CBS News will be featuring special programming which will be focussing upon the economy and how children (and their families) are coping in these tough times.

We were asked to submit a couple of questions to get the ball rolling. I sent the following:

Having worked as a school social worker in rural Louisiana, I know all too well the high incidence of children living in poverty existed long before this recession. In my small school in Plain Dealing Louisiana I had students without indoor plumbing or electricity. And this was in the early 90's. It wasn't uncommon for teachers to collect clothing and food for entire families at my school. So while many people, outside of rural communities or poor parts of urban areas, may think this poverty condition is "new" it's not. We've been ignoring the blips on the radar screen for years. The recession has merely made the blips larger and more difficult to ignore.

1. What of the children who have survived hurricanes Katrina, Ivan and now have parents facing an additional hardship of a recession?

2. How are the programs initially set up to meet the needs of this population of children and their families, now effected by the compounded problem of the recession?

Over at DC Metro Moms, I've written a little bit about some of my work with families living in poverty. Aviva worked with Parents As Teachers as a parent educator, visiting families at home and knows how parents worry about how their children will do if the family is under stress too. She encountered families struggling to make ends meet as well as families who had decent resources. We all know parenting can be tough even under good circumstances.

When I worked as a crisis intervention counselor in Kansas, I heard more than my fair share of families dealing with rising health care costs for their children and facing insurmountable insurance hurdles. But this was before the recession. These were times when money may have been tight for families, but at least unemployment levels were reasonable and while we had experienced a brief war during that time, the price of the war wasn't as high as the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not only are military families under far more stress, military families aren't even defined the same way if we consider how many are affiliated with Reservists and National Guard.

Back then, however, the day to day was at least viewed as managable by most people's standards.

Now what's going on? We've got a recession. And families are hurting. Parents are overwhelmed with how to handle job loss, insurance gaps and health care needs. Education budgets are being cut, but at the same time schools are stepping in to be community centers in a way they haven't been doing for quite some time.

And Katie Couric is using her star power to be the voice of the children. Admittedly, I was dubious. I've seen how celebrities adopt a pet project, and then abandon it soon after. But then Katie Couric said something during our phone call that resonated with me. She said she felt this issue was on par with her work to promote awareness about colon cancer. I knew Katie's husband had died from colon cancer. And I knew she had worked tirelessly to get information about colon cancer to the public. She further stated the issue of children and the recession, once addressed, isn't one that will go away and will have to be revisited. Just as she does with colon cancer.

And with that statement, she won me over. We hope you will watch the CBS News coverage of Children of the Recession. It will be featured programming on CBS Evening News, Face the Nation and The Early Show.