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This is the 16th annual Children’s Week at the state capitol. The annual event highlights the needs of Florida’s kids, and as Mike Vasilinda tells us, the needs have never been greater.

A hundred thousand paper hands hang in the Capitol for Children’s Week. The bright colors offer hope for the future, but advocates say the 2011 budget will be anything but kind to kids.

“We’re gonna knock kids out of healthcare,” Roy Miller with the Children’s Campaign said. “We’re gonna put more kids in incarcerated situations because we’re not going to care for them properly in the community.”

Healthy Families, which helps troubled families stay together, is being cut…again. School readiness is on the chopping block. And rich, poor, or middle class, a nearly 7 percent cut to public schools will affect millions of children.

800,000 Florida children already live below the poverty level. That’s defined as a family of four making less than 22,000.

But there are bright spots. 16-year-old Brianna Thomas is about to be adopted. Brianna was at the Capitol with her soon-to-be mother to give hope to other older foster children.

“I was abused and neglected by my grandma,” she said. “She did these things because she is an alcoholic.”

In foster care for three and a half years, Brianna says she knew she would have a family someday.

“I knew God had a family for me but I didn’t actually know that it was this soon,” she said.

As part of Children’s Week, the Department of Children and Families announced a three-hundred-thousand dollar gift of the book, Victor’s Dream. The book paints a picture of hope for children like Brianna in foster care.