State and Federal Policy Reform

In recent years, we have made policy recommendations and funded advocacy to support kinship families, strengthen early childhood development, align federal child welfare financing with best practices, increase children’s reading proficiency and provide alternatives to youth detention and reduce incarceration.

We promote the effective administration of essential safety-net programs proven to lift families out of poverty and the expansion of refundable tax credits for low-income working families, including the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Through our KIDS COUNT network, we support state advocacy organizations to improve programs serving kids and families and achieve policy wins on issues affecting both.

To equip advocates, policymakers and the media with the best and most accurate information, we invest in strong analysis of state budgets and taxes and federal budget issues.

We provide data, resources and technical assistance to state-level advocates seeking to improve child welfare systems.

We support research projects on the benefits of family leave insurance, poverty measurement and demographic information about low-income families, as well as innovative state approaches to services for low-income working families, such as health coverage, food programs and child care subsidies.

Poverty is a key indicator of whether a child will reach his or her full potential. In addition to developing a better way to measure poverty, we support efforts to connect families to jobs and school and protect federal programs proven to lift people out of poverty.

We focus on ensuring that working families have access to safety-net and public-benefit programs — such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the State Child Health Insurance Program and the Earned Income Tax Credit — that help parents earn enough to better support their families.

As solutions emerge for problems such as intergenerational poverty, early childhood development, economic and racial inequality, we invest in policy research and analysis to bolster these strategies.

Because children do best in families, we promote policies aimed at reducing the need for foster care; enabling relatives to care for children who have been abused or neglected; helping recruit, retain and support family foster parents; and limiting non-family care to short-term treatment that is needed to resolve crisis situations so children can return to families. A key priority for us is to better align federal child welfare funding with these best practices.

We advocate for policies that reduce youth incarceration and increase community-based alternatives for working with young people involved in the juvenile justice system.

To ensure kids in foster care don’t experience unnecessary school moves with placement changes and experience positive educational outcomes, we supported advocates in pushing for the federal Uninterrupted Scholars Act.

Several state legislatures have adopted best practices in such areas as foster home licensing standards, tuition waivers for foster youth and family-finding practices to connect youth in foster care with relatives or close family friends.

Through our partners, we influenced recent federal policy discussions, ensuring billions of dollars of support for low-income working families. Grantees helped protect essential safety-net programs from sequestration and extended key public benefit programs, including the earned income and child tax credits.

KIDS COUNT organizations achieved policy wins in 33 states that resulted in an estimated $3.6 billion in new investments that will serve 2.2 million children and their families.

Casey-supported Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, an online clearinghouse for news on connecting families to the economy, has more than 50,000 visitors each month.

Opportunity Nation and its Opportunity Index provide a platform for discussing how communities can connect young people and adults to school and the economy. Our support has helped Opportunity Nation’s messages reach more than 100 million Americans.

If you're interested in learning more about effective policies for children and families, visit the following Casey-sponsored resources:

• Children’s Health Watch
  
• Economic Hardship Reporting Project
  
• Legal Center for Foster Care and Education
  
• Opportunity Nation
  
• Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
  
• State Policy Advocacy and Reform Center
  
• Work Support Strategies: Streamlining Access, Strengthening Families