There are nearly 150 organizations in Santa Clara County, and over 2,100 across the state, in The Children's Movement - is yours? The Children's Movement is a network of businesses, nonprofits, and organizations across California that want kids to be prioritized in the policy-making process. Our goal is simply to connect organizations that care about kids - members do not have any obligations. If you join, we add you to our "pro-kid" list, and then share relevant updates. On occasion, we also invite Movement members to join us when we run campaigns on critical issues, but these are always optional. Join us! You can email Children Now at [email protected], or join here: www.childrennow.org/themovement/.

The Children's Movement network brought together over 560 organizations from across California to send a joint letter to California's congressional delegation expressing strong support for swift action on a five-year, clean funding extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program. The letter demonstrates the unprecedented, diverse support, ranging from the California Chamber of Commerce to the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and NAACP Pomona Valley. This effort demonstrates how connecting not just the various health, education, and child welfare organizations that serve children, but also business, labor, parent, civil rights, and other organizations can create a powerful base of support for California's children. You can review the letter by clicking here. 

Since 2013, Children Now has worked with youth in foster care to ensure we are capturing information about the quality of foster homes and caregivers in California. As the Department of Social Services (CDSS) works to develop a Youth Satisfaction Survey as part of CCR implementation, Children Now, in partnership with California Youth Connection (CYC), will continue to ensure that this is a youth-led process. CYC engaged nearly a hundred young people in the development of critical questions to ascertain how happy youth are in their placements and how cared for they feel. These youth also developed a survey process they felt comfortable with and that they believe will lead to a high response rate from young people in the foster care system. While significant progress has been made, there is still more work to be done to ensure a robust survey that amplifies the youth voice in the system and provides the state with vital data about caregiver performance. For more information, send email to Brittany Brown, Development and Outreach Assistant, at [email protected], or visit the Children Now website at www.childrennow.org.   

 

Kids in Common Stands with Dreamers!

Although the announcement from the White House to rescind DACA was expected, it does not make the news any less devastating. Kids in Common stands with our community in supporting those who are directly and indirectly affected by this cruel decision to roll back protections to young people who, while not born here, are Americans in every other sense of the word. DACA recipients are our students, colleagues, family members, and loved ones, and we must all stand together in protecting them. It is estimated that 24,000 Santa Clara County young adults are DACAmented. The county provides immigrant legal services with local accredited agencies to support these young adults and their families. You can learn more by clicking here. For additional information about the rights of DACAmented Americans, visit these websites: Educators for Fair Consideration and Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network.

Health status during childhood sets young people on a path toward good or poor health in adulthood. Kidsdata.org's new topic, Health Status, offers self- and parent-reported data on whether a child's health status is fair/poor, good, or excellent/very good. The data are available overall, by race/ethnicity, and by family income level for California and for counties. In California, children's health status has improved overall and for each race/ethnicity for which we have data since 2001. You can check out Health Status by clicking here.     

 

During this March 29 webinar sponsored by Kidsdata.org and the California Department of Public Health, panelists discussed how to describe the burden of childhood adversity in your community, how to frame your message most effectively, and how to engage and mobilize your community to address the roots and effects of childhood adversity. You can review the recording and presentation slides by clicking here; you can check out the responses to questions asked during the webinar by clicking here. 

California's school funding law, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), gives school districts flexibility-and an unprecedented opportunity -- to spend district dollars on early childhood education. It also provides parents, community members, and early childhood champions a chance to weigh in on how districts spend their resources. To help local advocates garner much needed funding for early childhood programming, Children Now created these helpful resources:
Step-by-Step Guide: You can review a step-by-step guide to help contact local district leaders and encourage them to fund early childhood programming in their local school districts by clicking here.
Sample Letter: You can read the sample letter that Children Now created for local advocates to use in encouraging their district board members to adopt a resolution that identifies your district as a preschool-12 district by clicking here.
Sample Resolution: You can review Children Now's sample resolution by clicking here.