In Defense of Children

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Viewpoints and analysis from the CDF Policy team on issues impacting children. CDF’s policy advocacy focuses on the whole child because children don’t come in pieces. We seek to end child poverty and give every child a healthy start, a quality early childhood experience, a level education playing field, safe families and communities free from violence—with special attention to children involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.







Senate Hearing Describes a “Perfect Storm” of COVID-19 Problems for Country’s Marginalized Students

Without a large and urgent Congressional investment in public education, our students are facing a “perfect storm” of problems caused by COVID-19: schools with scant budgets will be forced to make massive cuts, which will likely come from the parts of school budgets meant to provide critical resources to marginalized students, exactly at the moment when students are going to need more support than ever.

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New Analysis from CDF: TANF Must Be Strengthened to Fight For Racial Justice and Help Families Afford Their Basic Needs

We as a nation are weathering a tough storm, and low-income children and families, especially families of color, are carrying a disproportionate load of the health and economic burden. As new research shows that this pandemic could cause child poverty rates to rise by 53 percent, especially for children of color, Congress must act now. Here’s where the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program comes in.

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The Child Care is Essential Act Will Ensure Desperately Needed Relief for Child Care

CDF will continue to join the call for immediate relief to ensure child care settings and families can weather this crisis – and we are proud to endorse the Child Care is Essential Act which will help get us there. Without this funding, parents will not have the care they need to go back to work, employers will be unable to restart without workers, and our economic recovery will be jeopardized. The child care system needs to be funded like the necessity it is for families, businesses, and our economy.

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The Two Deadly Diseases Plaguing Our Nation—and Our Children

We must do better and stand up for our Black children if we are to achieve our mission to leave no child behind. We must fight for a system that treats Black children and families fairly, equally, and justly. We must commit to ending child poverty and creating a society that values the lives of all children by providing equitable, affordable, and high-quality education, health care, nutrition, and housing to all families. We will not stop fighting until we have dismantled systems of oppression and institutional racism and until our country values the lives of Black children just as much as White children. 

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A Choice to Be Separated is No Choice at All

Parents in three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) family detention centers were last week presented with this false choice: either separate from their children or agree to be detained together indefinitely during the COVID-19 pandemic. We as a nation cannot allow this administration to exploit COVID-19 as an opportunity to pursue its cruel, anti-immigrant agenda. Don’t look away. Stand with families. 

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Pandemic TANF Assistance Is an Important Step Forward to Help Low-Income Children and Families

Families should not have to worry where their next meal will come from or face harsh requirements that were impossible to meet even before this pandemic. The Pandemic TANF Assistance Act would provide vital assistance to families who need it most--an essential step toward comprehensive action to help children and families confronting severe economic hardship and poverty. 

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Pediatricians are Concerned with Declines in Well-Child Visits and Vaccines during COVID-19

As the coronavirus pandemic upends daily life all across the country, families must continue to follow public health recommendations by staying at home and limiting contact with others whenever possible. But an unintended negative consequence of the pandemic is the news that up to 80 percent of American children are not visiting their pediatricians’ offices right now and are missing out on routine well-child visits that include important developmental screenings and vaccinations.

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