The President will release his proposed budget this morning. Some of the proposals have been leaked from the President and White House including his proposals to expand child care and the child care tax credit or the proposal to expand access to community colleges. Under the new proposal for child care, the President would provide
Last Wednesday Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) offered an amendment in a committee deliberation to assure Medicaid coverage for young people who had been in foster care. Under the ACA a young person who exits foster care at 18 (or older) is covered by Medicaid to age 26. There has been a complication with the provision
On Tuesday, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced a bill to reauthorize the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA). The program provides three different grants to community-based organizations to reach out to homeless youth on the streets, provide crisis intervention housing, basic life necessities, family interventions and longer-term housing options when
On Tuesday, The Children’s Defense Fund released a new report called Ending Child Poverty Now highlighting proposals they say could end child poverty, as defined by the Supplemental Poverty measure. CDF argues that we can make this happen by investing another 2 percent of the federal budget to improve existing programs and policies that increase
Although the new Congress starts this week, some of the key committee decisions were taking shape in the old Congress. An official announcement on committee changes will be made sometime this week. The all-important Senate Finance Committee had 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans. With the new Congress the powerful committee will now have 26 members instead of the
On Wednesday, July 23, the House of Representatives passed HR 4980, the “Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act.’ The legislation will reauthorize the Adoption Incentive Fund for three years and extend it to guardianship placements. It will also extend the Family Connections Grants by one year through this current fiscal year of 2014. After
On Tuesday, July 22, there was a Senate briefing on S. 2570, the Tribal Adoption Parity Act. The National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) is circulating a letter of support for the bill. This bill would ensure that families who adopt children designated as “special needs” in tribal court are eligible for the same flat
The National Quality Improvement Center on Differential Response in Child Protective Services (QIC-DR) has released the final report from the Cross-Site Evaluation on Differential Response. Differential Response (DR) represents a different way of structuring a state’s child protective services system (CPS). DR allows CPS agencies to respond differently to child abuse and neglect based on
The Congressional Baby Caucus celebrated its 5th birthday with a briefing on veterans and families. The briefing was a follow up to the Caucus’s initial briefing five years ago which also focused on military families with young children. The briefing included a panel of three that included one program expert and two veterans to reflect
With Congress returning after the July 4th holiday break, the number of days left to legislate is dwindling to less than 30 actual days. The House is scheduled to be in session for 28 more days before the November election while the Senate (being less specific) is likely to be in for a similar number