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Forward for Children | April 2018
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Honoring Birmingham
Children’s Crusade in Action
Children were the frontline
soldiers and transforming catalysts in America’s greatest moral
movement of the twentieth century – the movement for civil
rights and equal justice.
On this 55th anniversary of the Birmingham Children’s
Crusade, Children’s Defense Fund will join Jack and Jill of America, Incorporated and more
than 2,000 children and adults in Birmingham, Alabama to remember,
honor, and follow the example of the children who stood up to fire
hoses and police dogs, went to jail by the
hundreds, and finally broke the back of Jim Crow in the city previously
known as “Bombingham,” by (re)committing to end
gun violence and child poverty in the United States.
On May 5, 2018 we will live stream a memorial service
from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It starts at 11:30am ET. Tune
in and share with others!
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Family First Act - Keeping Children Safely with
their Families
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As National Child Abuse Prevention Month comes to a close and we move into National Foster
Care Month, Children's Defense Fund (CDF) continues to work to
ensure the new Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First) will
truly help children. A child is abused and neglected in America every 47
seconds. To keep all children safe, we must get help to families early to
prevent maltreatment and treat it, and then get children and parents extra help
when problems continue so children can remain safely at home rather than enter
foster care. Family First guarantees states resources to provide quality
substance abuse and mental health prevention and treatment and in-home
parenting supports for children at risk of entry or re-entry in foster
care. It also offers new help for grandparents and other relatives who
often step in to assist when crises arise. The Opioid Crisis and
increasing demands on the child welfare system make Family First a critical
piece of the action needed to keep every child safe. Learn more about Family First and urge your state child welfare agency to make it
work for children.
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New Data Show Educational Inequities Persist
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Black children, other children of color, and children
with disabilities continue to be disproportionately suspended and expelled from
school, referred to law enforcement or arrested, and subjected to seclusion and
restraint according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil
Rights’ (OCR) newest Civil
Rights Data Collection (CRDC). Collected over the 2015-16 school
year, data are from more than 17,000 school districts; 96,000
schools; and 50 million students. Almost half (49%) of the students
were White, 26 percent Latino of any race, 15 percent Black, 5 percent Asian, 3
percent two or more races, 1 percent American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.4
percent Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. The new CRDC data
reinforce findings from the recently-released Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report that used CRDC data from the 2013-14 school year and
on-site interviews and found similar disparities in exclusionary and
punitive discipline.
Despite
continuing high rates of suspensions and expulsions, Secretary of Education
Betsy DeVos continues to threaten to withdraw the 2014 joint
Departments of Education and Justice school discipline guidance package that
addresses such inequities in discipline and reinforces the non-discrimination
requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, suggesting it has
failed in its goal. To the contrary, the guidance should be
preserved, highlighted and distributed more broadly. It reaffirms the
obligations school district leaders and those directly serving students have to
ensure discrimination does not interfere with students’ rights to learn and to
succeed. As Marian Wright Edelman said in her recent Child Watch Column “No Turning Back“,
these educational inequities must be confronted to help repair the harm and
ensure educational equity for all.
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Children’s Defense Fund Joins the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign
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The Children’s Defense Fund is excited to join over a dozen
leading national organizations in the Opportunity
Starts at Home campaign, a multi-sector housing campaign to meet the rental
housing needs of the nation’s low-income people. Housing
affordability is central to achieving better child outcomes, improved health,
higher educational attainment, and longer lifetime earnings. Homelessness,
unstable housing, and the unavailability of affordable housing all have dire
consequences. And the critical demand far outweighs the supply for those most in
need. Federal housing assistance reaches only 1 out of 4 eligible low-income
households. It’s way past time to make adequate and safe housing accessible
to all of America’s children and families. Join the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign. Contact
your Members of Congress to urge their support for stable, safe, affordable
housing. This May 1–8 participate in the “Our Homes, Our Voices” National Housing Week of Action, with events across the country
including letter-writing campaigns to elected officials, meal- and
story-sharing, community discussions, meetings with elected officials, and
nonpartisan voter registration drives.
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CDF Proctor Institute
– a Catalyst for Social Change
“If you want the opportunity and the chance to meet, hear, and
see history in the making, come to this Institute. It opens your mind, heart,
and soul to issues you didn’t think were important or relevant and drives you
do to more and better.”
Joi Adams, first-time participant
Now
is the time to register for the 24th
annual Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry (Proctor
Institute). Join us July 16–20, 2018 at CDF Haley Farm in Clinton, Tennessee. This year’s theme is “Realizing Dr. King’s Vision
for Every Child: Ending Child Poverty.” On the 50th anniversary of the
Poor People’s Campaign announced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and carried out
after his death by Marian Wright Edelman and countless others, the 2018 Proctor
Institute will look back at where we’ve
come from, examine where we are today,
and explore what more we must do to
realize Dr. King’s dream and end child poverty in our nation. Four plenary
sessions
will help us connect the civil rights movement then and the children’s movement
now as we hear from intergenerational voices. Don’t miss hearing and learning
from Dolores
Huerta,
President and Founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, Dr. William
Barber II,
founder of the Moral Mondays Movement, Rev. Jim
Lawson,
nonviolent direct action organizing strategist for Dr. King, and Taylor Branch, historian
and author, and many others.
Learn more and register
today! Early bird special ends TODAY! Help us spread the word. Download
and share this flyer with your community.
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Child Defender Fellowship Program Graduates Its First
Cohort
We are excited to announce the Child Defender Fellowship
Program has graduated its first class! During the past seven months, more than 100 Child Defender Fellows from across the country have gained a deeper
understanding of policy issues affecting children and strengthened their advocacy
and organizing skills. They contacted members of Congress in support of the
Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), and the Child Care for Working Families
Act. They met with local leaders. They built action teams to bring positive
change in their communities. And they acquired the tools to help them sustain
their efforts as they partner with other child advocates in their states.
We are proud of all of the accomplishments of
our first Child Defender Fellowship Program class, and we look forward to seeing them put their passion
into practice.
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Making a Difference
for Children in Texas, New York, and California
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On
April 8, in Austin Texas, Children’s
Defense Fund-Texas co-hosted a community Town Hall for Our Lives. In a packed
auditorium at the William B. Travis High School, students from the Austin area discussed
with their elected officials the ways to reduce gun violence – particularly in
schools. More than 20 students shared their stories of loss, pain and fear caused
by gun violence. Students urged lawmakers to focus on students of color in legislative
reforms: “Though securing our safety is important, I don’t think increasing the
presence of police in our schools is the answer, at least not if [the police]
don’t also receive cultural competency training, because it can result in the
over-policing of students of color,” one student said to a round of applause.
Students committed to both voting and getting many of their peers to vote.
Learn more about Children’s Defense Fund’s Protect
Children Not Guns campaign and different ways you can join.
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Children’s Defense Fund-New York continues
its advocacy work on behalf of unaccompanied migrant children who have found a
home in New York after fleeing prevalent poverty and violence in regions of
Central America. Their latest report, “Unaccompanied
Migrant Youth: Service Needs and Gaps in the New York Metropolitan Area,” identifies
challenges unaccompanied minors and their caretakers face, highlights the gaps
in needed services, and offers recommendations for addressing these
challenges. The report, the result of the 2016 partnership with UNICEF
USA, shows unaccompanied migrant youth are a vulnerable population with complex
needs and when provided with appropriate services and support, they can thrive
as productive and valuable residents of New York or future U.S. citizens.
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Children’s
Defense Fund-California continues to build the positive potential of young people with its
youth leadership and development program. Youth advocates from CDF Beat the
Odds Scholarship and Long Beach Youth Action Scholars programs traveled with CDF-California
staff members to Joshua Tree National Park in March to participate in the Storytelling
Retreat. For three days, training participants immersed themselves in
storytelling, exploring peer narratives, learning the framework of oral history
and the importance of intergenerational writing. “When asking the narrator
questions, I could envision how the person felt at that moment when they were
12 years old—that was transformative for me,” shared Maria Luisa Gonzalez, one
of the participants.
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Register to Vote
Your
local, state and national elections are closer than you may think. Check your
registration status or register to vote, request an
absentee ballot, or update an address on-line. After you’re done,
encourage your friends and family to do the same.
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