Children Now

Education: Children Nows education program aims to ensure every child has access to high-quality early learning opportunities, a rigorous TK-12 education, including high-quality STEM, after-school and summer programs, and access to affordable higher education. Through research and analysis, policy development, education and outreach, communications, convenings, and advocacy, we have worked to dismantle inequitable and racially discriminatory systems and achieved the following: led advocacy efforts to secure major new supports for child care, resulting in more than $1.4 billion to support child care providers and a new equitable family fee system to make child care more affordable; helped end inequitable school suspensions, addressing equity concerns associated with the disproportionate rate of suspensions among students of color; continued serving as the backbone organization for the Bay Area STEM Ecosystem and the California STEM Network, where we continued pushing for increased access to high quality STEM education, particularly for underrepresented groups; secured long sought changes to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), ensuring that the state budget include requirements that school districts explicitly state how their extra LCFF funding will be used to close achievement gaps, identifying actions that will improve outcomes for students and schools with low performance, and establishing goals for the targeted funding schools will receive to address the needs of Black students and track the progress of long-term English learners; championed additional funding to provide $300 million in ongoing resources to support Black student success; successfully launched the Summit for Student Leaders project, aimed at supporting the development, engagement, and connection of well-informed youth leaders and youth-led organizations so that their voices have a stronger impact on policy change at the state and local level; sponsored and advocated for several initiatives to scale and sustain teacher diversity, recruitment, preparation and retention; worked for high quality early childhood and TK-12 bilingual teaching and learning and a policy framework that incorporates accountability and finance structures that elevate the critical need to focus on DLL and EL success; and advocated for funding increases for the UC, CSU and community college systems so that they can meet the student-centered priorities outlined in the UC and CSU Compacts and Roadmap" for California Community Colleges which we supported.

Child Welfare: Children Nows child welfare program works to address the comprehensive health, education, and social service needs of children in the child welfare system. Through our research, policy development, education, and communications efforts, we have achieved the following: continued advocating to ensure that families have the basic income needed to house, care for, and feed their children; successfully elevated effective strategies to increase transparency and accountability around the supports local educational agencies provide to students in foster care to improve their academic outcomes; worked with the California Department of Social Services and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to implement several recommendations from focus groups to identify opportunities to improve Family Urgent Response System and collaborating with members of the California Youth Connection to revise outreach and education materials to better share information with youth about FURS; co-sponsored legislation to establish a statewide Child Welfare Disaster Respond Fund to ensure grants and resources are immediately available following a disaster; supported efforts to provide young people, currently or formerly in foster care, access to the supports they need to successfully transition into adulthood; participated in various initiatives and workgroups to ensure that health care needs of youth, currently or formerly in foster care, are consistently considered as part of the numerous state health care reform efforts underway; and collaborated with a range of stakeholders on reforming the Home-Based Family Care Rate structure to ensure that the appropriate resources are provided to families to stabilize children and youth in their homes.

Health: Children Nows health program focuses on ensuring that children pre-natal to age 26 have meaningful and equitable access to high-quality, culturally responsive, affordable health care, including physical, behavioral, and oral health care services, and other key services like home visiting and developmental screenings that are vital for Californias youngest children. Through our research, analysis, policy development, education, outreach, and advocacy efforts, we have achieved the following: led efforts to prioritize children's mental health in the state budget, allowing children and youth to access mental health services without needing a diagnosis, and requiring counties to prioritize infants and toddlers when assessing need; educated policymakers on the needs of students who are struggling with addiction and appropriate school-system responses to support California's children and youth; uplifted the need for a more reasonable process for parents/caregivers to get services for their kids, by proposing automatic-review of children's mental health denials by health plans; continued advocating and building on the learnings of the Asthma Mitigation Project to ensure new health plan benefits provide asthma remediation services to Medi-Cal members; led policy development efforts to allow non-licensed professionals, such as community health workers, to provide and reimbursed for asthma preventive services and in-home visits in Medi-Cal; continued to push the Department of Health Care Services to use their accountability levers to hold plans accountable for delivering and coordinating basic care for kids and for meaningful quality improvement; led advocacy to continuously cover eligible children in Medi-Cal during their first five years; led efforts to develop accountable care coordination policies, including Enhanced Care Management and Closed Loop Referral policy; continued to work to transform Medi-Cal access for Kids by leading the Medi-Cal Excellence in Early Childhood Outcomes Collaborative Learning Community and supporting family-centered quality improvement efforts; launched the Hearing Aid Coverage for Children Program and worked to close the insurance market gap for 20,000 deaf and hard of hearing children; launched the California Alliance for Children's Environmental Health to raise awareness of environmental health issues and inequities impacting children and identifying and building momentum behind focused policy priorities to improve environmental conditions for children, while elevating youth voice in developing an environmental health policy agenda; developed and co-led a family advocate workgroup to support caregivers and advocates that are part of state groups such as the Medi-Cal Children's Health Advisory Panel and the California Children's Services Advisory Group; provided technical assistance to local health departments in six counties: Fresno, Los Angeles, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare; and worked to expand the Medical Dental Referral and Navigation System to San Joaquin County, to support care coordinators in facilitating and tracking dental referrals for children who had not been to a dentist in the past 12 months.