Blog

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), along with Children’s Rights and expert organizations working to improve outcomes for children and youth, filed an amicus brief to challenge the Trump administration’s published Final Rule that would eliminate decades-long basic protections and remove standards of detention for immigrant children and families.

In June 2019, as part of the Pediatrics Supporting Parents initiative, CSSP and our colleagues at Manatt Health released Fostering Social and Emotional Health through Pediatric Primary Care: A Blueprint for Leveraging Medicaid and CHIP to Finance Change.  Designed as a practical guide for policymakers, program administrators, managed care plans, pediatric care providers, advocates and [...]

This blog is part of CSSP’s six-part #Evidence4Equity series, where we invite evaluators, researchers, and foundation leaders to elaborate further on some of the issues raised by the publication, Placing Equity Concerns at the Center of Knowledge Development, and to share their reflections on how they are intentionally focusing on equity in knowledge development. Join us [...]

PBS's award-winning documentary series, Visionaries, recently featured an episode on the legal fight by Children’s Rights and partners across Tennessee to reform Tennessee's child welfare system. The class action lawsuit was filed in 2000 against the Governor of Tennessee and the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) “on behalf of all foster [...]

We have all heard the labels, and sometimes used them ourselves: Foster youth. Special needs kid. Delinquent. Homeless youth.  Such labels are convenient shorthand, but they don’t reflect all that we need to know about the young person in front of us. They generalize what we think we know about youth in similar circumstances while [...]

More than a year ago, CSSP convened a symposium titled, Using Evidence to Advance More Equitable Outcomes for Children, Youth and Families, with two critical goals: (1) to explore the relationship between evidence and achieving more equitable outcomes, and (2) to lift up the value of recognizing often overlooked evidence necessary for advancing equity.

Family Specialists are the linchpin of the Development Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone (DULCE) intervention; without their work, families would not experience the transformative healthcare and approach to well-being cultivated by the program. DULCE is an innovative intervention based in the pediatric care setting. Clinical sites proactively address social determinants of health, promote the [...]

Almost everything I learned about being queer, I learned on the Internet. YouTube was the first place I saw someone come out. Tumblr opened my eyes to an extensive LGBTQ+ community, filled with people expressing themselves unabashedly. Dozens of Google searches and blog posts educated me on the importance of sexual health for everyone, not [...]

Nearly two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, General Gordon Granger and Union soldiers traveled to Galveston, Texas, to bring the news that the Civil War had ended, and all enslaved people were free. While the 13th Amendment formally abolished slavery in the United States in January of 1865, June 19th marked the [...]

We at CSSP were saddened and continue to mourn the passing of MaryLee Allen, our friend and inspirational colleague who shaped supports and opportunities for the nation’s children and families for more than 40 years at the Children’s Defense Fund. MaryLee was quite literally irreplaceable in the contributions she made to the nation’s child welfare system. [...]