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Young people deserve to feel supported and loved. They deserve access to affirming and inclusive health care; to caring adults who fully support and honor their development; to schools that promote their growth and learning; and to communities and friends that respect and support them. Unfortunately, despite knowing what young people need, policymakers in many [...]

LGBTQ+ youth deserve to be affirmed and surrounded by a loving community—whether they are living at home with their families or in foster care.  While there have been some positive shifts over the past year, there have also been an incredible number of attacks on LGBTQ+, and specifically trans, young people. As we look toward [...]

Parenting is both joyful and challenging, deeply fulfilling and also incredibly hard. Even in the best of circumstances, parenting carries physical, emotional, and financial demands. Parents face daily stressors; financial pressures, demands on their time, concerns about their children’s exposure to technology and social media, and worries about their well-being, health, safety, and futures. Parents [...]

As we look toward 2025, we have an important opportunity to promote economic security by advancing unrestricted cash assistance, or a guaranteed income, for young adults and families with children.  There is real momentum behind unrestricted cash, as the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit in 2021, pandemic-era stimulus checks, and local guaranteed income [...]

Heading into 2025, the challenges young people and families face are significant, but so are the opportunities. There is energy around passing an expanded Child Tax Credit, new and much needed attention to the stressors parents face and the mental health toll parenting can take, and a bipartisan commitment to re-orient supports upstream, before families [...]

Strengthening Families, developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), is a research-informed, strength-based approach that helps families, programs, and communities increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. The framework is centered around helping families build five Protective Factors: Parent resilience Social connections Knowledge of [...]

Raegen Selden talked with CBS Evening News about how the Child Tax Credit, which was temporarily expanded in 2021, is critical for children and families at all times. “Bills still needed to be paid and things still needed to be bought. And it was a comfort in knowing that you had this extra income [during [...]

The Census Bureau released data this week indicating that families with children experienced high rates of financial hardship and economic insecurity for a second year in a row, as policymakers have allowed critical pandemic-era investments in children and families to expire. Lawmakers’ decision to sunset investments in children and families over the last two years has had predictably devastating results. In 2022, when the temporary expansion of the CTC expired, child poverty more than doubled, from 5.2 to 12.4 percent, and as this week’s Census data show it remained high in 2023. In 2023, refundable credits still lifted 6.4 million people out of poverty, including 3.4 million children; the CTC alone lifted approximately 1.4 million children out of poverty. But because lawmakers have failed to reinstate the CTC expansion, refundable credits are doing less to reduce poverty than we saw in 2021, when 9.6 million people were lifted out of poverty by refundable credits, and 5.3 million people, including 2.9 million children, were lifted out of poverty by the CTC alone.

Safe Havens II: We Must Affirm and Protect Trans, Nonbinary, and Gender Diverse Youth in Out-of-Home Systems, developed by CSSP, Children’s Rights, Lambda Legal, and Unicorn Solutions, includes an update on important law and policy protections and attacks on LGBQ+ and TNGD young people along with recommendations for system improvement from young advocates with lived experience in out-of-home systems.

During the pandemic, the expanded Child Tax Credit was a lifeline for millions of families. However, I was one of the many who couldn’t benefit from it.  Why? At 15, I gave my baby to family members. But because the adoption was never finalized, I actually ended up owing child support—and only found out after it had [...]