National

  • Child Poverty

    What You Need to Know About Rental Assistance: A Brief Background on the Basics

    Federal rental assistance is a set of several programs—mostly administered through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Agriculture with support from tax credits— that help families with little or no income cover their housing costs. These programs help in many different ways, but the basic concept is that families with low incomes contribute a certain, sustainable amount of their income to their monthly rent payments and the government covers the rest. In total, these programs help more than 9 million people in 4.6 million households, more than a third of which were households with children.

  • Child Welfare

    CDF Endorses the CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2021

    Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) have introduced the CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2021 (S. 1927), which would reauthorize and amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. The Children’s Defense Fund was proud to endorse this legislation because of its significant increase in funding for prevention, its emphasis on race equity in child welfare, its overdue focus on child abuse and neglect fatalities, and the fact that the law would guarantee right to counsel for children and parents in all cases involving child abuse and neglect allegations.

    | National

  • Immigration

    I ❤️ My Immigrant Family

    America is a nation of values, founded on the ideal that we are all created equal. These values—freedom, equality, and opportunity—are strengthened by our immigrant family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. We love them, we’re glad they’re here, and we recognize that in order for children and this nation to flourish and prosper, we must commit to policies that reflect that 1 in 4 children in the U.S. live with at least one immigrant parent or are immigrants themselves.

    | National

  • Child Poverty

    What You Need to Know About TANF: A Brief Background on the Basics

    Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal block grant program for states, tribes, and territories designed to help families with a variety of services. States receive the block grant funding and use it to administer programs that provide cash assistance, child care, work supports and activities, child welfare, and more. States also use the funding to help families with children experiencing poverty pay for groceries, rent, diapers, clothing, and other basic necessities. In Fiscal Year 2020, which spans from October 2019 – September 2020, more than 1 million families—including more than 2 million children—received TANF assistance.

  • Youth Justice

    We Must Put an End to the Racist and Counteractive Practice of Juvenile Fees and Fines

    Juvenile fees and fines are not rehabilitative – instead, they increase recidivism and destabilize families, criminalize poverty, and heighten existing racial disparities within the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. It's time we move beyond reforming broken policies and put an end to these harmful practices altogether.

    | National

  • Child Poverty

    The Child Tax Credit Will Not Reach Every Child Until Congress Simplifies Complicated Tax Rules

    The current expanded CTC still leaves out hundreds of thousands of children due to arcane rules built into the tax code, collectively known as the “child-claiming” rules. It is time for Congress to rewrite the child-claiming rules to ensure the CTC follows each child, no matter their household composition, family structure, or where they live.

    | National

  • Child Poverty

    To Reach Every Child, the Child Tax Credit Eligibility Requirements Must Be Changed

    To ensure that no child is excluded from the CTC because of their family structure, frequency of moving, or their involvement in other systems, Congress must make critical changes to the definition of “qualifying child” for the purpose of the CTC. To expand eligibility, the CTC should be accessible to all children regardless of their relationship to their caregiver and the bene t should continue to support children and their families as their living arrangements change.