National

  • Reflecting on the 26th Amendment After 50 Years

    Rooted in our history in the civil rights movement, CDF will continue to fight to ensure that fifty years from now, we can celebrate a 2021 civic redemption, built and led by young leaders who are standing up to finally fulfill the promise of the 26th Amendment.

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  • Child Poverty

    What You Need to Know About Federal Rental Assistance

    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. Our new fact sheet provides a useful primer on federal rental assistance.

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  • Child Health

    CDF Endorses the RISE from Trauma Act

    By increasing resources to prevent and respond to toxic stress and trauma, the RISE from Trauma Act is an important step in aligning our policies to promote child well-being and ensure that children are able to thrive in their communities.

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  • 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

    Supreme Court Rules on Foster Care Non-Discrimination Case

    While this decision did not undermine the right of state and local governments to protect children and families from taxpayer-funded discrimination, it does underscore how tenuous these protections can be. The decision is a potent reminder of how crucial it is that we pass the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act (S.1848/ H.R. 3488) to ensure that all children and youth in the child welfare system are safe from discrimination, no matter where they live or who they love.

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  • Youth Justice

    The Juvenile Justice System Should Treat Kids Like Kids

    CDF joined more than 50 organizations writing to Congress in support of this legislation to reduce children’s contact with the criminal justice system; address racial disparities in criminalization, arrests, and sentencing; and create more equitable and age-appropriate measures for those children that do encounter these systems.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.