National

  • Youth Justice

    "I Am A Child": The Adultification of Black Children

    No 9-year-old child should be handcuffed or pepper sprayed; no 9-year-old child should be arrested. Yet, this incident is not unique. Too often, Black children are treated as adults, and their normal adolescent behaviors treated as delinquent.

    | National

  • Child Welfare

    Family First Prevention Services Act: Implementing the Provisions that Support Kinship Families Checklist

    Family First Prevention Services Act makes historic reforms to the child welfare system to better support children, families, and kinship caregivers, and promote a kin-first culture. Many of the reforms have significant implications for connecting children to kinship caregivers and further promoting permanency through kin guardianships. This checklist is designed to help child welfare agency staff take advantage of provisions in the law to engage and support kinship families.

  • Child Poverty

    CDF Urges Congress to Ensure Children and Their Families Are Stably Housing During the Pandemic and Beyond

    COVID-19 has exacerbated the nation’s affordable housing crisis—the result of a long history of racist housing policy including chronic underinvestment—the burden of which falls disproportionately on Black and Latino children. The emergency relief passed in December—which provided $25 billion in emergency rental assistance and extended the federal eviction moratorium—was a critical short-term step to protect the millions of families with children who are behind on their rent, but more must be done to ensure that these families emerge from the pandemic free from back rent and the looming threat of eviction.

  • Child Poverty

    CDF Calls for Congress to Expand the Child Tax Credit in the Next COVID-19 Relief Package

    Families need immediate support as they struggle with the costs of raising children in the midst of an ongoing pandemic and faltering economy. Ensuring that families have adequate support is especially important for the Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and immigrant communities who have been hit hardest by the current economic and health crises, and who have too often been excluded from support and services. We urge Congress to act without delay to strengthen and expand the Child Tax Credit, and ensure that all children in need are able to regularly and easily access the benefit.

  • Child Poverty

    President Biden Takes Key Steps to Address Hunger in New Executive Order

    Recognizing that hunger is a moral and political failure with devastating consequences for our children and nation, President Biden exercised his authority last Thursday to issue an executive order to strengthen federal nutrition assistance. This executive order includes a number of provisions to address shortcomings in existing COVID relief efforts and provide immediate relief for millions of families struggling to put food on the table.

    | National