Citizens Committee for Children of New York

As New York City endures unprecedented public health and economic crises, we are fully committed to ensuring that children, families, and communities’ needs are met, and that the city and its residents don’t just recover from these crises but thrive. We are also committed to pandemic recovery efforts that confront the drivers of inequity and systemic racism, ensuring that all children, families, and communities have access to the infrastructure, support and services that are proven to promote equity, justice, and well-being.

In response to unprecedented challenges facing children and families, CCC’s policy and advocacy strategies across areas will continue to advance policy, regulation, legislation and budget proposals essential to recovery and mobility – advancing proposals that lift incomes; stabilize housing and increase affordable housing; promote high quality health, behavioral health and developmental supports; reconnect children to early care, youth services and education support to address learning loss; and strengthen primary preventive services in child welfare and youth justice.

CCC’s research and data will include reports that address inequities experienced by communities of color, as well as projects that leverage our established methods of community-based research to inform program development and design. We will build upon our Keeping Track Online database, which continues to be a platform to turn data users into advocates for New York’s children and families. We will also leverage findings from our participatory research projects last year, including our citywide, cellphone-based survey of youth and our citywide and statewide survey of child welfare providers, to inform budgetary, legislative, and policy advocacy during the coming program year. This will be supplemented by new participatory research projects with caregivers of young children in northern Manhattan, with household heads who have lived experience of housing insecurity and the shelter system, and with caregivers and service providers for whom child care enrollment has been impeded.

Our civic engagement will build public dialogue around the needs of New York City children, families and communities and mobilize New Yorkers around solutions that promote equity and well-being. We will continue our annual Community Leadership Course to help participants better understand the needs of children and families, and the systems and programs designed to address those needs; and our YouthAction programming, which will provide scaffolded opportunities for high school students to learn the tools of effective advocacy. Finally, CCC will develop new opportunities to host or participate in workshops, webinars, and other events to raise awareness of our data expertise and policy priorities, and host a series of convenings to engage New York’s key decision makers in discussions about child and family well-being and opportunities to advance equity and recovery for New York children and families.

As a multi-issue organization, dedicated to ensuring that every New York child is healthy, housed, educated and safe, CCC is optimally placed to explore the interconnected nature of the challenges and barriers facing children and families. As such it can address the root causes of inequity and illustrate how health, housing, education, safety, and economic conditions are intertwined for parents, children, and communities.

All of CCC’s activities are led by facts and data. We collect and analyze data sourced from city, state and federal agencies to produce reports, data resources, community needs assessments and advocacy briefs that deepen public understanding of how New York’s children are faring and what public policies are needed to reduce risk factors and improve mobility and well-being. Additionally, we undertake participatory data projects to better understand the lived experience of New York’s children and families in both the identification of needs and of solutions. These data put facts into the hands of policy makers, philanthropists, and direct service professionals and inform statewide, citywide, and community-specific opportunities for progress.

During the past year CCC has created a constant drumbeat of analysis and products that have driven public dialogue and influenced decisions made by city and state leaders.

At the city level, we successfully advocated to increase the value of rent subsidies, expand 3-K in every district, bring additional child care seats to communities most in need, and dramatically expand access to summer enrichment programming. Our advocacy with leaders in Albany helped to ensure that federal stimulus dollars and state investments were leveraged to protect and expand resources for behavioral health, housing supports, education, child care, cash aid, child welfare, and more.

We also ended the calendar year with several historic pieces of state legislation being enacted, including legislation that would:
· Raise the lower age of juvenile delinquency from seven to twelve, establish multiple services and programs for children, and provide New Yorkers who have been denied youthful offender status a chance to reapply.
· Alleviate the financial stress experienced by child care providers by streamlining the system for payments and requiring local districts to offer them a direct deposit option.
· Extend the term and expand the scope of the Child Care Availability Task Force charged with identifying opportunities to expand child care statewide.
· Create a Covered Lives assessment that would assess an annual fee from insurance providers who routinely reject Early Intervention claims. This will help increase supports available for young children with disabilities and their families.
· Establish a Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council that would develop a plan to cut poverty in half in 10 years by evaluating, monitoring and expanding on statewide poverty reduction programs and initiatives.
· Continue the ability of Licensed Mental Health Practitioners to diagnose for behavioral health services, eliminate restrictions on telehealth services, and ensure credentialed and certified peers are reimbursed for telehealth services.