Family Forward Oregon

Our goal is to pass public policy that addresses the importance of caregiving, advances gender and racial equity, and economic justice. We have passed paid family and medical leave and pay equity policies. We are currently working on universal child care.

We approach policy work with a laser focus on equity. We know from history that policy often ends up creating more inequity even while it is purportedly aiming to reduce inequity. What this means in practice is that we focus on policy details, and we fight for strong, bold, inclusive policies that will make a real difference in caregiver’s lives.

Together, we can shift cultural attitudes about women, work, and care. We can build political power for our communities and together we can pass the public policies we need like affordable child care, access to mental health care, and permanent financial support for caregivers.

We have several key strategies:
Policy development with an equity lens: We have high-level policy expertise on our staff, and focus on how policy will play out along racial, gender and class lines. We advocate for bold, strong, equity-centered policy.
Organizing: We organize impacted women and caregivers to get involved in short and long-term campaigns
Coalition: We always work in coalition with other organizations including racial justice groups, community based organizations, labor unions and even progressive businesses.

We have a track record of working in coalition to pass groundbreaking policies in Oregon. We led the fight for paid sick time in our state, making Oregon the 4th state in the country to pass a paid sick time law. We led the creation of the Fair Shot For All Coalition which has successfully fought for a higher minimum wage, retirement security, health care for undocumented kids, reproductive health equity, ending racial profiling, rent control and more. We have also worked to pass laws related to pay equity, domestic workers’ rights, paid family and medical leave and affordable child care.

We have policy experts on our staff, as well as expert organizers. We are a multi-racial team of women who have lived experience with the issues we work on. Collectively, we have over 100 years of experience in social change work.

We are an organization founded by and led by Oregon mothers. Over the past 10 years, we have become the leading organization in Oregon on issues related to the economic security of women and families. We have successfully passed laws ensuring all families have access to paid sick time, expanded employment protections for domestic workers, developed a public retirement program, and created additional legal protections that ensure equal pay for equal work. We also played a major role in raising the minimum wage in Oregon and we led the campaign that passed the country's most progressive and inclusive paid family and medical leave law.

Just as important, we have supported women in getting involved in the civic process, learning new skills, speaking at town halls, hearings and community meetings, and engaging even more women in becoming civically engaged.

Our successes have been the result of robust policy expertise, strong coalition-building, and on-the-ground organizing among mothers. We demand that women’s voices be heard in policy considerations and we prioritize long-term, systemic solutions. These approaches have served us well.

In the last few years we co-founded the coalition that has created the vision for creating a universal child care system in Oregon. We serve as the co-lead of that coalition and together we passed over $100million in new investments in child care supply, workforce development, and needed infrastructure to address our child care crisis. Our long term vision is a child care system that is equitable, affordable, culturally-relevant, inclusive, developmentally appropriate, safe and community-led. We are committed to building this new system with our community of caregivers, mothers, and providers.