On December 21, 2020, Kate Breslin, Schuyler Center President and CEO, appeared on Susan Arbetter’s Capital Tonight to discuss how advocates are using New York’s Climate Act as a model to tackle child poverty.
Back in 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which enshrined an ambitious climate goal into statute, and created a Climate Action Council to develop recommendations to meet those targets. A new bill, sponsored by Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Harry Bronson, would use the same strategy to combat child poverty. The Child Poverty Reduction Act (S.9012/A.11063) aims to cut child poverty in half by 2030. Just as the Climate Act required the state to put its goals into statute, so does the CPRA.
On December 15, 2020, the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy participated in a Facebook Live Virtual Legislative Briefing to discuss the NY Childhood Poverty Reduction Act S.9012/A.11063 by bill sponsors Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Harry Bronson. Also participating in the briefing were Wes Moore, CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo, a pediatrician and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Norma Degante, a Children’s Defense Fund-New York College Navigator who participated in CDF-NY’s Beat the Odds program,
One of Schuyler Center’s top end of year priorities is to secure passage of S.8421/A.10513, a bill that would establish annual reporting requirements on utilization of child welfare preventive services. These services include home visiting, housing assistance, child care, day care, homemaker services, parent training or parent aide, clinical services, transportation, job training, education, and emergency services (i.e. cash grants). They are designed to help families deal with any issues which might prevent them from taking care of their children on their own, and provide an environment where children can thrive. Without these services, more families will be separated, with children placed in foster care.
One of Schuyler Center’s core principles is to promote policies that prevent harm to children and families, that strengthen families, and keep families together. Another core focus is holding public systems to account. Tracking data is the first step in improving outcomes. We cannot set a goal to achieve without first seeing our starting point. Getting a clear picture of the status of preventive services in New York State helps to identify the gaps as well. The data that would be collected under this bill will help the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) gain an understanding of how counties implement child welfare prevention. By collecting data on the services available to New Yorkers, OCFS will be able to see how many families are using these services, and for how long, and with what outcome. Do the families stay together, or are children placed with relatives or in foster care?
Providing families with proven supportive services is more important than ever right now. The pandemic and its impacts have placed many New York families—disproportionately families of color—under extraordinary stress. One of the circumstances that often bring families into contact with protective services is poverty. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 1 million children have had a parent lose their job, and 4,200 children have lost a parent or guardian to COVID-19. An estimated 325,000 children are now in or near poverty. Preventive services can safeguard families, and get them the support they need to continue taking care of their children the way they would have before March 1, 2020.
This bill was passed by both houses in July, but Governor Cuomo hasn’t signed it yet. We urge the Governor to support families by signing this bill before the end of this year. Since bills have a life cycle that ends at the end of the calendar year, it will have to be reintroduced in 2021 if he doesn’t sign before December 31, 2020.
To keep the momentum going, we urge partners to join us in urging Governor Cuomo to sign S.8421/A.10513 without delay. The preventive services data that would be gathered would help ensure families and communities are being provided the tools they need to weather mental health, social, and economic challenges.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced every one of us—individuals and organizations—to re-evaluate all aspects of our lives, but one thing remains certain: Schuyler Center’s work is as important as ever.
The racial, social, and economic disparities evidenced by this deadly virus cannot be overlooked. It is abundantly clear that the novel Coronavirus does discriminate. A family’s neighborhood, income level, and race and ethnicity are all significant contributing factors to whether someone gets and dies from this deadly disease, and the extent to which their community is affected.
Over the last several months, we have introduced Policy Priorities for Building Back Better: Putting Children in the Center of Recovery. We have effectively shared data which highlights the historical and ongoing racial discrimination in employment, housing, and education, among other realms, causing New York children of color to experience poverty, near poverty, and insecure parental employment, at approximately twice the rate of white children. We have also promoted that New York’s refundable tax credits exclude some of the very New Yorkers most likely to live in poverty, yet this tax policy is among the most effective strategies for reducing poverty. We are excited to showcase our work and thank our incredibly generous supporters with this reportdemonstrating our focus on preventing families from hardship.
For almost 150 years, the Schuyler Center has advanced effective and inclusive public policies that put children and families first. Today we continue to focus on income inequality and its ill effects on the health and well-being of New York families. We hope you will join our fight to shape policy so racial inequalities highlighted by COVID19 don’t continue to exist—with this virus, or the next one.
On Thursday, May 28th, 2020, the CHAMPS-NY coalitionheld a press conference to highlight the need for a moratorium on “aging out” of foster care in New York State during this ongoing public health crisis. CHAMPS-NY, a statewide group of providers, advocates and thought partners, works to promote state policy and practice changes to ensure children entering foster care are placed into family-based settings whenever possible.
In the press release, Kate Breslin, Schuyler Center President and CEO and CHAMPS-NY co-chair notes,
“In the middle of a global health crisis, when a safe and stable home are vital to both individual and public health, no young person should be pushed from their home or be forced to leave foster care without a family simply because they turn 21. Governor Cuomo needs to take Executive Action to ensure that all young people in foster care in New York State have the option to remain in foster care after their 21st birthday, and for at least 180 days after the last region in the state has fully reopened.”
The press conference itself was featured on Friday, May 29th, 2020 in an article in Chronicle of Social Change. It was the fifth article in that month to shed light on this urgent issue.
Since the pandemic began, nine states have taken executive action to protect youth in foster care. New York, the state hardest hit by this crisis, is not one of them.
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