Cover Story

Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus, speaking at a Dominican Monastery in 1948 said, "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." He described our responsibility as human beings "if not to reduce evil, at least not to add to it" and "to refuse to consent to conditions which torture innocents." "I continue," he said "to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die."

On the Children's Defense Fund's (CDF) 30th anniversary, we celebrate great progress in reducing the numbers of neglected, sick, uneducated and poor children in the United States. CDF's research, public education campaigns, budget and policy advocacy, and coalition building have contributed to millions of children gaining immunizations, healthcare, childcare, Head Start, a right to education, adoptions, a chance to escape poverty, and protections in our child welfare, mental health and juvenile justice systems. More than 400 CDF publications have educated millions about child conditions and what can be done individually and collectively to change them.

CDF's pioneering media campaigns and advocacy played a key role in decreasing both teen pregnancy and child gun deaths. Since they were launched, overall teen birth rates have decreased more than 10 percent; black teen birth rates by 24 percent. Child gun deaths have dropped from 15 to 8 a day, almost 50 percent. Millions of disabled children attend school—a right they did not have before CDF's first report on Children Out of School and follow-up advocacy, which contributed to passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). And tens of billions of dollars have been invested in child health, Head Start, childcare and education in which CDF leadership played a key role.

But we still have so far to go. Every 36 seconds, a child is neglected or abused; every 41 seconds, a baby is born into poverty; every 59 seconds, a baby is born without health insurance; every minute a baby is born to a teen mother; and every 3 hours, a child is killed by gunfire. Those facts are not acts of God but a result of our moral and economic choices as a society. We can and must change them. But it will require a powerful transforming movement to change national values and priorities.

This decade—a magical moral moment at the beginning of a new century and millennium—is a crucial one for the children's movement. CDF's most important work is ahead, not behind, us. We will lead boldly and collaborate with others to move to scale successful policies and practices, and by 2010, mobilize enough new voices for new choices to achieve a nation fit for our children and grandchildren.

The mission of the Children's Defense Fund is to Leave No Child Behind® and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

Nurturing the Roots of a Movement

CDF's roots are in the civil rights movement and in Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign. Since 1973, CDF has been planting, watering and nurturing the seeds for the next national civil rights movement required to solidify the social and economic underpinnings—the substantive rights—beneath the political and civil rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s. CDF's parent organization, the Washington Research Project (WRP) began in 1968. It was instrumental in making hunger a major national issue following Robert Kennedy's visits to shacks with hungry children in the Mississippi Delta, which garnered national media attention.

After Kennedy's and Dr. King's assassinations, WRP followed up on specific recommendations in the papers we prepared for federal government action for Dr. King's Poor People's campaign, and helped expand federal nutrition programs that today serve millions of children and families. We examined federal audit reports and exposed how school districts were misusing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act funds in Title I: Is it Helping Poor Children? We also led a successful coalition effort to defeat the nomination of segregationist Harold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Building Bridges for Justice

In 1973, we determined that the best way to close the race and poverty gap and to build the broadest possible constituency for social and economic justice was to focus on children. We emphasize the cost-effectiveness of prevention and early intervention and how more white than black and brown children are poor, teen parents, killed by guns, commit suicide and affected by drugs, pollution, violence, and spiritual poverty.

CDF always asks two questions: "How does a policy or absence of policy affect all children? and "how does it affect poor, minority, and disabled children?" We pursue remedies that help all children while never losing sight of the most vulnerable children who lack an advocate. Since helping most children requires helping their families and improving communities where they live, children are our metaphor and wedge for transforming social change.

CDF—a private, nonprofit organization supported by foundations, corporations and individuals—began in 1973. We have never taken a dime of government money as we continue to mount a strong, persistent and independent voice for children. We insist on governmental accountability for effectively enforcing laws for children, families and the poor. We work to improve practices and policies that affect large numbers of children rather than just helping families on a case-by-case basis. A key to our effectiveness is our capacity for multiple-issue strategies at national, state and local levels, and our ability to convene a broad array of networks for children across lines of race, income, faith and discipline. Thanks to general-purpose support by a diverse group of private funders, CDF has been able to experiment and help shape rather than just react to change.

Our staff includes specialists in child health and mental health, child welfare, early childhood development, education, jobs and family income, youth development and violence prevention. We opened the first of 15 regional, state, and local offices in 1974 and from the beginning created a 501(c)(4) Action Council to ensure our ability to do everything the law provides for children and nothing the law prohibits. Each year, the Action Council publishes a nonpartisan Voting Record of how members of Congress vote on key children's issues; disseminates a proactive children's agenda; and rallies the support of national, state, and local networks and leaders.

No one gets anything done alone and bipartisan support is essential to major policy changes for children. The Childcare and Development Block Grant's chief co-sponsors were Senators Orrin Hatch (R–UT) and Christopher Dodd (D–CT). The 1990 Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was cosponsored by Senators Hatch and Edward Kennedy (D–MA). Since our inception, CDF has convened, co-convened, and participated in a range of specific issue coalitions that helped achieve more than 35 major new federal laws and protections for children and helped prevent recurring attempts to block grant, cut, freeze and weaken child and youth protections (see "Effects of Quiet Vigilance," page 35).

CDF state offices have also made significant strides by engaging with others in specific issue coalitions for change. When we began, there were few, if any, child advocacy groups, and, to many, advocacy was a dirty word. Today, there are many child advocacy groups, usually addressing single issues. Melding them into a powerful movement and message that transcend single issues and organizations is a formidable challenge.

Melding a Movement Decade by Decade

Movement building is long-term work. Movements don't happen in a vacuum. They require discipline, ability to live with ambiguity and complexity, clear messages and mission, and a readiness to seize the moment when a spark ignites mass action. CDF has been laying the groundwork and developing a critical mass of leaders for the 21st century children's movement.

In our first decade, we researched and defined critical child needs in all racial and income groups, outlined and tested action strategies to meet those needs, began documenting the cost effectiveness of prevention and early intervention, and tried to organize child advocates to act more forcefully and collaboratively to protect all children. Reports on Children out of School in America, Children without Homes, Children in Adult Jails, Children of Women Prisoners, healthcare, and school suspensions documented urgent child needs and issued calls to action that we followed up on.

In our second decade, we continued to try to organize the converted but focused more on converting the organized. We reached out to educate a wide range of mainstream networks about the importance of child and youth investment, formed national and local Child Watch coalitions in more than 100 communities with groups like the Association of Junior Leagues, and strengthened work with state and local officials. In 1981, we began analyzing the federal budget's impact on children, published the first annual State of America's Children Yearbook and convened our first national conference to train child advocates on how to affect the budget process. Our key message: Whoever controls the budget controls the policy.

In our third decade, CDF sought to strengthen and better integrate our field mobilizing, organizing, and communications efforts. Empowering a critical mass of young servant-leaders for children has been an overarching goal. CDF has been a leadership incubator for the child advocacy movement. Former CDF board members, alumni, interns, and the 6,000-plus black youths we have trained dot the corridors of power and service at the highest federal, state, and local levels, in academia, the private sector, and child serving and advocacy institutions across our nation. Policy is only as good as the commitment and skills of the people implementing it. We also formed an intergenerational alliance with AARP, the Child Welfare League of America, and the National Council of Senior Citizens.

Our fourth decade will be devoted to melding together the critical mass of leaders—especially young leaders—needed to build and sustain the moral and political will to do for all children what we know works for some children. Incorporating decades of research, national, state, and local policy experience, and knowledge of best practices, CDF's Action Council developed, after two years of broad consultation with child serving and community leaders in every sector, a long-term policy vision to truly Leave No Child Behind. It is our short-, mid-, and long-term road map for children in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010.

Endorsed by more than 1,800 national, state, and local organizations, and hundreds of state and local public officials, the comprehensive Dodd-Miller Act to Leave No Child Behind (S. 448/H.R. 936) was introduced in Congress in 2001. It is not to be confused with the Bush Administration's single issue No Child Left Behind Education Act. Some of its provisions, like the child tax credit, have been enacted. The Act gives the president, Congress, and all Americans the opportunity to:

• Prepare every child for school through full funding of quality childcare, Head Start and Early Head Start, and new investments in universal preschool education programs.              
• Lift every child from poverty by 2010.              
• Ensure that every child and parent has health insurance as a first step toward universal coverage.              
• End child hunger through the expansion of food programs, living wages, tax credits and family supports.              
• Make sure every child can read by fourth grade and can graduate from high school able to succeed at work and in life.              
• Provide every child safe, quality after-school and summer programs to learn, serve, work and stay out of trouble.              
• Ensure every child decent affordable housing.              
• Protect all children from neglect, abuse, and other violence and ensure them the care they need.              
• Ensure families leaving welfare the supports required to be successful in the workplace, including healthcare, childcare, education and training.

Building a Nation of Families

Many view CDF's $75 billion-a-year vision in the comprehensive Act to Leave No Child Behind as unrealistic at a time when lavish tax cuts for the wealthy have drained the treasury, budget deficits are escalating, and wars overshadow pressing domestic concerns. But our nation does not have a money problem; it has a values and priorities problem. We can make new choices. We must insist that our children be protected and prepared for school and life regardless of the political and economic weather. As poor children face the most dangerous time since CDF began with new proposals to dismantle and block grant Head Start, Medicaid, foster care, and to eliminate, cut, or freeze a range of child investments, we must never lose sight of or waver in our bigger mission to save our children—our nation's soul and future.

America's strength reflects our courage, compassion, hard work, moral values and commitment to justice. Today, we can extend the American dream of our forefathers and foremothers to every child and family. We have the know-how, the experience, the tools and the resources. And we have the responsibility as parents, grandparents, and as concerned and sensible people across the country.

We can and must build a nation where families have the support they need to make it at work and at home; where every child enters school ready to learn and leaves on the path to a productive future; where babies are likely to be born healthy, and sick children have the healthcare they need; where no child has to grow up in poverty; where all children are safe in their communities and every child has a place to call home—and all Americans can proudly say "We Leave No Child Behind."

CDF's mission and vision in the months and years ahead is to do what it takes to meet the needs of children and their parents by building on the strengths and sense of fairness of the American people, learning from the best public and private ideas and successes, and moving forward to a renewed commitment to all our children.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed for opposing Hitler's holocaust, believed "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." It's time for our rich, powerful nation to pass Bonhoeffer's test.

Selected Children's Defense Fund and CDF Action Council Accomplishments

1973

Children Out of School in America, CDF's first major report, documents two million children not enrolled in school, including 750,000 children with disabilities.

1974

Following up the 1973 report, the first CDF state office opens in Mississippi to correct the exclusion of special-needs children, organize parents, and mount successful legal challenge. A CDF lawsuit against the state of Mississippi opens school doors to 30,000 children.

1975

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) passes, creating a federal right to education for disabled children. More than 70 billion federal dollars have since been invested in special education.

1976

Two major reports, Children in Adult Jails and Doctors and Dollars Are Not Enough, are published. Reports contributed to the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

CDF successfully leads opposition to the Ford administration's efforts to scuttle the Elementary and Secondary School Civil Rights Survey, which provided basic data on school desegregation, school suspensions and special education by race.

1977

CDF challenges state nonenforcement of Medicaid for poor children and urges new regulations requiring states to improve treatment for poor children in EPSDT: Does It Spell Healthcare for Poor Children?

1978

CDF spearheads successful campaign to protect Head Start and keep it in the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

CDF report Children Without Homes documents more than 500,000 children living away from their families.

CDF launches the Children's Public Policy Network with a toll-free number and "how-to" pamphlets.

1979

CDF prevents elimination of $200 million set aside for daycare in the Social Services Block Grant. Successful class action lawsuit, Ross v. Saltmarsh, orders changes in discriminatory school suspension practices in Newburgh, N.Y.

1980

Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act enacted to protect more than 500,000 children in the child welfare system and encourage permanence through family reunification or adoption.

Federal court grants CDF's requested relief in Bobby D. v. Barry and orders the District of Columbia to return to their homes troubled and disabled children from costly out-of-state institutions.

1981

CDF's first annual Children's Defense Budget describes massive federal budget cuts and attempts to block grant key child and family programs by the Reagan administration. All block grants are defeated and billions in cuts restored over time through the Children's Survival Bill.

First Annual CDF National Conference is held to inform advocates about proposed budget cuts in children and family programs and train advocates to analyze and monitor the impact of budget policy.

Child Watch Visitation Program is founded to monitor and document the impact of massive federal budget cuts on children in local communities.

1982

First annual nonpartisan voting record of members of Congress on children is released by the CDF Action Council—organized as a 501(c)(4).

City Lights School opens in Washington, DC, to help implement the successful 1980 lawsuit in Bobby D. v. Barry. City Lights has since given more than 2,000 youths a second chance.

CDF lawsuit wins dental care for 300,000 Texas children eligible for Medicaid.

1983

The first CDF Action Council Children's Survival Bill sets baseline positive child investment agenda for Congress and results in significant incremental restoration of previous budget cuts in children's programs.

1984

Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign is launched after convening networks of black, white and Latino leaders to discuss the problem of children having children and to develop common action strategies.

Federal Medicaid expansion for children, the Child Health Assurance Program (CHAP), is enacted after four years of advocacy. 500,000 children get healthcare.

The first major child support enforcement amendments enacted.

Head Start is reauthorized with a new after-school block grant.

The Independent Living Program for youths leaving foster care is passed.

1985

The first State Childcare Fact Book is published.

CDF launches five-year prenatal care campaign to improve infant mortality and low birthweight births to supplement efforts to prevent teen pregnancy, which contributed to both.

Key low-income programs for children and families are exempted from Gramm-Rudman budget-cutting law.

CDF-Ohio plays a key role in the largest state expansion of Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program.

1986

Five-year award-winning adolescent pregnancy prevention media campaign by Fallon McElligott (our pro bono ad agency partner) begins. Sixty-four local Adolescent Pregnancy Child Watch community assessment projects developed to support the effort.

Congress restores $2 billion in budget cuts in children's programs and adds $500 million in new initiatives.

Federal Medicaid expansions (COBRA and SOBRA) make health coverage available to three million pregnant women and children under age 5 in poor families.

Virginia appropriates $3 million for childcare for low-income families.

Mississippi appropriates $40 million for kindergarten programs.

1987

CDF report, The Immunization Status of American Children, first reveals declining vaccination rates.

CDF convenes the Alliance for Better Childcare to educate the public. CDF's Action Council drafts a childcare bill and mobilizes a broad coalition for its enactment.

The federal budget increases child investments by $700 million.

CDF-Texas plays a key role in building coalition to help achieve $100 million for a new Texas indigent health program.

1988

Children 1988, the first nonpartisan election-year public awareness guide is published by CDF Action Council to educate candidates and voters about children's needs and ways to meet them.

The Family Support Act provides 12 months of health coverage and childcare to families transitioning from welfare to work.

Federal immunization funding is increased by 50 percent, helping immunize one million children.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is reauthorized with new protections against disproportionate confinement of minority children.

1989

Sustained budget advocacy leads to Head Start increase of $152 million and $35 million to fight measles.

CDF-Minnesota leads effort to expand state childcare tax credit.

CDF-Ohio achieves nation's first major state Head Start funding increase.

1990

CDF convenes 22 black leaders for a five-day meeting to discuss the black child and family. The group calls for a Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC). John Hope Franklin drafts manifesto.

The first annual Beat the Odds event celebrating youths who overcome obstacles takes place in Los Angeles. (Now, an annual event in 12 cities.)

Congress enacts and President Bush signs into law the Childcare and Development Block Grant, which provides childcare to approximately 430,000 low-income children.

After years of CDF Action Council coalition work and advocacy, $30 billion over five years is included in the federal budget for new childcare, Head Start, child health and other child investments.

The final phase-in of Medicaid child health expansions for poor children is enacted; three million children are covered.

Ohio WIC expansions reach 230,000 additional women, infants and children.

1991

Family Unification Program enacted.

BCCC's initiative to Leave No Child Behind® is launched. Developing a new generation of young black leaders in service and advocacy for children is an overarching BCCC priority. (More than 6,000 mostly black youths trained at Haley Farm and CDF conferences since BCCC began.)

1992

Leave No Child Behind® nonpartisan citizen action and opinion-maker election year guides are distributed by Action Council. Fallon McElligott-BCCC/CDF PSAs run by networks. First interfaith services for children held at Democratic and Republican conventions. More than 200 denominations and faith groups endorse Children's Sabbath; over 20,000 congregations participate annually.

BCCC's Black Student Leadership Network evolves into Student Leadership Network for Children (SLNC) and is now Youth Leadership Network for Children.

CDF-Minnesota plays key conceptualization and coalition-building roles for the state's new health legislation (which grows to cover 160,000 uninsured citizens) and the enactment of an earned income tax credit for poor working parents.

1993

The Federal Vaccines for Children program is launched to slow declining childhood immunization rates and escalating vaccine costs.

The Family Preservation and Support Services program is enacted into law for a third time and signed by President Clinton after two vetoes.

Broadcasters donate estimated $5 million toward CDF-UNICEF childhood immunization campaign. Major League Baseball, U.S. Soccer Federation, and Ben and Jerry's are campaign partners.

The BCCC launches its flagship Freedom Schools project, based on the 1964 Mississippi summer Freedom School movement.

1994

The Costs of Child Poverty is released with advisory board of economists chaired by MIT Nobel Laureate Robert Solow.

CDF purchases 126-acre (now 156) farm of Roots author Alex Haley in Clinton, Tennessee, as center for spiritual renewal, leadership development, and intergenerational, interdisciplinary and interracial communication. Haley Farm is the CDF/BCCC home for building the 21st century movement to Leave No Child Behind®.

Head Start is reauthorized with significant quality improvements.

CDF CeaseFire! media campaign, developed with Fallon McElligott, warns parents of the risks of guns in homes and puts a child's face on gun violence.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation provides a $3 million challenge grant and the Schumann and Rockefeller Foundations make significant operating grants to provide multiyear support to the black community mobilization for children.

1995

Progress and Peril is published by CDF/BCCC describing the crisis affecting black children and needed actions.

CDF-New York launches a public-private collaborative campaign to raise city preschool vaccination rates from 52 percent to 90 percent over three years with Chase Manhattan and Robin Hood Foundation support.

CDF Action Council and BCCC networks play major roles in defeating Contract With America proposals to block grant, dismantle and cut eight major children's programs, and to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

The first CDF/BCCC Haley Farm Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry and great preachers series launched. Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, in whose memory the institute is now named, serves as first worship leader.

1996

CDF convenes Stand for Children Day at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, the largest mass demonstration for children in U.S. history (attended by 250,000).

As welfare reform and Contract With America debates continue, the framework of every federal guarantee for children and families is threatened with dismantlement and block grant proposals. All are defeated except the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Block Grant. The election year destruction of the federal income safety net for poor children and families is coupled with billions of dollars in budget cuts in nutrition and other programs benefiting the poor and exclusion of legal immigrant families from other benefits.

CDF develops and launches the multiyear Community Monitoring Project to track the new welfare law's impact on poor children and families and to restore budget cuts.

1997

Second Stand for Healthy Children Day is held with Rosa Parks and Rosie O'Donnell as honorary co-chairs. The enactment of Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is the largest expansion in child health coverage since Medicaid ($48 billion over ten years for children in low income working families).

1998

CDF celebrates its 25th anniversary and completes the Ford and Mott foundation challenge grants to help build long-term institutional self-sufficiency.

CDF begins tracking implementation of CHIP as states adopt plans to implement child health coverage.

The Childcare NOW! coalition campaign is launched to expand the Childcare and Development Block Grant and to ensure quality affordable early childhood and after-school and summer programs for millions more school-age children.

1999

CDF disseminates information on the impact of gun violence on children in Children and Guns.

2000

CDF releases a national report, All Over the Map: A Mid-Course Review of CHIP, which ranks states' progress in implementing CHIP.

CDF endorses the Million Mom March on Washington and Marian Wright Edelman speaks at the event.

2001

CDF and its Action Council consult widely with experts and community leaders to develop a comprehensive policy vision for what America should do for its children. The introduction of the landmark Act to Leave No Child Behind (S. 940/H.R. 1990) by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) builds on the best practices and addresses the whole child and family.

Wednesdays in Washington™ and Wednesdays at Home™ are launched to build support for the movement and Act to Leave No Child Behind.

2002

After six years of advocacy against efforts to erode core protections, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is reauthorized with crucial core protections for minority children and separation of children from adults.

13 Wednesdays in Washington™—and 26 Wednesdays at Home™—are conducted, including annual baby stroller and youth Wednesdays.

2003

CDF begins 30th anniversary with first major teach-in and interfaith service on the Bush administration's efforts to dismantle the federal role in protecting children.

CDF hosts the first presidential candidates' forum for children at its national conference.

25 Wednesdays in Washington™—and 40 Wednesdays at Home™—are held or scheduled.

CDF and its Action Council continue to lead work in coalitions to help preserve federal Head Start, Medicaid and foster care protections and to prevent billions of dollars in proposed cuts in child investments during the most dangerous time for poor children since CDF began.

CDF launches new comprehensive benefits and community outreach initiative to decrease child and family poverty by ensuring all eligible children and working families receive the benefits and tax refunds provided by law.

Southern Regional office completes planning process and begins action phase of Southern Rural Women's initiative in 77 Mississippi Delta counties to empower poor women to advocate for human rights. It also begins W.K. Kellogg Foundation's SPARK Initiative to align early childhood and public school programs in four Mississippi school districts.

CDF continues to plant and nourish seeds for a powerful interracial, intergenerational and interfaith Movement to Leave No Child Behind® and to achieve, by 2010, the vision of the Act to Leave No Child Behind.

Dr. Maya Angelou and Dr. John Hope Franklin visit the reading room named for them in the CDF-Haley Farm Langston Hughes Library.








 

 
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (with Marian Wright Edelman), Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway, writers Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates, architect Maya Lin and Barnes & Noble Chairman Len Riggio were among the 300 participants at the dedication of the library.


 

Effects of Quiet Vigilance

Since its founding, CDF and the CDF Action Council have convened coalitions with numerous organizations and worked with policymakers to help build bipartisan support in enacting laws that have helped millions of children get education, healthcare, Head Start, childcare, adoption, nutrition, and to escape poverty.

1974
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act Buckley Amendment to Protect Privacy of School Records

1975
Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now IDEA)

1980
Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act

1981
Childcare Tax Credit limits raised in Economic Recovery Tax Act

1982
Children's Mental Health Program

1984
Child Health Assurance Program (CHAP)
Child Support Enforcement Amendments
Foster Care and Independent Living Program

1986
Medicaid expansion under COBRA and SOBRA
Earned Income Tax Credit expanded

1987
Medicaid expansion for pregnant women and children age 5 to 8
Earned Income Tax Credit expanded

1988
Family Support Act Medicaid expansion covers all pregnant women, children and infants below the poverty line

1989
Fair Housing Act expanded to protect families with children

1990
Act for Better Childcare (Childcare and Development Block Grant)
Medicaid expansion reaches three million poor children
Earned Income Tax Credit expanded

1991
Family Unification Program

1993
Family Preservation and Support Services Program
Vaccines for Children
Earned Income Tax Credit expanded
Family and Medical Leave Act

1994
Head Start reauthorized with significant quality improvements

1996
Child Support Enforcement strengthened

1997
State Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
Adoption and Safe Families Act

1998
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act reauthorized with new protections for minority children

1999
Foster Care Independence Act

2001
Child Tax Credit expanded and made refundable
Earned Income Tax Credit made refundable
Dependent Care Tax Credit improvements
Foster Care Independent Living Program adds education vouchers

2002
Food Stamp provisions of Farm Bill enacted
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act reauthorized with protections against confinement of juvenile offenders with adults

Many efforts to dismantle, cut or weaken child protections have also been defeated. We are proud of the many bad things that did not happen to children because of quiet vigilance.

1978
Defeated attempts to move the comprehensive Head Start program from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and to the Department of Education

1979
Prevented attempts to eliminate $200 million set aside for daycare in the Social Services Block Grant.

1981
Prevented Reagan administration efforts to dismantle and block grant Medicaid, Title I Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Education for All Handicapped Children Act, foster care and other key children's programs.

1985
Key low-income programs for children and families are exempted from Gramm-Rudman budget-cutting law.

1996
Defeated 7 of 8 [Contract With America] proposals to block grant and dismantle eight major children's income, healthcare, foster care and nutrition programs.

2003
Preserved nearly $3 billion of CHIP funding that would have been lost in some states because of federal time limits and lagging state enforcement.

—M.W.E.

Photo copyrights: Elizabeth Rennie (girl holding sign), Catherine Goron (stroller parade), Todd Rosenberg (Maya Angelou and John Hope Franklin; girl climbing), Rick Reinhard (Democratic candidates).