Programs

  • Program 1 [2020]

    HealthChildren Now's health programs focus on ensuring that children birth to age 26 have meaningful and equitable access to high-quality, culturally responsive, affordable health care, including physical, mental/behavioral, and oral health services, and other key services like home visiting and developmental screenings that are vital for California's youngest children. Through our research, analysis, policy development, education, outreach and advocacy efforts, we have achieved the following: led efforts to improve Medi-Cal access to and quality of care for children and families, including successfully defended against proposed cuts to Medi-Cal that support children's access to health services; continued our leadership efforts to promote developmental screenings and early interventions for California's infants and toddlers by strengthening Medi-Cal compliance; helped expand asthma prevention services by improving access to trained community health workers; helped refine the State's telehealth policies, especially as they relate to oral health; highlighted the need for culturally appropriate screening resources and for providers to adopt trauma-informed practices within a clinical setting; prevented proposed cuts to trauma screenings and continued to work to maintain and increase statewide investment in trauma screenings; and supported school-mental health partnerships and mental health services for students.
    Geographies
    Not indicated
    Dates
    Jan 1, 2020 – Dec 31, 2020
    Source
    990
    No causes provided
    No populations provided
    –
    $1.6M

  • Program 2 [2020]

    EducationChildren Now's education program aims to ensure every child has access to high-quality early learning opportunities, a rigorous TK-12 education, including high-quality STEM and quality afterschool and summer programs, and access to affordable higher education. Through research and analysis, policy development, education and outreach, communications, convenings and advocacy, we have worked to dismantle inequitable and racially discriminatory systems and have achieved the following: helped improve access to quality child care and preschool programs; supported increasing reimbursement rates for preschool and child care providers; supported significant progress, including the development of a growth measure to better track student progress, towards building a transparent and student-focused education accountability system that helps ensure all children graduate from high school ready for college, career and civic life; protected TK-12 education funding by blocking proposed cuts to summer meals and overall cuts to education; ensured minimum requirements for distance learning including ensuring that districts provide all students with devices and connectivity, track student participation and assess progress and communicate with parents; expanded the membership of the California STEM Network and engaged the Network in key STEM issues, including increasing access to STEM education and preparing new STEM teachers, early math instruction and educator professional development, afterschool programs in computer science, and high school to community college pathways in STEM; continued to lead efforts to help ensure the implementation of Next Generation Science Standards, which updated standards and accreditation and testing for teacher preparation and credentialing; continued leadership role around the effective implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula, working to ensure dollars intended for English Learners, students in deep poverty and youth in foster care actually reach those students; achieved important revisions to the Local Control and Accountability Plan template to promote effective fiscal transparency, including the inclusion of clear tables to track funding at the local level; led efforts to ensure implementation of the English Learner Roadmap, to provide professional development for educators to learn how to address the unique needs of students who are English Learners; continued to promote transparent and accessible data in the state's longitudinal integrated data system, including working to ensure clearer references to early learning data and the creation of a stakeholder engagement process; led a new research project to identify evidence-based teacher recruitment, preparation and retention programs that are proven effective at training highly qualified diverse teachers; and promoted substantial improvements to K-12 course access and instructional quality around math and science to increase access to higher education for all students.
    Geographies
    Not indicated
    Dates
    Jan 1, 2020 – Dec 31, 2020
    Source
    990
    No causes provided
    No populations provided
    –
    $3M

  • Program 3 [2020]

    Child WelfareChildren Now's child welfare program works to address the comprehensive health, education, and social service needs of children in the child welfare system. Through our research, policy development, education, and communication efforts, we have achieved the following: led efforts to protect the Family Urgent Response System (FURS), a statewide, 24/7 hotline to support foster youth and their caregivers in times of crisis; helped relaunch FURS implementation efforts with the state, counties and other stakeholders to develop and finalize guidance and policies to help ensure youth in foster care and caregivers can access immediate, trauma-informed supports during the pandemic and beyond; helped ensure foster families did not experience a disruption to their child care during the pandemic by successfully getting the state to allow counties to extend the timeline for an Emergency Child Care Bridge Program voucher if the voucher was set to expire during the state of emergency; worked to protect the needs of foster children and youth and their caregivers are met when disaster strikes through the Child Welfare Disaster Response Fund; continued to work with the state on the Continuum of Care Reform, an effort to recruit and retain foster parents and ensure all children in foster care are raised in stable, supportive family homes; worked to stabilize foster youth housing and highlighted the need for transitional housing programs to support programming for parenting foster youth in extended foster care and reflect the variability of housing costs across the state; secured a number of state budget investments to address the substantial risk facing kids in foster care in the midst of COVID-19, including: higher monthly reimbursement rates for foster families impacted by COVID-19, increased access to technology to connect children and youth to education and other supports, and temporarily expanded eligibility for extended foster care to allow young people turning 21 to continue to participate in the program; conducted research, analyzed guidance, and collaborated with partners nationally and statewide to identify best practices and generate recommendations for implementing the Family First Prevention Services Act in California; and analyzed disparities in K-12 educational attainment of students in foster care, to highlight barriers and develop solutions to address these challenges.
    Geographies
    Not indicated
    Dates
    Jan 1, 2020 – Dec 31, 2020
    Source
    990
    No causes provided
    No populations provided
    –
    $950.7K