CHILD EQUITY: A Vision for Children and America's Future
Making Sure Candidates
Read the Headline and
Get to the Fine Print
What Children Need
Children represent one quarter of the population and 100 percent of our future. 20/20 Vision for Children seeks to ensure all candidates for public office see beyond a top-line visual and provide clear details on how they will ensure all children have the opportunity and support to succeed. Securing America's Future provides basic information to voters, candidates, the media, and advocates on core questions candidates need to answer as they create policy agendas for children
What Voters Say
Voters want candidates for federal, state, and
community offices to place a high priority on
ensuring child well-being and to make investments
in their future. Polling has consistently shown
that child policy issues rank at the top among all issues.
Results from and analysis of a poll conducted of
Iowa voters in May, 2019, show how much voters are
concerned about children and their future and how
highly they rank them as issues Presidential candidates
need to address.
What Presidential Candidates Say
Candidates develop platforms and priorities to advance their candidacies and make known their positions on key issues. Presidential candidate websites show that child policy issues are coming of age, but there is not yet in clear focus. A 20/20 Vision for Children content analysis conducted at the end of June of 23 candidate websites shows child policy issues often are “hidden in plain sight.” They show up as bullet points or elements within different issue sections – but they are not presented as their own issue area nor with a vision about children that would make them into a coherent whole. This can be corrected, and a primary effort of 20/20 Vision for Children is to get Presidential candidates to develop separate statements and platforms around children that address the seven questions in Securing America’s Future. The essay offers beginning elements gleaned from candidate websites on addressing issues of child equity as a major policy agenda.
What Child Advocates Can Do
The simple answer is, "a lot." It comes down to -- in encounters with candidates or their volunteers, in discussions with friends and colleagues, in review of media coverage, and in personal actions -- child advocates making sure that child policy questions are asked and that child advocates present their own views about them. At the national level, there are multiple organizations working on behalf of child policy to connect with -- many of whom have state and local chapters. In almost every state, there is a multi-issue child advocacy organization which speaks out on behalf of children. The Partnership for America's Children is both a national voice for these organizations and a resource as they network with one another. Visit the Partnership's website (www.foramericaschildren.org) for more information, and think about how you want candidates to answer the seven questions described in Securing America's Future and shown below. What child advocates and child policy electoral campaigns can do is provided in the short guide.
SEVEN QUESTIONS ALL CANDIDATES NEED TO ADDRESS
If elected, what will you do in each of the following areas:
CHILD HEALTH: Ensure that all children have health coverage and receive the health services that meet their needs?
SCHOOL READINESS: Ensure that all children start school eager and prepared for success?
SCHOOL SUCCESS: Ensure that all children have educational opportunities that enable them to develop the skills they need to advance in a 21st century workplace?
SAFETY AND PERMANENCE: Keep children safe in their homes and communities and protect them from abuse, neglect, and trauma?
ECONOMIC SECURITY: Ensure that families have the resources to meet their children’s basic needs and invest in their future?
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY: Promote inclusion and combat discrimination and close disparities in child opportunities and outcomes?
ACCOUNTABILITY: Ensure that child policy is debated, implemented, and advanced?
What's Right With Iowa? Child Policy in the Presidential Primary.
20/20 Vision for Children summarized its work and experience in Iowa in an October webinar, facilitated by the Partnership for America's children.
Helpers and the 2020 Elections
People in the helping professions (nurses, child care workers, social workers and counselors, educators, direct care workers, and other health and human service frontline staff) represent 16-20 percent of the electorate and are, in many respects, the backbone of our society and the best of who we represent. They also are most likely to depend upon government to provide their essential services to those most in need. They contribute to societal well-being and our overall economic prosperity but often are taken for granted and under-resourced for the work they do. They and their work is seldom part of the electoral dialogue. If it were, our elections would be better. A "first of its kind" virtual town meeting in Iowa, hosted by Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's state policy director, began to lay out how helpers could become a bigger part of the electoral process.
The New York Times and a 20/20 Vision for Children
Two prominent New York Times columnists -- Nicholas Kristoff and Paul Krugman -- independently wrote columns on the need to address child policy in the 2020 election. While their columns deserve review in their own right, 20/20 Vision for Children also produced a commentary on their commentary, posing a question at the heart of this issue -- “How should government act to ensure parents fulfill their most important role in society, raising their children to be healthy, educated, and prepared to contribute to society as adults?” An important KidsImpact blog also emphasizes this need..
Child Poverty: Raising the Issue to Critical Attention
The 2020 Democratic Presidential debate closed with a question on child poverty -- and candidates responded thoughtfully. Their responses deserve to be reviewed -- and fleshed out into a platform. The 2016 Kemp Presidential forum on poverty and opportunity similarly posed questions about child poverty to Republican candidates -- and candidates there responded thoughtfully. If child poverty is to be seriously debated in 2020, it also will have to focus specifically on the differential opportunities faced by children of color and it will have to flesh out for the public how both parties propose to address child poverty and opportunity. The three pieces below could serve as a basis for this dialogue and debate.
Helpers and the Biden Campaign in Iowa
The Biden campaign, through a Community Helpers Advisory Committee, has developed resources for use in describing and presenting his agenda for helpers and caregivers to the public and to those working in the caregiving fields, as a part of relational campaigning efforts. That includes a summary and talking points of the Biden-Harris Plan for a 21st Century Caregiving Workforce and sample letters-to-the-editor to show support for the campaign and that agenda.
