On Friday, February 9, the House gave final approval to a two-year budget deal that includes significant increases to defense spending, some increased funding in key priorities such as child care and opioids, extends the home visiting program and adopts the Families First Act from 2016. The latter had some modifications (see below). The deal
The Family First Act made it into the CR/budget agreement after the House inserted it in their slimmed down CR proposal. The Senate picked up the package. It is close to the version that had been considered in late 2016 with some additional behind the scenes modifications added into the final version. It includes the
Working with the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, CWLA is joining with other organizations to promote the Get It Back Campaign. The Center regularly works on encouraging families and now some individuals to be sure to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The campaign includes this video. The EITC allows lower income
Many members of Congress (especially Democrats) voted against the CR/budget agreement because it lacked a firm commitment by congressional leadership (and the President for that matter) on action on DACA recipients. Shortly before the vote on the CR, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WS) said, “I can’t speak to what our rule is going to look like;
As part of the CR/budget deal, the child care community had one of their most significant victories since the creation of the CCDBG in 1990. Congress still has to finalize the appropriations, so there could still be challenges, but the deal explicitly included a $5.8 billion increase in child care funding with an expected split
When the CR/budget deal was agreed to it included a commitment to provide $6 billion more in 2018 and 2019 to address the opioid epidemic. It is unclear how that will break out between treatment, enforcement and prevention but that will be taking place in these next several weeks as appropriations are dealt with. Senator
In response to demands for more support on dealing with the increasing numbers of infants born dependent, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has released a new comprehensive guide, Clinical Guidance for Treating Pregnant and Parenting Women With Opioid Use Disorder and Their Infants. The guide provides comprehensive, national guidance for
As part of the CR/budget deal, Congress has finally extended the home visiting or Maternal, Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) for a full five years. It has been a long haul for the home visiting coalition which originally sought a doubling of funding over five years. With the raging budget and health care
The latest data from HHS through the annual Child Maltreatment report indicates that the number of children substantiated as abused or neglected was 676,000 in 2016 compared to 683,000 in 2015. Consistent with the past several years the vast majority of children were victims of neglect (74.8 percent) compared to physical abuse (18.2 percent)
The budget agreement includes a further extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for ten years. The last CR had finally extended the expired CHIP program for six years. That was done because when Congress further restricted the ACA it meant that if CHIP disappeared it would be more costly to the federal
