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Each month, The Children’s Agenda sends to our subscribers an update on advocacy activities, recent trends, and other opportunities where you can get involved in improving the lives of children in our community, New York State, and in the United States.

Preview - 2024 March TCA Enews

March 2024

Let's put kids in the picture in Albany! Ready our budget summary here.

What's Happening

We are in the final weeks of New York adopting the state budget for the coming year. The Assembly and state Senate will release their budget proposals within the next few days and then the negotiations begin. Kids are counting on us to make sure when legislators have to make hard choices in the state budget, kids win.

Caden's life was saved by receiving Early Intervention when he needed it.

What's At Stake

1. Early Intervention

Thousands of infants and toddlers with developmental delays and disabilities are not getting the Early Intervention support they need and are entitled to by law. A scathing report from the US Department of Education released last week confirmed this. The cause is a shortage of service providers due to the fact the rate New York pays for Early Intervention services is lower today than it was in 1994. New York must raise those rates for there to be any chance of having service providers there when kids need them.

The majority of child care is provided by home-based providers, not large centers.

2. Child Care

Child care is a broken market. Parents can't afford to pay more but providers can't afford to charge less. Even with the high cost (infant care runs more than SUNY tuition), the median wage for child care providers ranges from $29,889 in the North Country to $35,788 in the Hudson Valley. Low wages are a major factor in the lack of available care. No county is untouched by the problem, although some counties are worse off than others. Public investment in the child care workforce is critical to solving the problem.

Find out how much your family could benefit here.

3. Child Tax Credits

New York gives all sorts of tax credits to industries including entertainment, real estate, restaurants, and producers of alcoholic beverages. What about kids and families? The complicated patchwork of child-related tax credits are very small and leave out the families that need a boost the most. The Working Families Tax Credit will consolidate and expand existing credits, resulting in tax cuts for 2.3 million New York families. The Working Families Tax Credit will keep more money in families' pockets so they can invest it in their children's care, well-being and education.

Continuous coverage will prevent 66,000 New York children from losing their health insurance every year.

4. Child Health

Every child should be able to get medical care when they need it. But too many children lose coverage because of temporary changes in their family's income. When kids cycle on and off Medicaid/CHIP repeatedly, they miss out on preventive health care and treatment. Guaranteeing continuous Medicaid/CHIP coverage for eligible children from birth to age 6 will keep kid healthy.

Take Action!

Go to our Take Action page here and send letters to your representatives in Albany TODAY so kids don't get left out of the budget negotiations that start next week.