Children First Pa

“Organization's process to review form 990 the 990 is reviewed in draft form by the board of directors meetings.”

“Enforcement of conflicts policy is reviewed at the board of directors meetings.”

“The board reviewed salaries of similar organizations in the area when determining compensation of upper management and key employees”

“The board reviewed salaries of similar organizations in the area when determining compensation of upper management and key employees.”

“The 990 is reviewed in draft form by the board of directors before the 990 is filed.”

“Children first is the greater philadelphia region's leading child advocacy organization. Its mission is to improve the lives of low-income children and children of color by analyzing the obstacles to opportunity, proposing sound solutions that improve life outcomes, and working with public officials to put solutions in place. Children first focuses on the needs of the whole child by documenting the unmet needs of children of color and low-income children, proffering sound solutions that address racial inequities and produce opportunity for all children and building public support to enact these solutions. Our work afects a child's development, health and well-being from the moment they are born to adulthood. After a landmark state court decision on school funding equity declared the pa state education funding formula unconstitutional, and found that it left poor districts insufficiently funded, children first strategically exerted the necessary pressure to produce bipartisan consensus for a history-breaking $1.1 billion school funding increase that puts low-income students first. There's no disputing that the earliest years of life present the most promise for nurturing healthy, vibrant minds. That's why the state dollars for great pre-k programs that help 67,000 children thrive are so important. Yet lawmaker interest in pre-k has waned since the pandemic and cuts to pre-k were planned for the state budget. In response, children first sounded the alarm and in just three months organized thousands of parents and early learning program staff to send letters, attend public events, and remind their state lawmakers of the benefits of pre-k. Children advocacy was the reason that state lawmakers shifted from a position of likely cutting pre-k to a $15 million increase. The covid pandemic uncovered the depths of despair among youth, and it also made things worse. In fact, 40% of children presenting in an emergency room for attempted suicide had never seen a mental health professional before trying to take their own life. And the pleas for help from caregivers and youth who've knocked on the doors of mental health care systems only to have them slammed in their faces convinced us to act. Chidlren first learned from caregivers, youth, and mental health practitioners the root causes of lack of access to care and crafted with them an ambitious mental health policy agenda to solve the problem. The results of this exhaustive research and our ambitious policy agenda are encapsulated in two groundbreaking reports, optimizing medicaid to improve child and youth mental health in pa and state examples of medicaid optimization for child and youth mental health in alignment with recommendations for pa. Our insightful research is rallying lawmakers, practitioners, public officials, and caregivers to focus on solutions and remove barriers to mental health services. When children first learned that high school students were sidelined from attending high school trade or skills programs because the state was decades behind on investing in these programs, we crafted a winning strategy to move things in the right direction. Staff quietly met with key policymakers we knew shared our goal of giving more high school students the chance to learn real world skills before they graduate and gave them the information they needed to win support from their colleagues for more resources. The result: $30 million more for these schools, the largest increase for technical high school education in a quarter of a century. Children first policy reforms have real potential to boost child outcomes and save taxpayers millions in avoidable costs. In sum, children first's contributions to the lives of children were matched more than 200:1 by increases in services and resources from the federal, state and local government as a result of the advocacy efforts led by, and supported by, children first. Spcifially, we are proud of the $1.1 billion increase in fundingfor public scho”

“Children First improves the lives and life chances of our region's low-income, Black, and Hispanic children by advocating for the building blocks of opportunity - equitable access to high-quality early education, sound health care, effective public schools, as well as dependency and delinquency systems that heal children. We work with and organize parents, youth, and concerned citizens to advance these fundamental requirements of a more just society and for a better future.”