Community & Child Welfare

CCC’s Work in Community & Child Welfare

Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York is committed to ensuring all safety; permanent, stable families; well-being for every child involved in the child welfare system.

CCC advocates to:

Ensure sufficient funding for child welfare:

• We support Federal and State child welfare financing laws that increase funding for child welfare, so agencies can better protect, care for and provide services to children who either have been, or are at risk of being, abused or neglected.
• We advocate for more resources for the overburdened Family Courts.

Ensure children are safe:

• We support competitive salaries, opportunities for career advancement, adequate compensation and manageable caseload sizes for caseworkers.
• We advocate for enough child abuse and neglect prevention services for every family in need.

Ensure children have safe and stable permanent families:

• We fight to decrease court delay by increasing the number of Family Court Judges.
• We support the Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program (KinGAP), which helps relatives to permanently care for children outside the foster care system and receive a subsidy.

Ensure child well-being:

• We support implementing New York State’s Medicaid Redesign to improve health and mental health care services for foster children.
• We advocate for programs and policies to improve outcomes for youth who turn 21 and age out of foster care without a family.

Current and recent issues:

• We saved crucial funding for effective child welfare and prevention services in New York City.
• We helped secure funding for 20 additional Family Court judges.
• We helped pass legislation to enhance the Kinship Guardian Assistance Program and continue to advocate for more resources for children in foster care.