Home > WI Election Resources > Agenda for Children and Families in WI

Share

Agenda for Children and Families in Wisconsin

Wisconsin’s state motto, “Forward,” suggests a place where all families have the opportunity to thrive.  For children that means growing up in a just, safe and nurturing family and community.  It is our collective responsibility to help all Wisconsin families move forward.  Taken together, the following policy priorities point towards a future that fulfills the promise of our state motto.

(Note: Download WCCF handout “Elect Candidates for Kids” for this and other information in pdf form.

A Sampling of the Issues We Care About, and Think Candidates Should Care About Too

Early Care and Education
We need a coherent and comprehensive early care and education system that gives every child a great start. The system should include quality standards, professional development, technical assistance, monitoring and accountability, ongoing financial assistance, and engagement with parents and communities. A successful system would feature:

• Increased access to affordable, high-quality early care and education services by expanding 4K, guaranteeing availability of Head Start and Early Head Start for eligible families, and strengthening the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program.
• Successful implementation of the YoungStar Quality Rating and Improvement System for child care, which will be the basis for rewarding higher quality within the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program
• Expanded evidence-based home visiting programs.

Health Care
Wisconsin is rightly proud to have one of the lowest rates of uninsured children and adults in the nation, but our work is not done until all children and adults have access to quality health care.  To achieve this goal we need to:

• Maintain support for BadgerCare Plus, including coverage of childless adults through the Core Plan, improve outreach to eligible families, and continue efforts to simplify enrollment and renewal procedures.
• Explore and fund innovative strategies to increase access to dental care and mental health services.
• Implement long-term, prevention-focused strategies to eliminate Wisconsin’s glaring racial disparities in health outcomes.

(back to top)

Juvenile Justice
All children deserve fair treatment in court. WCCF seeks to ensure that youth are treated through the juvenile court where their developmental needs can be met most effectively. We should:

• Return 17-year-olds to the original jurisdiction of the juvenile court.
• Create a statutory preference for diverting nonviolent juvenile offenders.
• Require data tracking by race and ethnicity of youth waived into adult court to begin to reduce disparate impacts on youth of color.
• Invest in youth development and prevention strategies that have proven to be effective in preventing delinquency and other risk behaviors.

Child Safety
Every child deserves to live in a safe home and community, free from danger to their health, safety and well-being. The following can help bring us closer to that goal:

• Improve the quality, consistency and outcomes of child welfare prevention, early intervention and intervention services.
• Safely decrease the number of children in foster care through increased focus on maltreatment prevention, placement stability and permanency.
• Eliminate childhood lead poisoning by providing resources to assist landlords and low-income homeowners in replacing windows and repainting.

Work, Economic Security, and Poverty Reduction
Helping families lift themselves out of poverty requires a focus on access to good jobs, sustainable housing, adequate health care, and high-quality early care and education. In addition to the recommendations outlined elsewhere in this document, strategies for addressing these interconnected needs include:

• Indexing the minimum wage to inflation
• Expanding and restructuring financial aid to make postsecondary education more feasible for low-income adults balancing school with work and parenting responsibilities
• Developing “bridge” and “pathway” programs that streamline the process for earning the skills and credentials necessary to qualify for family-supporting jobs
• Identifying resources to help families maintain safe, affordable and sustainable housing

(back to top)

Budget and Taxes
We support a balanced approach to solving Wisconsin’s fiscal challenges in order to ensure that the state has sufficient resources to maintain its infrastructure and sustain excellent education (from early care and education through post-secondary) and human services systems. We need to:

• Provide the Department of Revenue with the resources to collect a greater share of taxes owed to the state.
• Ensure that the state takes advantage of opportunities to maximize the amount of federal funding available.
• Extend the sales tax to certain currently exempt services.

Racial Equity
Wisconsin has some of the worst racial and ethnic disparities of any state in the country, including outcomes related to child welfare, health, high school graduation, unemployment, adult incarceration, and juvenile justice. As a state we must address these issues and the social, economic, educational and environmental inequities that contribute to them. We call for:

• A public commitment by state leaders to set goals to reduce disparities across all systems
• A requirement to gather and analyze data related to these disparities to identify potential opportunities for change
• Targeted investments in health care, child welfare, education and employment to reduce disparities
• Efforts by public officials to reach out to and engage private leaders and resources, especially in communities with the greatest disparities, to identify systemic changes that can be made to improve opportunities for children and families of color
• Valuing the contributions that immigrants make to our state and removing barriers to success for their children

Download WCCF handout “Elect Candidates for Kids” for this and other information in pdf form.

(back to top)