Our Issues
Children First for Oregon works to make Oregon a place where every child thrives. We believe every child has the right to be healthy, safe and secure. In order to work collaboratively with partners and address key areas of need in our state, we focus our work on the following issues:
Child health care coverage and access
Growing up healthy, both physically and mentally, is essential for a child’s success. Health needs that go unmet significantly impact a child’s well-being and reduce her or his ability to learn and grow into a productive adult. Every child and youth in Oregon deserves access to quality health care. This care must be comprehensive, including oral health and mental health services. Access to affordable, quality and comprehensive health care is not only vital to a child’s health and well-being, it is an essential component of every family’s financial stability.
Child care affordability, quality, and access
Affordable, quality child care is an economic necessity for working families and for families looking for work. Without child care, parents face significant barriers to obtaining or maintaining employment. This is especially true for low-income families. Child care is also a bottom-line issue for businesses, employers and our economic well being. When employees have access to quality child care, they are more productive, miss less work and experience higher morale. Conversely, lack of quality care for their children can result in lost productivity, higher turnover and reduced profits.
Child abuse and neglect
The physical and emotional scars from abuse can last a lifetime and negatively impact individual victims and entire communities, especially if adequate intervention and support services are not available when needed. Paying for the effects of abuse means paying for more hospitals, child welfare caseworkers, law enforcement and court officers, mental health therapists, special education classes, and prisons. Investments in prevention not only saves taxpayers money, but also saves children’s lives.
Foster care improvement
Efforts to address child abuse and neglect encompass a continuum of prevention, intervention, and healing services and supports. Foster care is the part of the system that provides substitute care for children outside their own homes in a variety of settings, such as non-relative family foster homes, relative care homes, family group homes, emergency shelters, residential treatment programs, and pre-adoptive homes. Oregon must deal with the lack of quality foster families by increasing support to these families. The state must also increase the amount of support it provides to foster youth as they transition to adulthood out of the foster care system.
Family financial stability
Children lose out when families experience financial instability. A growing body of research shows poverty put children at increased risk for negative outcomes in health, social and emotional development, educational achievement and future economic success. Financial stress in a family also put children at risk of abuse or neglect. Because poverty is a key risk factor for decreased child well being, it is a smart investment to assist low-income families in succeeding financially.
