Children’s Council of San Francisco Takes Our Advocacy to Washington, D.C.

Last week, Children’s Council of San Francisco proudly joined early care and education advocates from across the country at the Child Care Aware of America Symposium in Washington, D.C. As part of a united California delegation, we partnered with the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network and Wu Yee Children’s Services to amplify the urgent need for federal investments in child care.

Our advocacy focused on several key policy priorities that directly support working families and promote equity for young children. We called on Congress to:

• Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
• Strengthen the Child Tax Credit
• Increase funding for the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG)
• Protect and defend Head Start programs nationwide
  

These policies are essential to reducing the financial burden on families, increasing access to quality child care, and ensuring all children—especially those from underserved communities—have a strong start in life.

Our delegation—including Ben Doyle, Alan Wong, Alex Maykowski, Chanelle Brown, Maria Luz Torre, and Nayo Johnson—met with key Congressional offices to advance these priorities. We had the honor of meeting with Patti Ross, Deputy Chief of Staff to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, whose office expressed strong alignment with our mission and support for the policies we championed.

We also met with Ayan Dixit, staffer to Congressman Kevin Mullin, to express our strong endorsement of the Poverty Line Act (H.R. 1428). This bill would modernize how the federal government calculates the poverty line by factoring in regional cost-of-living differences—an important step toward making programs like Medicaid, SNAP and child care assistance accessible to more families who need them.

At Children’s Council of San Francisco, as part of our mission to help every child in San Francisco reach their full potential we believe every child deserves access to affordable, high-quality early care and education. Our visit to Washington reaffirmed the power of partnership and policy in creating lasting change, and we return home more determined than ever to advocate for the children and families of San Francisco.