OR
OR
Early relational health integrates science-based and experience-informed ideas, values, and practices which elevate the significance of the earliest attentive, responsive, nurturing, and reciprocal caregiver-child interactions in promoting children’s healthy development and well-being. This report outlines the actionable implications of 10 foundational principles of the early relational health paradigm.
(26 pp)
Caregiving is essential work, but this work too often falls on individuals with little or no support from society as a whole. As a result, many caregivers experience severe economic security and hardship—especially women, and Black, Latinx/e, and other women of color and immigrant women in particular, who provide the most care. To better understand the current policy gaps and how we might better support unpaid family caregivers moving forward, this new report summarizes the policies in place to compensate family caregivers in the United States and abroad and offers recommendations for ensuring future policies more effectively support unpaid caregivers and their families.
(29 pp)
This report expands on the perspectives and research evidence that inform the Strengthening Families and Youth Thrive frameworks by addressing key issues not highlighted in the initial research foundation reports.
(38 pp)
In this webinar, community providers discuss the challenges they face in providing responsive services, including building evidence and operating in the context of restrictive “evidence-based” standards, as well as recommendations for actions state and federal policymakers can take to ensure all families have the support they need through expanding access and availability of programs that are developed by and for communities of color.
Panelists and Moderator:
Read the report here.
Ensuring child and family well-being requires a radically different, anti-racist response of supports that center the voices of diverse children and families of color, are dignified and strengths-based, and that are offered in spaces they trust. As this brief highlights, community-based organizations across the country are striving to answer that call despite numerous barriers. This brief lifts up the voices of those community providers, with the goal of highlighting and addressing the barriers that stand in the way of all families having the support they need.
Watch the webinar here.
(19 pp)
In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California’s cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research on parenting students’ experiences with housing.
(8 pp)
In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students in CalWORKs, California’s cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research on parenting students’ experiences transferring to four-year institutions.
(5 pp)
In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California’s cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research on how public systems too often cause and exacerbate stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges for parenting students and their families. While parenting students persevere in order to support their children and pursue their goals, these systemic problems slow their progress and undermine their health and well-being over the long term.
(5 pp)
Our public policies and systems do not provide all families with the services and supports they deserve and have historically either excluded Black families. We must center families who are marginalized or excluded by our systems and policies, by creating shared principles that can guide efforts to promote health and well-being both within and outside of health systems. This brief shares eight things that we owe all children, youth, and families to promote mental health and well-being.
(3 pp)
In its annual budget released in March 2023, the Biden administration once again proposed critical investments in families, including restoring the Child Tax Credit, establishing a national paid family and medical leave program, and expanding access to high quality child care and early education. This fact sheet shares how the Biden administration's proposals reflect what Black, Indigenous, and Latinx parents and caregivers have told us that they need.
