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Kids can’t vote, but the issues facing our nation’s children are simply too important for us to ignore their voices. Help us hold lawmakers accountable and add your voice to the actions below.
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First Focus on Children works to ensure that every child has access to high-quality, affordable child care, and to properly fund and reform our child care and early education system to benefit children, parents, care workers and early educators, and uncompensated family caregivers, including parents.
Food insecurity affects millions of children, interfering with their ability to learn, grow and thrive, and driving the epidemic of childhood obesity. First Focus on Children works to strengthen and expand programs that fight childhood food insecurity and ensure better nutrition.
Child poverty is a policy decision, one that costs the United States an estimated $1.1 trillion a year. First Focus on Children leads the U.S. Child Poverty Action Group, a coalition of organizations working to get federal lawmakers to set — and then to achieve — a national child poverty reduction target.
The United States and Somalia are the only two countries in the world that have not signed the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. First Focus on Children works to reform lawmakers’ approach to children and to secure the basic rights and protections of every child.
More than a quarter of all U.S. children live in immigrant families and they represent the nation’s fastest growing group of kids. First Focus on Children works to ensure that all federal policies address the comprehensive needs of these children, and protect and promote their health, well-being, and success.
Health care is key to promoting children’s physical and mental health, and their educational, financial and social outcomes as adults. First Focus on Children has been instrumental to the continued success of Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and other forms of health insurance, and works to ensure that all children have access to high-quality, affordable health coverage and care.
High-quality early learning programs reduce educational disparities and foster a host of positive academic, social and emotional outcomes. First Focus on Children works to increase equity, access and federal funding for this vital sector.
Air and water pollution, environmental toxins, climate change and other environmental hazards impact children far more than adults. Marginalized children — children of color and those in low-income communities — bear the brunt of these dangers. First Focus on Children works to ensure that every child lives free from environmental risks.
First Focus on Children works to make children the priority in all federal budget decisions by advancing policy solutions, advocating for systemic change and publishing child-focused fiscal analyses, such as our annual Children’s Budget.
The American public overwhelmingly supports improving policies that affect children. Yet lawmakers just as regularly treat children as an afterthought. First Focus on Children strives to make government work better for children and families in the U.S. and abroad, promoting systemic change through child impact statements, cross-agency priorities and other standards and instruments that center children in federal and state policymaking.
An estimated one million school-age children experience homelessness in America, yet data suggests the actual figure is far higher. First Focus on Children advocates for a more accurate assessment of child homelessness, and works to ensure that lawmakers support affordable housing and eviction prevention, and act on the reality that homelessness is inextricably linked to poverty and all the burdens that flow from it.
Children make up one-third of the world’s population — and up to half the population in some countries — yet they remain an afterthought in U.S. foreign policy and assistance. First Focus on Children works to center children’s needs in foreign policy and program development.
First Focus on Children works to ensure that all children, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, or zip code receive a quality education.
Children are the most diverse generation in the United States, yet longstanding systemic and institutional racism continue to undermine the health and well-being of children of color. First Focus on Children works to ensure that federal policies actively create the opportunity for all children to thrive, regardless of race or ethnicity.
The U.S. youth justice system endangers the lives and futures of the children it entangles. Its punitive approach undermines children’s physical, mental and emotional health, as well as their education and employment opportunities. First Focus on Children works to ensure policies that support a culturally responsive, trauma-informed approach to youth delinquency.


Thank a Champion for Children

Tell the Senate: Your vote showed us who’s for kids & who’s just kidding

Urgent: Tell Senate to Vote “Yes” & Expand the CTC

Pass the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act

Tell Congress: Fully Fund WIC

Tell Congress: Our Rising Child Poverty Rate is Unacceptable

Tell Congress: No Child Should Live in Poverty — Pass the Bipartisan Tax Package

Tell Congress: We Must Keep Child Care Afloat
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