Our Focus

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children (PPC) is a strong, trusted and effective voice for improving the health, education and well-being of children and youth in the Commonwealth. The vision of PPC is that Pennsylvania will become one of the top 10 states in the nation to be a child and to raise a child.

Our agenda concentrates on five core issues:

1. Child welfare (abuse and neglect)
2. Children's Health
3. Early Learning
4. Public Education through Post-secondary Completion
5. Afterschool and Youth Development

View Our 2013-14 Public Policy Priorities

Child Welfare

• Take steps to align state financing with desired child and family outcomes.
• Strengthen the services and supports that children and families receive to reduce child abuse and neglect.
• Ensure that all children in foster care receive services and supports that will help them be part of a permanent family.

Children's Health

• Build on the success of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicaid to assure that every Pennsylvania child is insured.
• Assure that children receiving CHIP and Medicaid coverage have access to benefits and providers to meet the full array of their physical and behavioral health care needs.

Early Learning

• Maintain and expand, when possible, the availability of evidence-based home visiting strategies to strengthen families and meet the comprehensive needs of at-risk infants and young children.
• Monitor investments and policies that support the inclusion of children with developmental delays and disabilities in high-quality early learning programs and provide ongoing supports to parents and providers.
• Assure the availability of high-quality child care for low-income families.
• Improve child care quality.
• Maintain and expand, when possible, the number of children enrolled in high-quality pre-kindergarten.

Public Education through Post-secondary Completion

• Ensure that all children receive a high-quality public education by providing state resources necessary to support their academic success via a formula built on the principles of equity, predictability and accountability and through targeted investments proven to increase student achievement, sustained multi-year commitments to provide schools and teachers with tools to aid their efforts, and strong accountability for new investments and how schools/districts perform.
• Provide all children with the opportunity to learn from an effective teacher – every year.
• Ensure children without means have access to school enrollment innovations that provide them the opportunity to attend more successful schools.

Afterschool and Youth Development

• Ensure high school graduates are postsecondary and career ready.
• Take steps to prevent students from dropping out of high school.
• Ensure high school dropouts have access to high-quality education options so they can re-engage and earn high school and postsecondary and/or industry credentials that prepare them for self/family-sustaining wage occupations.
• Ensure all young people (both in-school and out-of-school) have access to postsecondary education regardless of ability to pay.