Public Policy Goals

Learn how you can help achieve PPC's public policy goals.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children is a strong, effective and trusted voice to improve the health, education and well-being of children and youth in the Commonwealth. PPC is statewide, independent, non-partisan and non-profit.

Public Policy Priorities for 2013-14 Legislative Session

A 20-year History of Our Accomplishments for Kids

Our Vision: To make Pennsylvania one of the top 10 states to be a child and to raise a child.

To achieve its vision, PPC seeks substantial gains toward these public policy goals:

Children’s Health

• Build on the success of Medicaid and CHIP to ensure every Pennsylvania child has health insurance.
• Assure children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP have access to care that fully meets their physical and behavioral health care needs.
• Develop and implement a health insurance exchange that is efficient, easy to access and use, and meets the comprehensive health care needs of children.
• Expand Medicaid coverage for uninsured adults up to 133% of the Federal Poverty Level, consistent with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Child Welfare

• Align state financing with desired child and family outcomes.
• Strengthen response to reports of child abuse and neglect and the services and supports children and families receive to reduce instances of child maltreatment.
• Ensure all children in foster care receive services and supports that help them become part of a permanent family.
• Improve the education outcomes of children involved with the child welfare system.

Early Childhood Education

• Increase the availability of evidence-based home visiting strategies to strengthen families and meet the comprehensive needs of infants and young children at highest risk.
• 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.
• Ensure the availability of high-quality child care for working parents with at-risk children. 
• Ensure the health and safety of children in child care settings and improve child care quality.
• Increase the number of children enrolled in high-quality pre-kindergarten.
• Ensure the use of data to manage and evaluate early learning programs.

K-12 Education

• Ensure all children receive a high-quality public education 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 investments and how schools/districts perform.
• Provide all public school children with the opportunity to learn from an effective teacher every day in every classroom.
• Ensure children have access to school enrollment innovations that provide them with the opportunity to attend charter schools and, should their district-operated school persistently fail, other successful schools. 

Post-Secondary and Workforce Readiness

• Ensure high school graduates are postsecondary and workforce ready.
• Take steps to prevent students from dropping out of high school.
• Ensure high school dropouts have access to rigorous, standards-aligned 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.
• Support public policies that ensure all young people – including in-school and out-of-school youth – have access to postsecondary education, regardless of ability to pay.