Take action on the Child Tax Credit!
To help support families in meeting their basic needs, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was recently expanded as part of the American Rescue Plan. This year, families can receive up to $3,000 for each child ages 6 to 17 and up to $3,600 for each child under age 6. That’s non-taxable income to help pay for basics like food, housing, health care and other essential supports, which doesn’t change families’ eligibility for public programs like Medicaid, SNAP and child care subsidies.
Right now, the expanded CTC is only for 2021. President Biden has proposed extending the CTC improvements as part of the American Families Plan, but Congress must act to make the improvements permanent. That’s why the Educare Learning Network is joining with national, state and local partners to launch a Child Tax Credit Campaign: to help bolster families’ finances and ensure a more equitable future for all young children. Our goal is to ensure eligible families know about and can access the CTC (especially families who may not automatically receive these benefits) and to ensure continued funding of the CTC beyond 2021.
Gather Voices
Visit our Gather Voices platform to record a video about the impact and importance of the CTC. It’s quick and easy to submit a video via cell phone or handheld device.
Family & Staff Survey
Take this Family & Staff survey about the CTC. Our goal is to gauge CTC receipt across the Network to help ensure all interested, eligible families and staff receive their CTC payments, and to support advocacy efforts for continuation of the CTC.
Investing with Families Chat-a-thons
As part of the Office of Head Start’s Investing with Families initiative, the National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) is hosting a monthly chat-a-thon series. These chat-a-thons are extended interactive conversations via chat to help support Head Start staff and families in accessing, planning and using available American Rescue Plan benefits for individual family economic mobility goals.
The next chat-a-thon about the CTC and other tax credits available to families will take place on Thursday, August 26 at 2 PM CT. Register here!
Start Early’s Action Center
Join the Educare Learning Network and our partners at Start Early in making your voice heard! Share your story or contact legislators to help make an impact on local, state and federal policies – like asking Congress to pass the American Families Plan to make the CTC permanent.
Contact Your Members of Congress
Write letters to your members of Congress using this template to help hold them accountable to make long-term, sustainable investments in families with young children, child care and preschool providers, and the early childhood workforce.
CTC & The Educare Five: Supporting Stable Families
This year, the Educare Five Policy Agenda was launched to elevate policy recommendations in five priority areas to move toward a more equitable future for young children. One of these five priority areas is supporting stable families – and the CTC is one example of how we can do this work. Expanding investments such as the CTC helps ensure families have adequate finances to access the basics – housing, food, health care and other supports needed to thrive.
