Voices for Virginia’s Children: How Local Policy Advocates Prioritize Early Childhood Development
Throughout the summer, Robins Foundation’s summer intern, Annaliese Santana, interviewed eight inspiring community leaders as part of the foundation’s “Partner Spotlight” initiative. This new initiative provides a platform for grantees to highlight their important work in early childhood development and for Robins Foundation to recognize the incredible efforts and successes of our partners.
Annaliese sat down with Allison Gilbreath, Senior Director of Policy and Programs at Voices for Virginia’s Children to learn more about the policy and advocacy work they do.
Voices for Virginia’s Children advocates on behalf of over one million children in the Commonwealth, focusing on the most vulnerable populations in Virginia. Allison, a devout activist and mother, provided beautiful points on the importance of political advocacy in advancing early childhood development initiatives.
Can you describe, at a high level, what Voices for Virginia’s Children does?
Voices for Virginia’s Children wants to ensure that the children and their families can realize their potential is not predictable by race, socioeconomic status, or geography. Our refreshed mission is to champion public policies and legislation that achieve positive and equitable outcomes for young people. To me, it’s particularly important that children can realize who they want to be without any systemic barriers.
What does political advocacy look like in Voices for Virginia’s Children?
There are a lot of different ways we do advocacy work. We have a program called Virginia’s Youth in Action. Here, we partner with young people with lived expertise in the systems we aim to change, and they advise us on what policy solutions should be prioritized from their experience.
We also do coalition work, where we work in partnership with other advocates so our voices can be louder together. Additionally, we lobby members of the General Assembly and educate them on the most pressing issues. Our job is to bring subject matter expertise to members of the General Assembly and let them know what the next steps are. We’re also on a lot of advisory boards and commissions and engage folks who are interested in our advocacy efforts and bring them to the General Assembly with us.
I read that you created the Foster Care Policy Network at Voices for Virginia’s Children. Can you please describe what that is?
In 2018, there was a report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) that showed devastating research on the Virginia foster care system. In many cases, we were making children entering foster care worse off than they were before. In response, I called a few legislators and asked if we could create a Foster Care Caucus, a group of legislators who make this topic a priority in the legislature. Luckily, some folks said yes and they have been meeting as a group every year since. This past legislative session, they helped pass the landmark legislation for kinship care, which provides financial assistance and case management services to kinship care providers.
Your organization’s mission has been to cover a variety of core policy topics, but you all focus on child poverty in a broader sense. Can you talk about the impacts of child poverty on early childhood development?
Child poverty impacts everything about a child and their family. Children who are in poverty are more likely to enter the foster care system, be food insecure, and not meet their developmental milestones. But poverty is a solvable issue. There are policies that we can put in place to get at the core of poverty; policies such as the child tax credit and paid family medical leave.
During COVID, families were receiving child tax credits, economic boosters, and additional dollars through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). During this time, data shows that child poverty decreased by the greatest amount we’ve ever seen. As a result of these programs, we also saw decreases in child abuse and increases in family economic security. So, we have learned, we know what the right policy choices are, and we have to make them.
In addition to poverty, what are other specific issues that the children you serve face?
There’s a youth mental health crisis in Virginia. In fact, the Virginia Youth Survey conducted by CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS offered a youth mental health survey to students and found that about 38% of young people were reporting that they felt depressed or anxious within the last two weeks.
Sometimes, when people hear “youth mental health,” they automatically associate that with teens. But it impacts children of all ages, including young children. There are specific policy solutions around school-based mental health that would ensure that children can access therapists, school counselors, and support groups while they’re in school. The objective is to ensure students’ mental health is prioritized in the setting where they are at the most.
How does policy play a role in motivating change?
I often say, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me what you value.” The Virginia budget is our state’s value statement. It communicates what we prioritize, what we value, and if we’re putting money into the sectors that improve the lives of Virginia’s children. The General Assembly policies also allow us to change and influence systems for children. There’s always a need to improve; through policy change, we can change the trajectory of so many children’s lives.
What motivates you to do this work? What brought you to this moment?
I am a mom of two young children, and I have paid over $90,000 in childcare expenses to date. When you ask any parent that, they’ll tell you that’s common. Navigating early care and education with my first child was an eye-opening experience for me, even though I worked here and cared about these issues. For example, I put my son on a daycare waitlist when I was only six weeks pregnant. When he was about three months old, I was the only mom to get a spot in that daycare; we were on the waitlist for almost a year.
As my son got older, we learned he had some additional needs. Seeing how challenging it was to navigate that early care as a parent with a special needs child brought me even closer to the issue. My son is six, but because he was able to access the Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI) he’s thriving now. There are so many parents like me that struggle to navigate through different support systems for their children; we have to make childcare broader and more accessible for families like my own.
What do you wish more people understood about the children you serve or the work that you do?
There are systemic failures that make parenting difficult; childcare being one of them, family economic security being another huge one. When families can’t afford basic needs, children often pay the cost for that. When we’re looking at long-term impacts on children and their families, it is often preventable through policy decisions. I just wish more people were involved or were interested in getting involved on the policy level.
How has support from Robins Foundation helped you all address some of the needs that you’ve talked about today?
Robins Foundation has given us the opportunity to consider a vision and strategic plan for early care and education. They see the value of early care and education and understand that many of these issues are policy-related. This past legislative session, Robins Foundation and Voices for Virginia’s Children were able to work in partnership. This work took years to get here, but the governor signed a budget that included $1.1 billion for early care and education. Now we get to help with some of the implementation of that. Now we get to think bigger. Robins Foundation put us in a place where we get to dream a little bit, which is fun.
Do you all have any upcoming initiatives that you would like to promote?
In a few months, we will be planning our 2025 legislative agenda. We will have opportunities for folks to join us at the General Assembly, opportunities for a mental health advocacy day, and we will offer Advocacy 101 workshops for people to learn about advocacy work. We are always interested in folks who want to share their stories and are impacted by the issues that we wish to change. If someone reads this article and wants to share their personal story of their experience accessing childcare, I would love to hear that.
Is there anything else that you want to say with regard to your experience in this role or some of the work that you all do?
For me, policy work is a lot like parenting. I put a lot of effort and time in as a mother, and I often don’t see the rewards of my work right away. For my kids, I nursed them and rocked them back to sleep. It wasn’t until many years later where I got to see, “Okay, you’re doing the things I asked.”It’s the same with policy. Sometimes, it can take years to see change, but I feel like it’s worth it. Every year we win some and lose some, and that’s part of this process. I have a lot of hope and I do see change; we just have to sometimes look at the long game and not the short game.
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For more information on Voices for Virginia’s Children, please visit https://vakids.org/
