-- 2016-2023 SALT LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES --

Social Action Linking Together (SALT) has over 1,300 members supporting SALT’s goal to help shape social policy that advances the common good and supports human services in Virginia. We urge your support for:


SALT Legislative Priorities for 2023

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2022

2021 Special Session II Report

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2021

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2020

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2019

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2018

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2016

SALT Legislative Priorities for 2014

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Attention Advocates: This is an Excellent Advocate Resource located on the Virginia General Assembly web page: (click on) Citizen Involvement

Solitary Confinement Legislator Packet for SB108—2022 Session


The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy has created a Guide for churches, groups, and organizations that can be accessed here through the following Link:
VICPP Solitary Confinement Action Guide -2021


THANKS TO ALL OUR VIRGINIA LEGISLATORS THAT SUPPORTED THE EXPANSION AND ALL THE ADVOCATES THAT WORKED SO HARD IN MAKING THIS HAPPEN!


The Issue:  The 1996 Welfare Reform Act introduced many changes to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), also known as Welfare.  Among them, the money for TANF has been dispersed to states in block grants, with significant flexibility given to states in how much they give in TANF benefits, and how much of the money can be diverted to programs intended to help current and former TANF recipients.  Unfortunately, with too few controls or guidelines on how TANF programming money can be used, states have grown dependent on TANF funds to balance their own budgets, using them for "everything under the sun," as Welfare Reform architect Ron Haskins put it.  This means there is too little available for needy families, those TANF is meant to benefit.

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**Cost of Living Adjustment Charts

The TANF caseload in Virginia has been reduced by 50 percent since the start of Welfare Reform in 1995 while Federal funding has remained constant. Thanks to this dramatic caseload reduction, Virginia should have sufficient Federal TANF funds that could be used to pay for a modest benefit increase up to 50 percent of the federal Poverty Level (FPL).

 

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 Striving for Family Stability Through TANF

Family stability is a primary goal of the TANF program.  Social Action Linking Together (SALT) is requesting a 10% increase in TANF payments to parents and other kinship/relative caregivers of children in Virginia.  Current TANF payments are inadequate to support families with children.  As a result, children who might be cared for within their extended families often must be placed-at greater expense and with greater trauma to the child and his or her family-in non-relative foster care.

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Kinship Care is Better

A recently published study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine reports on the impact of kinship care on the behavioral well-being for children in out-of-home-care. The study was conducted over a three year time period and involved 1309 children. The children included those in kinship and foster care. The conclusions of the study were that children placed into kinship care had fewer behavioral problems three years after placement as opposed to those placed in foster care.  The study authors concluded these results support efforts to maximize placement of children with willing and available kin when they enter out-of-home care.

The complete journal article can be viewed on line at

 http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/162/6/550?eaf

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Voices of Fairfax:  Letters to the Editor:


Foster Care Disparities

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) makes it possible for children to be provided for in their homes or the homes of relatives, despite family poverty.  Relatives, especially grandparents, make tremendous sacrifices to care for these children, and they receive little support.  Some older relatives and grandparents have to postpone retirement and move to a bigger house or move out of retirement communities to provide for these children.  I know: I grew up in relative care.  The disparity in benefits is amazing.  An entire TANF family of three receives less than a half as much as a single foster-care program child.  Are some children worth less just because they are poor, or are lucky enough to have a relative who cares?  We hope you will look into and make these disparities known.

John Horejsi