EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
VISION: Voices for Virginia’s Children envisions a Virginia in which our systems center young people, ensuring their ability to realize their brightest potential is no longer predictable by race, socioeconomic status, or geography.
MISSION: Voices for Virginia’s Children champions public policies and legislation that achieve positive and equitable outcomes for young people.
In 1994, a visionary, bipartisan group of advocates from across Virginia asked a momentous question: What will it take to make the well-being of children the focus of intense thought, debate, and action by all policy and decision makers, the media, and the public? Their answer was the creation of the Action Alliance for Virginia’s Children and Youth, an advocacy organization designed to serve as the vehicle for the dream that all children in Virginia could thrive and grow to their fullest potential.
That organization later became known as Voices for Virginia’s Children. For three decades, Voices has uplifted the needs of young people through independent research, policy advocacy, community engagement, and partnership cultivation.
In 2022, Voices’ Board of Directors and staff joined hands to refresh the organization’s mission, vision, and theory of change. For the first time, Voices articulated the vision that the ability of young people to realize their brightest potential is no longer predictable by race, socioeconomic status, or geography. Our theory of change framework focuses our advocacy on structural reforms and addresses the root causes of inequities in Virginia’s youth-serving systems.
With this new framework in place, the Board and staff gathered once again to develop a new roadmap for putting our mission into practice: our 2024-27 strategic plan.
We are delighted to share our new goals with you, and we look forward to working in partnership and community to ensure that all young people in Virginia can thrive.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
Voices for Virginia’s Children envisions a Virginia in which our systems center young people, ensuring their ability to realize their brightest potential is no longer predictable by race, socioeconomic status, or geography.
THE WORK (WHAT WE DO)
• Collect data to track and identify trends: conduct research to model possibilities and to inform policy pertaining to young people.
THE OUTCOMES (WHAT WE ACHIEVE)
• Policy makers and decision makers use a data-driven approach to prioritize young people.
• Families have the information and confidence needed to advocate for themselves.
THE IMPACT (WHAT WE CHANGE)
• Community investments to eliminate systemic inequities are made proactively.
• Communities are transformed as families are well informed and well resourced.
• Convene individuals and advocates around youth issues, and join them together with decision makers
• Cultivate the voices of young people and their champions.
• Laws are passed and policies enacted that benefit young people.
• Young people’s needs overcome partisanship.
• Collaboration among youth advocates becomes the norm.
• The voices of young people are brought to bear in the halls of power.
• Young people have access to all they need to realize their brightest potential.
• Young people are recognized as experts in their own needs.
OUR PROCESS: In June 2023, Voices’ Board and staff kicked off our strategic planning process with a retreat facilitated by our colleagues at Dax-Dev, a social impact consulting firm. For the next six months, we met regularly for discussion and deep thought, consulted with partners across Virginia, and asked tough questions about the direction of our work. The Board of Directors approved our plan in December 2023.
OUR 2024-27 POLICY GOALS: We then arrived at two sets of goals: five major policy goals to advance our vision of a Virginia where all young people can thrive, and five goals for Voices’ organizational development.
GUIDING QUESTIONS ???
Early on, the Voices planning team identified a set of guiding questions for the strategic planning process. These questions contemplate Voices’ identity in a changing policy and advocacy landscape.
They also articulated some tensions within Voices’ approach to advocacy after a period of rapid transformation and staff transition. The consultants and planning team used these questions as a basis for early discussion, internal testing, and consensus building.
• How will we maintain our identity as an independent voice for children in an increasingly polarized political landscape?
• How will Voices continue to expand our advocacy to include young people ages 0-25 while maintaining our strong roots in early childhood advocacy and the 0-8 age range?
• Related, how will Voices continue to be a leader in a changing early childhood education (ECE) advocacy landscape?
• What will it take to create Voices’ unique data and research brand?
• Given the changing population and increasing needs of young people, how should Voices expand our policy work to include additional issue areas?
• What does it mean for Voices to partner with community members, particularly young people, in our advocacy work?
LANGUAGE OF CHANGE (DEFINITIONS)
YOUNG PEOPLE/YOUTH
To build a Virginia where all young people can thrive, policy interventions are necessary from infancy through young adulthood.
Our work now spans the ages of 0 to 25, and we use the umbrella term “young people” to describe this age group. When referring to specific age ranges, we use more specific language; e.g., infants, toddlers, children, adolescents, and young adults.
In expanding our focus age range, we are guided by research indicating that adolescence (roughly ages 14 to 25) is a significant development period much like early childhood, when the brain is especially open to learning and growing.
COMMUNITY
We define our community as the young people and families who are most impacted by our youth-serving systems and agreed that centering lived expertise is an important aspect of Voices’ engagement work.
SYSTEMS CHANGE
Our work dismantles the barriers that stand between young people and the opportunity to realize their brightest potential. We address root causes of injustice and aim to transform the systems, structures, and power dynamics that perpetuate inequities in Virginia.
INTERGENERATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
Over the last several years, Voices has deepened engagement with older youth, including teenagers and young adults, and leaned into cultivating the voices of young people and honoring youth agency. In 2022, we launched Virginia’s Youth in Action, our youth advocacy council and leadership development program. This new approach is not an abandonment of advocacy on behalf of younger children, infants, and caregivers; rather, it is an enhancement. An intergenerational strategy is essential to advocacy for policy change and for community healing.
GOAL #1
FAMILIES IN VIRGINIA ARE FINANCIALLY SECURE AND ABLE TO PROVIDE A HEALTHY LIFE FOR THEIR YOUNG PEOPLE.
OUR OBJECTIVES:
1. Ensure that Virginia prioritizes family economic security in tax relief proposals, including expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, establishing a state-level Child Tax Credit, and taking family size into account for all tax rebates.
2. Ensure that Virginia provides expanded income support to families through public benefits programs like TANF and Guaranteed Basic Income pilots.
3. Ensure that young people have access to nutritious food through universal school meals and Food is Medicine programs.
Our Why: Economic security is the foundation upon which thriving families are built. Economic resources determine whether young people have access to food, housing, health care, child care, high-quality education, and family supports.
Current Barriers: We measure economic hardship as a lack of financial resources, but economic hardship also creates daily trauma and chronic stress in young people and caregivers.
Solutions for Well-Being: Virginia must intentionally remove barriers to economic security by providing social support and adequate financial resources to families so that all young people can thrive.
GOAL #2
FAMILIES IN VIRGINIA HAVE ACCESS TO A VARIETY OF AFFORDABLE, HIGH-QUALITY EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES.
FAMILIES IN VIRGINIA HAVE ACCESS TO A VARIETY OF AFFORDABLE, HIGH-QUALITY EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES.
OUR OBJECTIVES:
Increase state investment in early care and education by $500 million to enhance ECE quality and participation.
2. Increase the allocation of ECE funds to increase early educator compensation.
3. Ensure that participation in ECE is representative of the racial, socioeconomic, and geographical diversity of our commonwealth.
Our Why: High-quality early care and education (ECE) is an essential component of a thriving childhood. Early care and education opportunities provide children with a strong developmental foundation and allow parents to pursue paid work to provide economic security for their families.
Current Barriers: In Virginia, parents have to pay too much for child care, and early childhood education professionals earn too little.
Solutions for Well-Being: To solve this crisis, Virginia must invest more funding in a mixed-delivery system of early education and preschool that includes homebased providers, private child care centers, and public schools. The commonwealth must also measurably improve compensation for early childhood professionals and provide more support for families needing infant and toddler care. Families need access to a variety of child care options to meet their needs. Providing financial assistance to families, investing in early care professionals and building a strong mixed-delivery system gives parents these choices.
GOAL #3
YOUNG PEOPLE IN VIRGINIA HAVE EQUITABLE ACCESS TO THE RESOURCES NECESSARY FOR A LIFETIME OF GOOD HEALTH.
OUR OBJECTIVES:
1. Ensure that all young people and their families have health insurance coverage.
2. Ensure that Virginia’s family health care workforce is diverse, educated, and informed on youth well-being.
3. Ensure that all families have access to high-quality health care tailored to their needs, including language access, access to gender affirming care, access to a variety of Medicaid services, and access to perinatal care.
Our Why: Health is determined not only by the absence of illness, but by equitable access to high-quality, affordable, and culturally responsive care.
Current Barriers: Poverty and structural racism cause devastating health disparities among young people in Virginia.
Solutions for Well-Being: Ensuring the health of our young people requires affordable health insurance coverage, a diverse and well-educated health care workforce, and increased opportunities for access to health care.
GOAL #4
VIRGINIA’S SYSTEMS OF CARE PRIORITIZE YOUNG PEOPLE AND TAKE A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALING AND MENTAL WELL-BEING.
OUR OBJECTIVES:
1. Ensure that Virginia’s public schools integrate a continuum of high-quality, school-based mental health care services.
2. Ensure that Medicaid reimbursement rates are increased to offer a highquality continuum of child and adolescent mental health care.
3. Change the narrative on youth mental health from deficit-based to assetbased.
Our Why: Young people and their families are demanding a transformation of Virginia’s mental health system to promote well-being and remove stigma.
Current Barriers: Families should have access to a continuum of mental health services allowing them to receive support whenever they need it, but currently access to care depends on geography, age, and income.
Solutions for Well-Being: Virginia must improve its system of clinical care to address the unique mental health needs of young people. Our systems must also recognize that mental well-being also goes beyond the clinical model of care and invest in preventive factors such as economic security, welcoming school environments, and youth development opportunities.
GOAL #5
VIRGINIA’S CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM PUTS FAMILIES FIRST BY OFFERING SUPPORT AND PREVENTING SEPARATION.
OUR OBJECTIVES:
1. Champion a statewide, fully funded kinship care program, including a kinship division at the Virginia Department of Social Services, kinship case management services, and financial payments to kinship caregivers.
2. Ensure that young people aging out of foster care have pathways to a four-year college education and career by expanding the Great Expectations program into high-priority high schools and all public, four-year universities.
3. Ensure that the child welfare system prioritizes prevention and avoids unnecessary separation by launching a regional pilot program for parent advocacy and legal representation.
Our Why: The child welfare system was created to address family disruptions and protect young people.
Current Barriers: Too often this system fails to provide young people and families with the tools for stability and success and causes additional rupture and separation.
Solutions for Well-Being: The system must prioritize family preservation and foster care prevention through economic and social support for struggling families, including formal support for kinship caregivers and youth aging out of foster care.
OUR 2024-27 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITMENTS
Goal 1: Deepen our capacity for collecting data and conducting research on the well-being of young people and evidence-based policy interventions.
The ability to collect, analyze, and illustrate data on the well-being of young people will strengthen Voices’ policy advocacy. Accomplishing our policy objectives will require Voices to expand and enhance our capacity for collecting data and conducting research—two activities that are fundamental to our theory of change. Voices will need to invest in more staff and data tools to conduct quantitative and qualitative data analysis.
Goal 2: Enhance our advocacy with greater communications presence and storytelling opportunities.
In today’s media-drenched world, championing public policies requires powerful narrative change. Convening partners and cultivating the voices of young people necessitates developing a shared platform for advocacy through authentic and strengths-based storytelling. Voices will need to invest in more strategic communications opportunities to challenge deficit-based narratives about young people and to build narratives of truth and healing.
Goal 3: Explore the expansion of our statewide presence.
Voices is a champion for state-level public policy, and our work has a statewide impact.
Yet our roots are mostly in the Northern Virginia and Central Virginia areas. Voices can deepen its impact and further its mission by becoming a truly statewide organization and thought leader. Gaining reach and recognition among a statewide audience of supporters and stakeholders will allow Voices to build the resources necessary to expand its core issue areas and staffing capacity in future years.
Goal 4: Strengthen our approach to intergenerational engagement as an advocacy tool.
Voices launched Virginia’s Youth in Action (VAYA), our youth advocacy council and leadership development program, in 2022. As Voices has learned from and refined this cohort experience, we must continue to strengthen our capacity and skills for intergenerational engagement and center the experiences of young people.
Goal 5: Build an organizational structure that makes Voices an employer of choice.
To uphold its values and cultural promises, Voices must continue its journey of self-examination and building internal equity. Accomplishing our mission over the next three years will require significant investment in staff and in creating a thoughtful, intentional organizational structure with competitive salaries, professional advancement opportunities, and administrative support.
