(WEBINAR) Work Requirements Don't Work: What's At Stake & What Can We Do?

This webinar outlined the current and potential threats to basic assistance programs with a specific focus on work requirements; provided an on-the-ground perspective about how imposing work requirements in exchange for basic supports will hurt low-income individuals and especially people of color; and shared communications tools and tactics for how to reframe the work requirements narrative and advocate for positive strategies to end chronic unemployment and poverty.Moderator: Melissa Young of Heartland Alliance's National Initiatives on Poverty & Economic Opportunity Panelists: Elizabeth Lower-Basch of Center on Law and Social Policy, Ronald Johnson of Heartland Alliance Health, and Rebecca Vallas of Center for American Progress

Doing More for Our Children: Modeling a Universal Child Allowance or More Generous Child Tax Credit

Child poverty in the United States remains stubbornly high, with 12.2 million children living in poverty in 2013. Nearly 17 percent of children in the United States lived in poverty in 2013 -- a higher rate than for other age groups, and considerably higher than the child poverty rate in other advanced industrialized countries. The U.S. deep child poverty rate -- children who live in families with incomes less than half of the poverty line -- was 4.5 percent of all children in 2013, meaning nearly 1 in 20 children live in families that cannot even afford half of what is considered a minimally adequate living.One key policy for reducing child poverty is the child tax credit (CTC) -- which reduces the child poverty rate from 18.8 percent to 16.5 percent of American children. There is broad acceptance of the importance of the CTC, and key expansions to the CTC were made permanent at the end of 2015. At a moment when leaders ranging from President Barack Obama to Speaker Paul Ryan are talking about poverty, now is an opportune time to explore policy options that would build on this success. This report models two approaches to reduce child poverty in the United States even further -- a universal child allowance and an expanded CTC.A universal child allowance is a cash benefit that is provided to all families with children without regard to their income, earnings, or other qualifying conditions, and that could be subject to taxes for families with high incomes. The U.S. child tax credit, in contrast, is provided only to families that meet a threshold for earnings, phasing in as earnings increase and then phasing out as earnings rise higher. While most other advanced industrialized countries have some kind of universal support for children, the United States does not.For each approach, we begin with a modest reform, and then model increasingly generous versions. In our simulations, we find that even the modest reforms generate important poverty reductions. Our results also make clear that the more we spend on these programs, the greater the reduction in poverty the United States can achieve

Civic Engagement and People with Disabilities: A Way Forward Through Cross-Movement Building

This report presents a national overview of the barriers to civic engagement that disabled people experience. Drawing on our findings from surveys, a Twitter chat, and interviews, we offer recommendations for the philanthropic sector and for civic engagement organizations aspiring to create a more inclusive and responsive democracy to build civic power among people with disabilities. Civic power in this report is conceptualized as opportunities for people with disabilities to amplify, mobilize, and elevate their voices and infuence within democracy.This report centers the expertise, insights and lived experiences of people with disabilities, including leaders from various disability communities. Our findings reaffirm that no disability rights issue exists outside the sphere of civic engagement and no meaningful civic engagement strategy can emerge without attention to disability rights. Supported by the Ford Foundation's Civic Engagement and Government (CEG) program, this report is a collaboration between the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy and the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy, both based at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy. The disability rights mantra "nothing about us, without us" informs the questions, methods and content in this report. We hope the findings and recommendations will inspire new thinking and action within philanthropy and civic engagement spaces, and spark courageous conversations and inform practices within the vital organizations working to strengthen democracy in the United States.

Deviancy, Dependency, and Disability: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration

Three widely discussed explanations of the punitive carceral state are racism, harsh drug laws, and prosecutorial overreach. These three narratives, however, only partially explain how our correctional system expanded to its current overcrowded state. Neglected in our discussion of mass incarceration is our largely forgotten history of the long-term, wholesale institutionalization of the disabled. This form of mass detention, motivated by a continuing application of eugenics and persistent class-based discrimination, is an important part of our history of imprisonment, one that has shaped key contours of our current supersized correctional system. Only by fully exploring this forgotten narrative of long-term detention and isolation will policy makers be able to understand, diagnose, and solve the crisis of mass incarceration

Deviancy, Dependency, and Disability: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration

Three widely discussed explanations of the punitive carceral state are racism, harsh drug laws, and prosecutorial overreach. These three narratives, however, only partially explain how our correctional system expanded to its current overcrowded state. Neglected in our discussion of mass incarceration is our largely forgotten history of the long-term, wholesale institutionalization of the disabled. This form of mass detention, motivated by a continuing application of eugenics and persistent class-based discrimination, is an important part of our history of imprisonment, one that has shaped key contours of our current supersized correctional system. Only by fully exploring this forgotten narrative of long-term detention and isolation will policy makers be able to understand, diagnose, and solve the crisis of mass incarceration