Supporting Children, Youth, and Families: The Social Safety Net and Student Experiences

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Students spend a great deal of time at school, but they spend even more time at home, where experiences vary greatly. While some children grow up in stable, well-resourced homes and neighborhoods, others experience poverty, illness, and dysfunction at home, yet all are expected to meet the same academic benchmarks at school. Too often, education policies are enacted and evaluated separately from family and child welfare policies, ignoring important out-of-school factors that may impact student readiness, attendance, and academic performance. This panel examines the associations between social safety net programs, community resources, and caregiving responsibilities and student readiness and academic outcomes. Our first paper, “Ready or not? State policy choices, family resources, and children’s school readiness,” examines the association between state-level economic policies including the minimum wage, paid family leave, childcare subsidy access, and access to federal welfare programs and children’s school readiness as measured by the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) Healthy and Ready to Learn index. This paper uses the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center’s novel Policy Impact Calculator (PIC) to estimate resources available to a model family across fifty states, thus applying an invaluable tool to a timely policy question. Our second paper, “Strengths, Challenges, and Time Constraints: A Phenomenology of Youth Caregiving in Philadelphia,” explores the experiences of adolescent caregivers in Philadelphia and the ways that caregiving youth experience and interact with the educational and medical systems. By doing so, it sheds light on the responsibilities undertaken by adolescents in the absence of an adequate social safety net. Lastly, our third paper, “SNAP Participation: How Community Resource Institutions Shape Access in North Carolina,” explores how community organizations such as hospitals, schools, churches, community centers, and food banks shape SNAP uptake, which is linked to children’s health, nutrition, economic, and education outcomes. By connecting families’ experiences navigating social safety net programs to the educational experiences of their children, we seek to explore the link between family and community resources and academic outcomes. While the public education system is an invaluable lever for progress and social mobility, children and adolescents growing up in families where basic needs go unmet may need additional supports to fully access the educational opportunities offered to them. Thus, exploring the relationship between safety net programs and academic outcomes emphasizes the interconnected realities of children’s lives by bridging the gap between family and education policy research.

Policy Area

• Family and Child Policy

Chair

• Sara White, Vanderbilt University

Discussants

• Taryn W. Morrissey, American University

• Lisa Gennetian, Duke University

Organizer

• Katherine Braham Pedersen, University of Pennsylvania

Individual Presentations

• Strengths, Challenges, and Time Constraints: A Phenomenology of Youth Caregiving in Philadelphia - Presenting Author: Katherine Braham Pedersen, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Sarah Mitchell, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Daniel Carter, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Eric Underwood, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Omar Elsakhawy, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Ericka S. Weathers, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Joanna Hart, University of Pennsylvania

• Ready or Not? State Policy Choices, Family Resources, and Children’s School Readiness. - Presenting Author: Easton Stone Dawson, Vanderbilt University

• Strengthening Systems of Support to Improve Early Childhood Development - Presenting Author: Katie Pullom, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Brooks Bowden, University of Pennsylvania

• Immigration Enforcement and U.S.-Born Mothers’ Labor Supply: Evidence from State Reliance on Immigrant Childcare Workers - Presenting Author: Eunha Kim, Columbia University