Advocacy

Children’s Friend takes a leadership role in educating policymakers and the public about the needs of Rhode Island children and their families.

2026 Legislative Priorities

At Children’s Friend, we serve 925 families in our First Connections, Healthy Families America and Nurse Family Partnership home visiting programs. The state has changed the funding model, so these programs are primarily paid for by fee-for-service Medicaid, making it extremely difficult for us to cover the costs of these lifesaving programs. Rhode Island must be creative – as other states have been – in funding home visiting programs to ensure their ongoing sustainability.

Children’s Friend provides an array of early education and early child care options for families including Early Head Start, Head Start, Child Care, and Pre-K. We have served over 1,469 children so far in 2024 at one of our 13 licensed early childhood centers. We have a waitlist for these programs, primarily due to our inability to hire enough staff. We urge the state to invest in child care reimbursement rates and strategies to invest in our early education workforce.

Children’s Friend supports increasing cash assistance benefits annually and aligning them with the federal poverty limit, ensuring no child lives in deep poverty. Additionally, measures should be taken to protect vulnerable children from losing their benefits if their parent loses eligibility due to immigration status.

Family Home Visiting in Rhode Island: Financing, Staffing and Access

Family home visiting is a time-tested prevention strategy which supports pregnant moms and parents as they bring a new child into the world.

Sustaining Home Visiting Programs

There is still much work to be done to sustain home visiting programs, like First Connections and Healthy Families America. Read more about the impact of these programs in commentary recently published in Rhode Island Current by one of our home visiting nurses:

Investing in Early Care and Education

Thanks to your support for Children’s Friend, our advocacy efforts over the past several months have been successful. The Rhode Island General Assembly supported our priorities this legislative session by extending the Child Care for Child Care Educators Pilot Program and making critical investments in child care. This is progress worth celebrating, and we could not have done it without your support!

How You Can Help

Join a meeting

The RIght from the Start campaign hosts meetings throughout the year to share more about what’s happening in the legislature on our priority issues.

Open campaign meeting schedule

Share your story

The most effective tools we have are real stories of how Children’s Friend makes a difference for the children and families we serve. If you’d like to share your story, please email us at info@cfsri.org.

Early Head Start

Head Start

Rhode Island PBS Weekly: Falling Behind

First Connections

Children’s Friend: Needed Now More Than Ever

Marc’s Story

The Dads Job Training Program at Children’s Friend
Many, many thanks to Capitol Conduit, who donated this amazing video.

Contact your legislators

Your legislators need to hear from you about what they can do to help children.

find your legsilator

Amplify our message

Follow along on social media to see the latest on our advocacy efforts. Share, like, and comment to help build momentum.

2025 Budget and Legislative Priorities

Children’s Friend is calling for investments in First Connections, Early Intervention, Head Start, and the Child Care Assistance program.

View our 2025 Priorities Sheet

(H5196 Diaz / S100 DiMario) Continue the Child Care for Child Care Educators program
(H5200 Donovan / S673 Urso) Pass the Early Educator Workforce Act
(H5197 Diaz / S62 DiMario) Streamline Access to the Child Care Assistance Program
(H5281 Diaz/ S240 Vargas) Child Care is Essential
(H5199 McNamara / S394 S Gallo) Establish Pre-K implementation and expansion guidelines, including a infant/toddler set-aside

(H5164 Carson / S231 Valverde) Support the establishment of an IDEA Task Force bill
(H6073 Giraldo / S677 Valverde) Invest state funding to draw down federal funds for home visiting and re-visit Medicaid strategy to support proven, multi-year, consistent, relationship-based programs

Children’s Friend supports the creation of an IDEA Task Force (H5164) to develop a financing and staffing plan for a coherent system of educational and developmental services for babies and young children with developmental delays and disabilities.
(S247 Valverde) Maternal and child health service for children with special healthcare needs – Early Intervention program for developmentally disabled infants.
(H5462 Tanzi) Maternal and child health services for children with special healthcare needs – Early intervention program for developmentally disabled infants.