AAC's Mission

Action Alliance for Children exists to inform, educate, and inspire a statewide constituency of people who work with and on behalf of children by providing the most reliable information on current issues, trends, and public policies that affect children and families.

AAC is a resource for policy makers, children's service providers and advocates, and the media. In addition, AAC facilitates dialogue among diverse community groups (child care workers, educators, parents, human service providers, advocates, media, policy makers).

AAC is committed to improving the lives of children and families and believes that providing information is the first step towards this goal.

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Children's Advocate and Awards

Children's Advocate is an award-winning, bimonthly newsmagazine with a readership of more than 50,000 children's services providers, advocates, community leaders, policy-makers, and parents. Since 1973, the Children's Advocate has covered current trends and public policy issues affecting children and their families.

Awards for the Children's Advocate

• Parent's Choice Gold Award
• Educational Press Association Distinguished Achievement Award
• American Bar Association's Gavel Award
• California Association for the Education of Young Children (CAEYC) Commitment to Children Press Award

Add your voice to the Children's Advocate through our Building Communication Networks.

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Defensor de los Niños

The Children's Advocate is bilingual in English and Spanish. For an index of articles in Spanish, by subject, check out our índice de artículos en español.

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Building Communication Networks

Building Communication Networks create opportunities for people who work with or on behalf of children to share ideas and feedback with the Children's Advocate.

Add your voice to the Children's Advocate through our Building Communication Networks.

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Children's Advocate email bulletins

Children's Advocate email bulletins (formerly AAC's email news bulletins) help providers and advocates stay informed on issues affecting children and families in California. Monthly bulletins offer links to Children's Advocate articles, additional related resources, and advocacy opportunities related to issues affecting California's children and families.

Sign up for Children's Advocate bulletins.

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Conferences, Forums, Trainings

AAC's conferences and forums have explored promising models in child welfare, child care, welfare reform, and domestic violence. Often these events have brought together professionals from different fields to talk about possibilities for collaboration.

• March 2005: Social-emotional development strategy session brought together experts from a variety of fields to outline ways that people who work with children can foster children's social and emotional skills.

• October 2003: Parents leading the way ... toward stronger communities for children was a two-day conference for emerging parent leaders and organizations committed to fostering parent leadership. Find out more about this conference.

• 2001-02: Our Children, Our Future Talk Series provided an opportunity to listen to, and dialogue with, leaders in the children's advocacy movement in California. Topics included accountability, family-friendly workplaces, violence prevention, child care in the state budget, and foster care.

• March 2000: "New Directions in Child Welfare," profiled innovative child welfare programs helping children and families: family-to-family foster care, family group decision making meetings, and family resource centers. See related Children's Advocate newspaper issue.

• May 1999: "Nurturing Children While Parents Work," focused on child care issues, including child care's "staffing crisis," the lack of child care subsidies, how to build community partnerships, exempt care, diversity issues, and special needs care. It was sponsored by the Quality Child Care Initiative and organized by AAC.

• November 1998: "From Welfare Reform to Foster Care?" examined the extent to which welfare reform may be pushing families into the child welfare system and exemplary responses to this issue. See related Children's Advocate newspaper issue.

• September 1997: Held roundtable discussion about collaboration between professionals in the child welfare and domestic violence fields.

• Spring 1997: Domestic violence training programs taught child care providers how to identify and help children who have witnessed domestic violence.

• 1996: Convened conference on the impact of proposed federal policies on children's funding and programs and effective strategies and programs for working with children.

AAC's media forums enable children's advocates and the press to discuss effective ways to disseminate information about children's issues.

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Quality Child Care Initiative

The Quality Child Care Initiative -- a partnership of Bay Area foundations, corporations, and local governments -- is a project of the Early Childhood Funders Group (ECFG). The ECFG, an informal group of over 59 funders, has been meeting quarterly in the Bay Area since 1995.

The Quality Child Care Initiative (QCCI) was created in July 1997 in order to promote the need for quality child care in response to welfare reform. In addition, QCCI encourages collaborative information sharing and problem solving and also sponsors conferences, trainings, forums, and cluster groups for QCCI grantees and others working in the child care arena.

Working with QCCI from 1999 to the present, Action Alliance for Children has

• coordinated Early Childhood Funders' Group meetings
  
• hosted QCCI reports and other documents online

• convened two cluster group meetings, on child care advocacy and the role of child care in Prop 10
  
• assisted with development and implementation of a statewide Child Care Centralized Eligibility List Project (CEL)
  
• organized "Nurturing Children While Parents Work," a conference focused on child care issues
  
• produced four issue briefs on county-level child care issues in the Greater Bay Area with funding from QCCI.

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Violence Prevention

In 1997, we produced "Violence and Young Children: Successful Violence-Prevention Strategies," a video about effective violence-prevention strategies in order to increase awareness about the effects of violence on young children.

In 1993 and 1994, we sponsored two state-wide conferences on the impact of violence on children under the age of eight ("Violence and Young Children: Reducing the Risks" and "Successful Strategies: Addressing Violence and Young Children"). The December 1993 and January 1995 issues of Children's Advocate describe the conferences. AAC also co-produced "Violence and Young Children: Reducing the Risks," a video and discussion guide based on the first conference.

As an outcome of the 1993 violence-prevention conference, AAC facilitated the development of the Young Children/Violence Prevention Coalition. AAC continues to chair the coalition, which focuses on violence-prevention policies to help children under the age of eight.

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Action Alliance
for Children
e-mail aac@4children.org
1201 Martin Luther
King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 444-7136