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UWP's Public Policy Priorities and Agenda for the 2019-2020 Legislative Session
The new year brings a new 2019-2020 legislative session in Pennsylvania with many new and returning House and Senate members.
As with every new legislative session, UWP evaluates our top policy priorities and narrows our focus for the issues we will be advocating for or against during the current session.
It is through United Way's expertise and relationships that we are able to develop meaningful and lasting cross-sector solutions to community challenges. Below is a highlight of the various policy priorities UWP will be advocating for this session:
PA 2-1-1: Connecting Pennsylvanians to the Right Service at the Right Time. UWP Supports:
- Investment of state funds to continue a public-private partnership to strengthen 2-1-1;
- Providing data for health and human service planning at the state and local level;
- Exploring ways to increase the efficiency of state and local governments by contracting to provide information phone hotlines; and
- Working with state agencies to define shared goals to save taxpayer dollars by connecting Pennsylvanians in need to the right services.
Education: High-Quality Childhood Education and Out of School Time Activities to Prepare PA's Kids for the Jobs of Tomorrow. UWP Supports:
- Assuring all children have access to consistent, high quality and affordable early learning with increased funding for Pre-K and Head Start programs;
- Assuring all children have access to reliable, high quality and affordable child care;
- Creating a forum for out of school time program funders, providers, schools and policy makers to identify stable sources of funding, consider quality program standards, and foster partnership to support out of school time activities; and
- Incentives for aligning out of school activities with PA's projected work force needs in order to prepare PA's kids for high-demand, family sustaining jobs
Income Stability and Family Self-Sufficiency: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty. UWP Supports:
- State and federal Earned Income Tax Credits to support working families;
- Improving PA's affordable housing options in rural and urban areas for median and low-income individuals and families;
- Workforce development initiatives that help more of PA's populations achieve jobs that provide family-sustaining wages; and
- Expanding access to vital and affordable health care programs including Medicaid and CHIP.
You can read our full list of public policy priorities and agenda
here. We also have a condensed version of the priorities in a brochure that you can use for your legislative visits and community outreach.
We held a webinar to review our priorities for members. You can listen to the recording
here.
UWP is looking forward to kicking off this new legislative session with some great partnerships and advocacy opportunities around important issues to Pennsylvanians and their families. Please stay tuned for opportunities to engage through action alerts and other advocacy.
If you have any questions about these priorities or other advocacy related issues, please reach out to
Maggie.
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Webinars on Opioid Strategies and MyFreeTaxes.com Changes Upcoming
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There is still time to register for our Evidence-Based Strategies for Fighting the Opioid Epidemic Webinar on
Wednesday, January 9th, 2018 at 2:00pm. You can
Register Here
or through
Workplace by Facebook. The Webinar will go over
methods and programs that have proven successful at fighting the opioid epidemic.
As was previously announced, H&R Block will be ending their two-year sponsoring relationship with UWW and MyFreeTaxes.com in 2019.
Despite this, the changes to MyFreeTaxes.com for 2019 will preserve this tool for households earning less than $66,000 to file their taxes for free online.
UWW will be hosting a webinar to address this information and answer questions. The Webinar is January 17th, 2018 at 2:00 PM. You can register for the webinar at
UWW's Website
.
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UWP ALICE® Project Overview for Local United Way Boards Available
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UWP is excited to announce we have distributed video that was created specifically for local staff to use to educate United Way Board Members about the ALICE Project. This video goes over what ALICE means and the goals of the project in five minutes.
The video was created as part of an exclusive series for our committed ALICE members to educate their boards, but our ALICE committee has decided to make the first video available to everyone to help answer questions and open up discussions with all local UW boards. There will be a new video each month available for committed United Ways to access. If you would like to access the project overview video, please reach out to Amanda Barbarich for the link.
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First United Way Twitter Chat of 2019 - Financial Stability
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UWW's first Twitter Chat of 2019 will be held on Wednesday, January 16 at 2pm. All United Ways are invited to join using the hashtag #UnitedWayChat. This month UWW will be focusing on Financial Stability to allow United Ways to share their most important financial stability initiative, advocacy work, profile a beneficiary, share news coverage and recognize corporate and nonprofit partners.
To see a list of questions, click here. For resources on how to participate in United Way's Twitter Chat, click here.
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