TCP Snapshot
Mission
The Children’s Partnership (TCP) is a national,
nonprofit organization working to ensure that all children, especially
those at risk of being left behind, have the opportunities and resources
they need to grow up healthy and to lead productive lives. With
input from its highly respected advisors, TCP researches
new trends and emerging issues that affect large numbers of children and
provides early analysis and strategies for action. In the fields of
health care and technology, TCP helps build successful social innovation
models in communities, and then takes these proven strategies to a
larger audience through policy advocacy and public and private
partnerships.
History
The Children’s Partnership was founded in 1993 by
Wendy Lazarus and Laurie Lipper, two veteran child advocates with
ambitious goals of developing practical new strategies and policies to
improve the lives of children, particularly those lacking opportunities
and resources for success. TCP has been working on issues of children
and the digital media since 1994, when TCP published the first
comprehensive look at how the digital society impacts children
(America’s Children and the Information Superhighway). In
1996, TCP released the award-winning Parents’ Guide to the
Information Superhighway: Rules and Tools for Families Online, a
first-of-its-kind guide providing parents with the information necessary
to help children in the new age of information technology.
The Children’s Partnership’s extensive
work in extending health insurance to uninsured children began in 1996
with the publication of America’s Uninsured Children and the
Changing Policy Environment: A Strategic Audit of Activities and
Opportunities, which is credited with helping tilt decision-makers
toward the eventual passage of 1997 federal legislation that made up to
5 million uninsured children of working parents eligible for health
insurance. In 1998, we began working on Express Lane Eligibility, an
innovative policy idea that makes it easier for parents to sign their
children up for public health insurance in schools, child care centers,
WIC programs, etc., where large numbers of eligible but
uninsured children are located.
Program Focus
Over the past decade, The Children’s Partnership
has made notable strides towards our goals of helping invent a future
where all children have health insurance and do not need to go to an
emergency room to treat a simple ear infection; where the significant
benefits of the emerging digital society would reach even the most
disadvantaged child; and where parents, regardless of education or
income, can learn to guide their children safely on the Internet. We
currently operate robust programs in the areas of digital
opportunity and health insurance access,
and, in addition, TCP operates three Web
initiatives.
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