Yesterday, Voices sent out a policy memorandum to the Governor and Senate and House Leadership. We believe the challenge before us is two-fold: to take immediate, effective action to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable people, followed by a redesign of our broken safety net. Here are our recommendations.

 We recognize and appreciate the rapid and robust planning response we know is happening, and are heartened to see that these collaborative efforts are centering human needs. Given the fast-paced nature of the response, some of the recommendations that follow may have already surfaced and be in the works. 

Our whole state apparatus must be focused on meeting families’ basic needs and mitigating immediate harm with a people-first response to the emergency. We ask that you act quickly to provide immediate additional economic relief in the form of increased access to healthcare, direct cash transfers, housing assistance and more in order to protect the health of all children and families in Vermont and provide households with some financial stability to weather the current emergency. In addition, we request that programs serving Vermont’s most vulnerable residents adopt as much flexibility as possible, using the authority of executive orders where needed.

Economic Security

There will be large numbers of children and families experiencing economic crisis. Even before the emergency, almost a quarter of people counted in the annual point-in-time homeless census were children. Our child poverty rate had just barely recovered to pre-2008 recession levels. And the reach of safety net programs had been degraded by years of budget cuts. The COVID-19 pandemic has put these challenges in stark relief. The success of public health measures rests on a foundation of economic protections, food security, shelter, access to health care, and avenues to ask for help of all kinds when needed. We recommend that the state: 

1. Suspend eligibility redeterminations for Reach Up and SNAP for the duration of the emergency.

2. Prioritize family stability by ending all program terminations during the emergency, including those for families involved with Family Services. 

3. Suspend all asset limits for safety net programs.

4. Expand TANF emergency and transitional assistance. Vermont should raise the income eligibility limits for Reach First and Reach Up to enable the state to help more families in need during this time. Vermont’s TANF income eligibility limits are extremely low — less than 40% of the federal poverty level. Greater flexibility in those thresholds could help families keep a roof over their heads and prevent homelessness among children during this difficult time.

5. Evaluate all policies and programs to ensure that they include and are available and accessible to homeless and undocumented individuals. Communicate tailored messaging to these and other populations around the urgency of seeking care and provide assurances they will be held harmless when they do seek care with respect to both cost and immigration status. 

6. Expand housing supports for families experiencing housing insecurity, and enact a statewide moratorium on evictions and foreclosures. 

7. Pay special attention to housing options for those experiencing intimate partner violence.

Health 

We appreciate the immense undertaking of adapting to the current situation and the rapidity with which federal guidance and state needs are emerging.  In addition to all that is being done, the following recommendations would contribute to the stability of the overall healthcare system:

1.     Protect and streamline food access. Consider using public transportation routes in addition to school bus routes for food access including rural routes. 

2.     Incentivize and temporarily expand the use of motel vouchers including at previously non-participating motels as preferable to people remaining in or entering congregate settings, particularly in light of the privacy and separation of restroom facilities and basic cooking/food preparation capacity.  In addition, community providers should be granted the flexibility to use the housing/shelter option that works best for each individual or family to support health and safety. 

3.     Congregate recovery settings for those already testing positive should not be used when this would separate children from their caregivers.  

4.     Develop a plan to manage and maintain normalcy for ongoing and arising health needs that are unrelated to COVID-19 but pressing: this includes children with special health needs and/or in need of hi-tech nursing care; perinatal care access and labor and delivery support, and services for parents in recovery.  

5.     Medicaid funds should be used to pay family members, including parents, when workforce shortages make it necessary for a family member to provide essential services to children with special health needs.  Background checks and training requirements should be expedited or waived in these cases.  This measure should be temporary, extending 6 months from the end of the State of Emergency in order to ease the disruption to this critical workforce.

6.     Consider the capacity of non-medical health workers like community health workers, therapists, and peer counselors to support families through increased stress, delays, and navigating changing access options as well as options to triage and deliver services at home or other non-clinical settings.  

Child Protection

Child protection is a complex system under the best circumstances.  The state is in an untenable situation right now and must act immediately to prioritize the safety of children within the context of this public health emergency. Specifically, we recommend that the Department for Children and Families: 

1. Invest in meeting families’ basic needs to reduce stress and support healthy parent-child relationships. 

2. Accelerate family reunification by using stimulus funds to resolve any economic barriers (eg housing) that are prolonging out-of-home placement.

3. Ensure that the child protection and family support workforce has the necessary technological resources, when regular face-to-face contact may be difficult, and proper protective equipment when needed to conduct home visits and investigations.  

4. Create solutions to the current barriers to placement (e.g.: it is impossible to get fingerprints taken right now, which means that people cannot be approved for foster care or permanency).

5. Allow for additional flexible funding to respond appropriately to any emerging increases in maltreatment incidence that occurs during the pandemic.

6. Allow youth who have transitioned out of care to independence to receive basic needs/services until they are 26.  

7. Ensure that kinship providers, foster parents, and families connected to the child protection system have regular check-ins (by phone or video) and a network to support the children in the home if the caretakers become ill. 

Thank you for your consideration of these initial proposals. We are available to discuss further and will follow up if changing circumstances call for a revised approach. And thank you for your commendable efforts to date to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on Vermonters. We believe we can emerge from this crisis with a better understanding of what’s needed to assure a resilient, just future for our state, and a commitment to act on behalf of our kids.

Want to learn more? Check out our COVID response page for additional resources.