Voices for Utah Children Articles

  • 2026 Legislative Updates: Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice

    Voices for Utah Children aims to make our juvenile justice and child welfare systems fairer and more equitable for everyone. It’s exciting to see the incredible progress we’ve achieved over the past five years. Thanks to the dedication of lawmakers and...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Martín C. Muñoz
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2026 Legislative Updates: Children's Health

    After a tumultuous year in the political landscape for immigrants, families, and human services more broadly, our goals for the session include defending wins we have achieved in recent years and preventing further erosion of services. As the sessions...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Megan Neuf
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2026 Legislative Updates: Immigrant Family Policies

    More than 300,000 immigrants call Utah home, and more than 41,500 U.S. citizen children live with at least one undocumented parent. We recognize that policies targeting any immigrant demographic can affect all immigrants across the state. Therefore, we...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Ciriac Alvarez Valle
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2026 Legislative Updates: K-12 Education and Child Care

    As Utah enters the 2026 legislative session, we are watching child care policy with both urgency and optimism. Families across the state continue to face rising costs, limited availability, and persistent workforce shortages that strain providers and...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jennifer Stout
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2026 Legislative Updates: Tax & Budget

    The 2026 Utah Legislative Session is expected to advance additional income tax cuts and fiscal policies that reduce long-term state revenue, disproportionately benefit high-income earners, and shift costs to local governments and families. These...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jenna Williams
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2025 Legislative Recap

    Was this year's legislative session good for kids? We answer this and more in our 2025 Legislative Recap! In this latest brief, we break down what happened during the legislative session, what we accomplished alongside our partners, and why staying...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Anna Thomas
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • Racist Rhetoric Won’t Fix Utah’s Child Care Crisis

    Voices Official Statement Condemning Rep. Nicholeen Peck’s Racist Remarks On March 6, 2025 during the House debate on SB 189, Rep. Nicholeen Peck dismissed Utah’s child care crisis, stating: “People often speak of a child care crisis, and this term is...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Voices for Utah Children
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • How to Strengthen Utah's Child Tax Credit in 2025

    In 2023, Utah introduced its own child tax credit (CTC) marking a positive step forward. In 2024, the credit was slightly expanded. However, the credit's limited scope falls short of providing real assistance to families raising young children....

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jenna Williams
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • Support HB 30 The Indian Family Preservation Act

    This legislative session, Utah has the opportunity to support Native children and families by passing HB 30, the Indian Family Preservation Act Amendments. This bill would allow tribes to establish foster home standards and oversee child custody cases,...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Martín C. Muñoz and Laneta Fitisemanu
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • SB 221: Stand Up for Safe Child Care

    Utah lawmakers could do many things to alleviate the child care crisis families are facing. In fact, there are 33 expert-recommended ones right here, thanks to the state’s newest child care solutions study. Endangering kids' safety by lowering...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Moana 'Ulu'ave
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • Another Year, Another Tax Cut: Who Benefits?

    Key Takeaways Minimal Savings, Major Loss: Another tax cut in 2025 will remove about $100M from essential services, pushing total cuts to about $1.3B annually—funds that could strengthen schools, childcare, and healthcare. Wealthy Win, Families Lose:...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jenna Williams
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • What Happened With Child Care During the 2025 Legislative Session?

    This 2025 session, supporting families with young children remained a top policy priority of Voices for Utah Children. The urgent need to address families' critical child care needs remained at the forefront of our advocacy efforts. This session was...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jenna Williams
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • Voices for Utah Children 2025 Legislative Priorities

    Looking to the 2025 Legislative Session, Voices for Utah Children remains committed to speaking out for all those Utahns who can’t vote but are greatly impacted by public policy: our kids! Despite an increasingly difficult state policy climate, we...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Anna Thomas
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • A Rough Legislative Session for Utah Kids (Again)

    The 2024 Utah Legislative Session ended at midnight on Friday, March 1. For the Voices for Utah Children team, this session included supporting a lot of community engagement, working hard to protect the programs that protect Utah kids, and trying not...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Anna Thomas
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • What Happened With Child Care During the 2024 Legislative Session?

    As we entered the 2024 session, supporting families with young children remained a top policy priority of Voices for Utah Children. At the forefront of our advocacy efforts is the urgent need to address the critical child care needs of these families....

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jenna Williams
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • What Happened with Child Care During the 2023 Legislative Session?

    Child care certainly received its fair share of discussion this legislative session, but did anything really happen? The short answer is kinda. Here’s what happened. Funding Requests During the session, Voices for Utah Children teamed up with parents,...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Jenna Williams
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2022 Legislative Session: Tax Policy: Giving In Again to the Tax Cut Temptation

    The story of tax policy in the 2022 Legislative session is a tale of two tax cuts: A large, top-heavy cut to the income tax rate from 4.95% to 4.85%. How large? $164 million. How top-heavy? 63% of it goes to the top 20% of taxpayers. all of whom have...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Matthew Weinstein
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • The 2021 Utah Legislative Session: Was It Good For Kids?

    We appreciate the many legislators that supported bills affecting children. In summary, it WAS a good year for kids, but we still have plenty to do and we look forward to working together to #investinutahkids! Early Childhood Early childhood care and...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Sara Gunderson
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • Good News for Juvenile Justice Reformers, from the 2019 Legislative Session

    Fans of juvenile justice reform have a lot to be happy about, with regards to the recently concluded legislative session. Thanks to the hard work of many committed elected officials, reform-minded public administrators and community-based advocates,...

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Anna Thomas
    • Category: Updates & Blog

  • 2019 Utah Legislative Session Update

    2019 Utah Legislative Session Update The 2019 Legislative session is in the books. The beginning of the Session was dominated by a disappointing rollback of voter-approved Prop 3, which will cover fewer families and create additional barriers to care....

    • Type: Article
    • Author: Terry Haven
    • Category: Updates & Blog
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