SAVE THE DATE - JULY 11, 2-3PM - FIRST NAC ADVOCACY CONFERENCE CALL 

On July 11th, the National Advocacy Center will be hosting the first in what we hope will be a helpful series of educational conference calls for Good Shepherd Advocates.  These calls will highlight different ways of being involved in advocacy, provide a forum for agencies and communities to share their experiences and "best advocacy practices," and offer Good Shepherd Advocates an opportunity to ask questions of NAC staff.  For the first conference call, we have invited two representatives (one from a Good Shepherd Agency and one from a Good Shepherd Sister community) to share their work in integrating advocacy into their agency/community life. NAC staff will moderate this discussion and provide additional resources and suggestions from our experience and what we have learned from coalition partners.

We will be using a free conference call service for this call, which will provide a single call-in number for everyone to use.  In order to set the call up, however, we need to know the number of participants in order to ensure that we have enough lines available.  If you are interested in participating, please RSVP to aprevost@gsadvocacy.org by Friday June 30th.  After that date we will be sending out a confirmation e-mail to all who have RSVP'd that includes the call-in number, passcode, agenda for the call, and additional information.  Again, please e-mail aprevost@gsadvocacy.org by June 30th if you want to participate in this first conference call.  We look forward to your participation and the great conversation we hope it will generate.

          CALL-IN DAY FOR KINSHIP CARE        

The Child Welfare League of America, along with the Children's Defense Fund, Generations United and many other organizations have come together to sponsor a national call-in day Thursday June 15th to urge Congress to pass legislation that provides additional support for those who provide safe and caring homes for children who are not able to live with their parents.  The bills (H.R. 3380 and S. 985) would allow states, for the first time, to use federal Title IV-E foster care funds to help provide subsidized guardianship assistance payments to relatives so that the children they care for will not have to remain in foster care. H.R 3380 would also extend this support to non-relatives serving as guardians.

More details about the legislation are available at the CWLA website.  This legislation is especially important given the cuts that Congress made to kinship care as part of the "Deficit Reduction Act" earlier this year.

          ACTION NEEDED:         

Call your Senators and Representative Thursday, June 15th and urge them to help children on Father’s Day by co-sponsoring kinship care legislation, S. 985 in the Senate and H.R.3380 in the House of Representatives! You can call toll-free at 1-888-233-1221 to be connected to the Capitol Hill switchboard. Then ask to be transferred to the offices of your Members of Congress.

          UPDATES         

Good News on the Estate Tax: Efforts to repeal the estate tax were defeated last week on a procedural vote 57-41 (60 votes were needed - see how your Senators voted here. However, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has stated that he plans to bring the estate tax back up for a vote later this year. The National Advocacy Center will keep you posted on developments as we remain strongly opposed to estate tax repeal, especially given current deficits and human needs that remain unmet in our communities

SOA Amendment fails, but gains greater support: Although Rep. McGovern's amendment to cut funding for the School of the Americas/WHINSEC failed by a vote of 188-218 (find out how your Reps. Voted here.  Thanks to the efforts of advocates it picked up support from 55 Representatives who were not already co-sponsors. Our friends at NETWORK have their website set up so that you can send a letter to thank or express disappointment to your Representative over their vote.