Collaboration across political divides is necessary to solve big problems. And, as Texas Monthly has reported, that cooperation is possible even in polarized places like the Lone Star State.
With leadership from Stand Together Trust grantee Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), state lawmakers recently approved reforms to Texas’s troubled Child Protective Services (CPS) system that will keep more children with their parents. TPPF and a strong cross-ideological coalition of organizations worked with Republican and Democratic lawmakers to advocate for the “revolutionary” changes.
As Houston-area lawyer Tara Grigg-Green explained to Texas Monthly, the system has been especially hard on families struggling with poverty or racial prejudice. “We just want them to stop taking our kids out of our community,” she said.
TPPF Senior Fellow Andrew Brown told Texas Monthly families should not be separated because of economic need. Instead they should be “connected to resources in the community that can help them.”
Stand Together Trust work with partners to create unique, individualized paths out of poverty that recognize the potential of every person to contribute. Read more about our support for social entrepreneurs committed to ending poverty.