HealthCare.gov is a brand new consumer website that really does help make sense of the new federal health care reform. It is a one-stop shop that contains a variety of special features and links that you, your agency’s participants can use to help take care of health needs. It is not an enrollment site; it is a clearinghouse, written in consumer-friendly language. The site has great information on federal and state public policies and also compares private coverage and options plans.

“I participated in the White House telephone briefing on HealthCare.gov and it really is an incredible tool,” said the Partnership’s Don Mathis. “Moreover, the site has just been launched and HHS Secretary Sebelius and her staff are committed to improving and adding more information and options. Even if you are not computer-savvy, you’ll want to visit HealthCare.gov” Check out a portion of the press release on the site and part of the home page.

Announcing HealthCare.gov

Posted by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on July 01, 2010 at 05:00 AM EDT

Today, our Administration is launching HealthCare.gov a new consumer website that provides unprecedented transparency into the health care marketplace. Through HealthCare.gov, individuals will have more control over their health care as informed and empowered consumers.

This “first-of-its-kind” website is simple and easy to use, and provides one-stop shopping access to a wealth of information, including your new consumer rights and benefits under the Affordable Care Act, a timeline of when new programs under the new law will come online between now and 2014 and a new insurance finder that will make it easy to find both private and public health insurance option that works for you.

HealthCare.gov will help take some of the mystery out of shopping for health insurance. For too long, it was confusing to identify your options and compare plans. HealthCare.gov makes comparison shopping easier with a new insurance finder that allows users to answer a few basic questions and receive information about insurance options that could work for them. The site makes a system that thrived on complication and confusion easier to understand. This kind of transparency helps create informed consumers which increases competition, reduces prices and improves quality.

Here are just some of the basics about what you can find when you visit:

• Approximately 500 pages of content
• Data for more than 1,000 insurance carriers and 5,561 open products (2,030 in the individual health insurance market and 3,531 in the small employer health insurance market)
• Information on every Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program in the country
• Information on the Pre-Existing Condition Plan in every state.
• Billions of choices. Answer a few basic questions, and the site’s insurance finder automatically sorts through a huge catalog of public and private coverage options to help you identify the ones that are right for you (with billions of potential personal scenarios supported).

Emerging Leader Videos Needed: Community Action Through My Eyes

As we reflect back on the successes of the past 46 years, we are must look forward and anticipate the challenges we will continue to face. In preparing for these challenges, we must arm the future leaders with the tools and resources necessary for success.

In an effort to build our community of future leaders, the Community Action Partnership is hosting an Emerging Leaders track at the Annual Convention in Boston. This track will focus on the tools and resources each emerging leader needs to successfully carry of the legacy and work of Community Action.

As part of this Emerging Leaders track, we will be assembling a video that highlights depicting “Community Action Through My Eyes”. We will combine the videos received from agencies throughout the country into a product that will be showcased at the 2010 Annual Community Action Partnership Conference in Boston August 31 – September 3.

We are asking for your help! Please forward this to the emerging leaders in your agency and ask them to participate in this highly visible project!

Please create a video that depict Community Action through your eyes. Each video should be approximately 3 minutes in length.

To see a sample please click on the following link: www.chdcorp.org/emergingleadersproject

The video should focus on answering the following questions:

• What about Community Action are you most proud of?
• How is Community Action relevant in today’s political & economic climate?
• What is the greatest challenge facing Community Action in the next 10 years?
• Why are you committed to the Promise of Community Action?
• Optional: Footage of you stating the Promise of Community Action.

Cash Prizes! Each of up to five videos will be chosen to receive a $150 cash award. The award, from a private donor, will go to the emerging leader, her or himself, and be announced at our national convention in Boston on September 3rd.

To Submit A Video:
Submittal of a video is easy. Follow this link to upload and send your video: https://dropbox.yousendit.com/EmergingLeadersVideoProject
By July 30, 2010 - Please submit all videos for inclusion in the Emerging Leaders video Project.

For Additional Information:
Amber Twitchell is the Economic Recovery Director at California Human Development and is coordinating this project as a member of the Partnership’s Emerging Leaders Task Force. Please contact her at 707-570-7769 or amber.twitchell@chdcorp.org for additional information and/or with any questions.

Community Action is only a movement if we keep it active and alive. Additionally, a movement will go nowhere without engaged, dedicated and passionate individuals. Let's use this Emerging Leaders track as an opportunity to restate our commitment to this movement.

 

Thanks to a two-year grant from the Ford Foundation and the deft, expert leadership of project director Mary Virtue, the Partnership is compiling the lessons learned from our seven-site “Racial Equity and Economic Security” project (REES). Mary will lead a webinar discussion featuring two of our leading Community Action leaders, John Edwards of Northeast Florida Community Action Agency (and chair of the Partnership board of directors) and Lois Carson of Community Action Partnership of Riverside County (CA). Sign up now for this no-cost webinar scheduled for Thursday, July 15th.

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Webinar: Community Action Agencies Working
With Racial Equity Outcomes

Date: Thursday, July 15, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

REGISTER TODAY for the first REES webinar with Lois Carson and Mary Virtue:
" Community Action Agencies Working With Racial Equity Outcomes"

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Racism persists because it is built into our institutions and it determines who gets a good education, who gets a job opportunity, and who has access to capital, healthcare and childcare. It continues to hurt and disadvantage Americans. Community Action can play a role in ending it. The seven projects in the Racial Equity and Economic Security (REES) initiative are using a racial equity lens to address the issues of race in new ways in their communities. In these webinars, they will be sharing their experiences and presenting how Community Action Agencies can work to dismantle racism. Major funding for the Partnership’s Racial Equity and Economic Security project is from The Ford Foundation.

• Lois J. Carson, CCAP, is Executive Director of Community Action Partnership of Riverside County. The REES project at this Community Action Agency focuses advocacy through community dialogues and on providing accessible, quality child care to the hard working residents of the County.

• John Edwards, CCAP, is Chair of the Community Action Partnership board and Executive Director of Northeast Florida Community Action Agency. The REES project at this agency uses the ROMA tools and ARRA funding to address African American male joblessness in a comprehensive way.

• Mary Virtue is the National Project Director for REES. She has recently written Advancing Racial Equity: Lessons for Philanthropy. This report is being disseminated by the Ford Foundation and through the Council on Foundation’s social justice project.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer)

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WEBINAR SCHEDULE:

"Tools to Help You Get Started Using the Racial Equity Lens"
A SEPARATE REGISTRATION will be created for the second REES webinar with John Edwards and Mary Virtue to be held on August 5, at 3pm EDT.

Lil Dupree
Director of Training and Technical Assistance
Community Action Partnership
1140 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1210
Washington, DC 20036

202-449-9775 - Direct
202-265-5048 - fax

“Turning Partnerships Into Opportunities”
Webcast Series

Please join
Internal Revenue Service
Stakeholder Partnerships, Education and Communication (SPEC)
for this webcast
Financial Education and Asset Building – Planning Activities

July 28, 2010, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. ET

Topics you don’t want to miss:
Awareness Campaigns on Alternative Loan Programs
Tracy Fischman, AccountAbility Minnesota

Developing Campaigns on Preserving Home Ownership
Larry Garcia, El Paso Affordable Housing

Survey Community Needs
Noorie Brantmeier, Oweesta Corporation

This webcast will serve as an opportunity for partners to share best practices,
resource tools and information through brochures, websites, etc.

You are the key to “Turning Partnerships Into Opportunities”
Your engagement is critical!

Click here to register today!

If you have any questions or need more information please email FinancialEducation@irs.gov.

 

Save the Date!

“Developing Your Case for Support”

FREE Webinar hosted by:
Community Action Partnership
Community Economic Development project
and
California – Nevada Community Action Parnership

July 26, 2010
1:00 – 3:30 pm EDT/10:00 – 11:30 am PDT

Whether your organization is embarking on a capital campaign, preparing grant proposals or developing your annual fund materials, the Case for Support is the first critical element in your fundraising program. In this interactive workshop, we will learn the importance of the case and how it is used, list the key elements in a case for support, evaluate case statements and prepare an outline for your case statement.

Thanks to our great colleagues at the Center for Community Change and the Coalition on Human Needs, the Partnership joined with hundreds of national, statewide and community organizations in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senate Majority Whip Durbin calling for the enactment of S. 3500, the Local Jobs for America Act. Other national organizations signing on included: the National Association For State Community Services Programs (NASCSP), AFL-CIO, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for Law and Social Policy, Coalition on Human Needs, the Corps Network, Economic Policy Institute, Half in Ten, Food Research and Action Center, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, National Low Income Housing Coalition, National Urban League, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, US Conference of Mayors, Wider Opportunities for Women, and YouthBuild USA.

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June 18, 2010

The Honorable Harry Reid
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Richard Durbin
Majority Whip
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Majority Leader Reid and Majority Whip Durbin:

The undersigned organizations write to express our strong support for the Local Jobs for America Act (S. 3500) which would create a million public and private jobs in local communities. We applaud Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Al Franken and Senator Mark Begich for the introduction of this critical legislation.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost over 8 million jobs, including many providing critical services in communities across the country. The current crisis of unemployment is devastating families all across America. May’s unemployment report revealed an overall jobless rate of 9.7 percent; among African-Americans the jobless rate was a staggering 15.5 percent, among Latinos, 12.4 percent, among women who head families, 11.6 percent, and among youth, 26.4 percent.

We need bold Congressional action in order to put Americans back to work and prevent more layoffs and cuts in crucial services. The Local Jobs for America Act will not only provide employment for hundreds of thousands of jobless workers, it will create and save jobs for workers who are providing services that our communities badly need.

The Local Jobs for America Act provides $100 billion over two years to create or save 750,000 jobs providing local services, and to save 250,000 education jobs. The funding will also keep 5,500 law enforcement officers on the beat, allow localities to hire additional firefighters, and provide on-the-job training slots to help local businesses create employment opportunities. These jobs in turn will put money in the pockets of families, spurring demand in the economy and creating additional private-sector jobs and tax revenues.

Projections of a slow recovery in the labor market underscore the urgent need to create jobs now. As local and national organizations who are witnessing firsthand the current crisis of unemployment and the increased need for services in the face of deep budget cuts, we believe that a bold response cannot wait.
We support quick passage of the Local Jobs for America Act to immediately put Americans back to work, in addition to meeting pressing needs in our communities.

(The following national organizations and about 200 state and local organizations signed this letter.)

9to5 National Association of Working Women
Adrian Dominican Sisters
Advocacy for Justice and Peace Committee of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia
African American Ministers in Action
Alliance for Children and Families
Alliance for Disabled in Action
American Association of University Women
American Community Partnership
American Federation of Government Employees
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
American Federation of Teachers
American Friends Service Committee
American Rights at Work
Americans for Democratic Action, Inc
America's Promise Alliance
Asian American Justice Center
Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs
Augustinians, Province of St. Thomas of Villanova
Campaign for America's Future
Campaign for Community Change
Center for American Progress Action Fund
Center for Law and Social Policy
Change to Win
Coalition of Labor Union Women
Coalition on Human Needs
Committee of Interns and Residents/Service Employees International Union
Communications Workers of America District 1
Community Action Partnership
Community Organizations in Action
Corps Network
Demos
Direct Care Alliance
Disciples Justice Action Network
Dominican Sisters- Grand Rapids
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy
Economic Opportunity Institute
Economic Policy Institute
Employee Rights Advocacy Institute For Law and Policy
Enterprise Community Partners
First Focus Campaign for Children
Food Research and Action Center
Franciscan Action Network
Global Justice Ministry, Metropolitan Community Churches
Green for All
Half in Ten
Insight Center for Community Economic Development
Interfaith Worker Justice
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Jewish Council for Public Affairs
Jewish Labor Committee
Jobs with Justice
Leadership Conference of Women Religious
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Leadership Team, Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Main Street Alliance
Mindspring Coaching
MomsRising
Ms. Foundation for Women
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd

President Obama created the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to address our nation’s fiscal challenges. President Obama charged the Commission with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run. The Commission will vote on a final report containing a set of recommendations no later than December 1, 2010. The report will require approval of at least 14 of the Commission’s 18 members. The Commission is co-chaired by Senator Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, Chief of Staff to President Clinton.

The Coalition on Human Needs, led by its executive director Debbie Weinstein, spearheaded the effort resulting in the letter below. It is a powerful, well-argued letter that makes the case that budget and deficit reduction should not be at the expense of poor and middle-income people and families. The Community Action Partnership joined with 118 other agencies in signing the letter, including the National Association For State Community Services Programs (NASCSP), National Community Action Foundation, Coalition on Human Needs, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Center on Law and Social Policy, Center for Community Change, Families USA, Food Research and Action Center, National Low Income Housing Coalition, Wider Opportunities for Women, and others.

Following the letter, you may want to visit the links for Debbie Weinstein’s testimony to the Commission (great job, Debbie!) and the press release on this effort (which specifically mentions the Partnership).

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June 30, 2010

To Members of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform:

We are writing to urge the Commission to take special care not to cause harm to America’s low- and moderate-income households in formulating its recommendations this year. In particular, we ask that:

1) The Commission adopt as a basic principle that its proposals should not make lower-income individuals and families worse off. The Commission’s recommendations should not harm those who already have difficulty getting by. Its proposals should not push people into poverty or make those who are already poor still poorer.

2) To aid it in meeting this goal, the Commission should assure that it obtains and makes public in a timely way a distributional analysis (e.g., by income deciles or quintiles) of the impact of the proposals that it considers. Understanding and making transparent how different paths would affect different income groups is an essential means of determining fairness in who bears the burdens of changes in spending and tax policy.

Even before the recession, low- and moderate-income people in our nation had been largely shut out from the benefits of the nation’s economic growth for two generations. From 1979 to 2006, the average aftertax income of the bottom fifth of the population rose only 11 percent over 27 years, from $14,900 to $16,500, in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This includes non-cash income like food stamps, housing assistance, and refundable tax credits. The average income of the second fifth rose a modest 18 percent, to $35,400 — still well under 1 percent per year. In contrast, the average income of the top fifth rose 86 percent, from $98,900 to $184,400 during this period, and the average income of the top 1 percent increased 256 percent, from $337,100 to $1.2 million.

Moreover, during the last economic recovery, from 2001 to 2007, poverty actually increased and the median income of working-age households declined, even as income at the top of the income scale continued to rise.

In other words, after nearly three decades of overall economic growth, America saw only very weak gains for the bottom two-fifths of the population and substantially widened gaps between the top and bottom of our society. Income stagnation and rising inequality have left lower-income households bearing a heavy cost.

Reducing public supports for this population would be unwarranted. This population has borne an undue share of the pain of the economic and political transformations of the last several decades, not to mentionnthe deep recession from which the country is only beginning to emerge.

Reducing the federal deficit is a means to an end — the strongest possible economic future for the nation. Under-investing in low- and moderate-income children and adults would not be consistent with that goal. Indeed, smart and more adequate investments for them could help strengthen the economy and the nation. We believe that an explicit goal to protect the most vulnerable in our nation, together with impact analyses to ensure the goal is being met, will assist the Commission in producing recommendations that can put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course without harm to those who have no margin to sacrifice more.

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To read the CHN testimony to the Fiscal Commission, visit: http://www.chn.org/pdf/2010/DeficitComTestimony.pdf

To view the press release, visit: http://chn.org/pdf/2010/DeficitComPressRelease.pdf

A report from the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO), “Low-Income Energy Assistance Program: Greater Fraud Prevention Controls Are Needed” was released in June (see link below to get copy of the 62 page report). GAO investigators examined LIHEAP enrollment files in Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Virginia. The report cites a 9% fraud rate of households that received LIHEAP benefits despite not having accurate (and often fraudulent) eligibility information. GAO makes six recommendations to the Dept of health and Human Services to better prevent LIHEAP fraud.

Critics of LIHEAP, of Community Action, and of federal support for programs that help low-income people and families are citing this report as justification for cutting and/or eliminating LIHEAP and other programs. If your agency provides LIHEAP, this is a “must read’ report.

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Investigators audited 7 states, found names of 11,000 dead people and hundreds of prisoners used as applicants for funds

July 1, 2010

WASHINGTON – Three top Republican lawmakers today released a Government Accountability Office report that found nine percent of households in seven states could be improperly receiving Low Income Heating Assistance Program funds at a cost of $116 million a year.

“It looks like a ton of LIHEAP money was disbursed to con artists who applied under the names of convicts and the dead. Even some people living in million-dollar houses got their utility bills paid by the taxpayer,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “LIHEAP is supposed to be for poor people, not for cheats who pose as something or someone they’re not and get their paperwork rubber-stamped by gullible government officials. It’s Secretary Sebelius’ responsibility to run this program right, and she needs to start doing it by stopping this fraud.”

LIHEAP, which is administered through the Department of Health and Human Services, costs $5 billion a year and serves 8.3 million low-income households by providing financial assistance to low-income households for heating and cooling costs.

In its investigation, GAO found that more than 11,000 dead people and hundreds of prisoners were used as applicants or household members for LIHEAP benefits. More than 1,000 federal employees whose federal salary exceeded maximum income threshold received benefits and in several cases, people living in million-dollar houses received benefits.

The report was requested by Barton, and U.S. Reps. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., ranking member and former ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, respectively.

“This program is intended to benefit poor Americans who need assistance paying their energy bills, but for the fact that it’s abused and administered inefficiently,” Burgess said. “LIHEAP seems to be another example of waste, fraud and abuse running rampant and unchecked in government programs, and must be reined in. Low-income Texans have a hard time accessing their fair share of LIHEAP funding, so to learn that nine percent of LIHEAP funds are wasted is astonishing.”

“This is yet another poster child of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Walden said. “Taxpayer dollars for heating assistance were shelled out to the well-off and crooks posing as the deceased. Taxpayers may have been cheated out of more than $100 million because HHS couldn’t figure out that the deceased don’t need energy assistance? By the way, this is the same outfit that’s going to run the $1 trillion government takeover of healthcare. The American people deserve far better protection of their tax dollars.”

Below are examples of fraudulent or improper activity in LIHEAP that GAO uncovered:

• “Illinois provided $540 in energy assistance to an applicant who fraudulently used the identities of two deceased family members to qualify for LIHEAP.
• “Illinois provided $840 in energy assistance to a U.S. Postal Service employee who fraudulently reported zero income to qualify for LIHEAP. Despite earning about $80,000 per year, the employee stated that she saw ‘long lines’ of individuals applying for LIHEAP benefits and wanted the ‘free money.’
• “New Jersey provided $3,200 in energy assistance to a nursing home facility whose director claimed to represent eight patients residing in the facility. These patients had their nursing home care paid by Medicaid.
• “Posing as low-income residents, landlords and an energy company, GAO used bogus addresses and fabricated energy bills, pay stubs and other documents to apply for energy assistance. All fraudulent claims were processed and the energy assistance payments were issued to our bogus landlords and company.”

A copy of the GAO report can be found here.

To get the CEO annual report, go to www.ceo-cap.org

The Commission on Economic Opportunity in Troy, New York recently disseminated its 2009 Annual Report to more than 110,000 community members by including it as an insert in The Troy Record and the Times Union newspapers. What a great way to reach a significant portion of the community and share with them CEO’s accomplishments—such as the 21 people who graduated from its YouthBuild program, the low-income families whose homes were saved through the Weatherization Assistance Program, and the hundreds of children who participated in the many early childhood services programs. Well done, CEO!

 

Guest view: Fight poverty by getting involved

By Amy Turner
Observer-Dispatch
Posted Jul 04, 2010 @ 09:00 PM

On June 21, the Mohawk Valley Community Action Agency, in partnership with the Coalition for Economic Justice, hosted the second annual Poverty Symposium on the Mohawk Valley Community College Campus.
Debbie Weinstein, executive director for the Coalition on Human Needs, said in her keynote address that poverty in America is an “epidemic,” one that is affecting one out of four children nationally and a staggering 50 percent of our children in the city of Utica.

She said people were more concerned about the possibility of getting the swine flu than they are about the actual impact of poverty on our community.

At the same time we were holding this event locally, our leaders in Washington, D.C., failed to pass legislation to extend unemployment benefits that would have tided over hundreds of Mohawk Valley residents until they find jobs. What happens to these people when they lose their unemployment benefits? They lose their homes; they join the ranks of those living in poverty in the Mohawk Valley, and they reach out to struggling public programs for relief.

Or maybe they find creative — even illegal — ways to make an income for their families.
Finding a job is a struggle in a market where there is only one job for every five job seekers, and many of those jobs barely support a family.

In a June 20 column, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, wrote: “Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered. How hard is that to understand?”
In his column, Krugman discussed exactly what Weinstein shared with our group locally – now is not the time to focus on our deficits – it is time to focus on recovery and ensuring that our fragile economy does not slip in back in the woes of recession.

It’s past time for us all to change our priorities to ensure that all Americans can and will succeed. The face of those living in poverty is everywhere – it is no longer something that can be hidden or that you say only affects “those people.” It is your neighbor, your friends and quite possibly your family.

So what do you do? Get involved, register to vote, pay attention to the issues and communicate with your elected public officials. Don’t be blindsided by those who want to cut government by cutting programs that support families! The new administration brought new hope for a prosperous future in American and the Mohawk Valley, and to realize that hope will take courage and the unity of purpose!

Amy Turner is executive director of Mohawk Valley Community Action Agency and chair of the Coalition for Economic Justice.

 

Pay tribute to Community Action with an ad in the 2010 Annual Convention program book!

Celebrate your role in America’s poverty fighting network and
Community Action: The Power of Partnerships by sending special greetings to
your colleagues, honoring your CAA's partners, and highlighting the unique history of your CAA.

Ad deadline is July 16. Click here for the ad registration form and prices.

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To view or download the 2010 Annual Convention Brochure or the Registration form, click here. To see a preliminary list of workshops, click here.

Hotel rooms are sold out at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. Rooms are available at the Westin Copley Place at the convention rate of $189.00 single or double. To reserve, call 1(888) 627-7216.