Public Policy for Youth Development

As a result of its work on behalf of children and youth at the community level, CLPS has emerged as a leading proponent for local and statewide public policy to support young people and families during out-of-school time. Acting as a policy center, the office coordinated portions of the 1999-2000 campaign to create a NEXT GENERATION FUND from New Mexico’s tobacco settlement monies and thus establish a permanent state funding stream for youth programming. Collaborating with a broad network of advocates, it saw two major pieces of legislation passed to fund this trust, only to be vetoed by the governor.

Now CLPS is assuming the lead once again for preparing a new statewide policy statement on youth development for private foundations and the newly formed New Mexico Forum for Youth in Community, which it helped to found. Major efforts are also underway to draft statewide legislation for after-school programming to be submitted in the next legislation session (2003) and also to create a statewide intermediary for out-of-school time, with CLPS as a major contributing author for many of the guiding ideas.

In the most recent legislative session, CLPS took a leadership role in seeing two pieces of legislation were passed and signed into action – a Joint House and Senate Memorial to Study All State and Federal Funding Supporting Youth Development in New Mexico and the creation of a new statewide Youth Council to advise the Governor, Lt. Governor and Children’s cabinet on youth related matters.