We are excited to announce the official launch of the Choose Children 2026 campaign!
Choose Children is working to ensure California’s next governor prioritizes young children and their families, making them a core investment for the state’s future.
Choose Children is a statewide coalition of child advocates, community-based organizations, First 5 commissions and foundations committed to early childhood investment. The Children’s Partnership serves as a member of the Choose Children steering committee, leading the campaign’s partnership efforts.
After months of planning, Choose Children 2026 officially launched in early December, with a press conference that included new polling data and the Choose Children policy platform. Our President Mayra E. Alvarez spoke at the campaign launch. Her remarks are below.
But first, the polling data.
The newly released data highlights the most pressing issue facing California’s children and families:
- Affordability, without a doubt, remains the number one issue for California voters.
- Our poll found that 1 in 5 California parents are making the hard choice to skip medical care because they simply cannot afford it.
- A third of California parents feel that childcare is a “significant financial strain” on their family finances and causes them to either skip work or make other household sacrifices.
- We echo the 83% of likely voters who believe that California’s next Governor should prioritize policies that make California a place where families with young children can live and thrive.
This polling validates what our partners and communities have been naming, and underscores the urgency and relevance of our policy platform in the 2026 election.
TCP President Mayra E. Alvarez on the importance of making children’s well-being a California priority
I stand before you today on behalf of California’s families — parents working hard, doing their best and forced to make impossible choices.
Parents are grappling with one fundamental, urgent challenge: affordability. Affordable housing. Affordable health care. Affordable child care. These issues aren’t distant policy debates — they shape every decision a parent makes at home.
At this pivotal election moment, we’re asking our next governor to be bold and commit to making our state stronger for children and families, our safety-net programs strong and resilient. Because they often feel fragile for far too many families.
California needs a leader who will ensure that no child goes without health care, no child goes hungry, and no family risks losing their home.
But affordability must also mean opportunity, — especially for our youngest Californians. Right now, far too many children in our rural communities and our bustling cities face barriers to being healthy and thriving. We cannot accept a system where a baby’s access to essential learning, health care, and basic needs depends on their zip code, income, or immigration status.
Too often, parents are faced with impossible choices. Skip work to care for a sick child? Pull their child from those vital early-learning programs because child care is unaffordable? Be late on rent or feed their family? These choices are a burden on parents, on children, on our future workforce, on our collective well-being. What parents need is support. Stability. Relief. A champion.
That is why today, we are proud to join with Choose Children — and stand behind the vision of Bringing Up California — to demand policies that support the complex needs of families.
A key part of this campaign is a policy platform that makes clear what families need to thrive.
The policy platform is built on guiding principles of racial and economic justice, community-centered solutions, and culturally responsive services — aiming to create a California where every child, regardless of background, identity or family circumstance, is embraced, valued and provided the opportunity to thrive.
We give deep thanks and appreciation to our partners for their commitment to this campaign and their day-to-day work to support our children and families.
Here’s what that bold vision for California means in concrete terms:
- Families will have access to navigation and peer support — culturally relevant supports that guide them to the economic, social-emotional and developmental services they need.
- Every family with expectant parents and infants gets access to culturally responsive prenatal, birthing, postpartum and early-childhood supports. We will strengthen maternal and infant care so that every child’s early days are healthy, supported and hopeful.
- Young children will have access to affordable, high-quality health coverage and care, regardless of immigration status, income or zip code.
- Early care and learning — from infancy through toddlerhood — will be reliable, affordable and culturally affirming, laying the foundation for long-term success in school and in life. And early-childhood care providers are fairly compensated, well supported, and trained to offer culturally and linguistically affirming care in settings that reflect the diversity of California families.
These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas. This policy platform is practical. It is tested. It is impactful.
We know this approach works — because it centers on real families, real challenges, real hopes. It is a “whole child” and “whole family” agenda. It is not about picking winners or special interests. It is about building the future — for our children, our communities and our state.
We are calling on our next Governor to commit to this platform. To choose children. To choose families. To choose a future where every baby, every young child who calls California home has the opportunity to thrive — healthy, supported and ready to succeed.
Because when we invest in our children — when we support families, nurture young minds, protect hard-working households — we invest in California’s future.
Visit Choose Children’s website to stay up-to-date on the campaign: https://choosechildren.org/.
