It’s FAMLI Friday, a weekly call to action to advocate for an affordable, adequate, and accessible paid family and medical leave program. We’ve crunched the numbers, we know that social insurance model offers the most time and coverage for workers. Paid family and medical leave provides concrete support in times of need which would ultimately increase equity and economic security in families across Colorado.
Last legislative session, the Colorado legislature created a 13-member Family and Medical Leave Insurance Task Force to develop a report with recommendations about how Colorado should move forward to ensure Coloradoans can take paid leave to take care of themselves and their families. The Task Force voted unanimously to recommend that the program be regulated and operated by the state Department of Labor and Employment. To read the task force’s full report, click here.
Paid family and medical leave allows the family more time with an infant during the most critical year for preventing child fatality: the first year of life, when the majority of child fatalities occur. Such programs are associated with significantly higher rates of successful breastfeeding and maternal health, reductions in hospitalizations for abusive head trauma, and lower rates of family stressors and risk factors. After California implemented a lower than minimal paid family leave policy in 2004 (6 weeks of 55% wage replacement), abusive head trauma hospital admissions decreased by 5.1 per 100,000 children (Klevens et al., 2016). These positive outcomes likely would have been greater if California had higher wage replacements at the time and if the policy were extended to 20 weeks minimum to cover the full period of increased infant crying and peak abusive head trauma incidence. Offering paid time to parents and caregivers to care for not only their infants, but also themselves, increases parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, and social and emotional competence of children.
Want to make paid family and medical leave a reality in Colorado?
TAKE ACTION: Tell Governor Polis and our legislators that you support a social insurance program for paid family & medical leave. PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION in support of paid leave.
