The children. . .

The recently agreed upon federal budget that resulted in funding cuts of almost $40 billion included a $504 million cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

Taking a closer look at the WIC website, I identified the program mission:  "WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk."

A program description reads:  "WIC food packages and nutrition education are the chief means by which WIC affects the dietary quality and habits of participants."

WIC has worked hard to make the program incredibly efficient, while also upgrading the dietary quality of the food provided low-income mothers and children.  Here's a description of recent gains in the quality of nutritive food products distributed: 

"New food packages are now being provided to WIC participants in all States. On December 6, 2007, an interim rule revising the WIC food packages was published in the Federal Register. The new food packages align with the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and infant feeding practice guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The food packages better promote and support the establishment of successful, long-term breastfeeding, provide WIC participants with a wider variety of foods including fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and provide WIC State agencies greater flexibility in prescribing food packages to accommodate the cultural food preferences of WIC participants."

For years we've referred women with infants to WIC for the nutritious food products needed by their little ones.  Women earning at or below 185% of the federal poverty level have been eligible for the program.  To put that in real terms, a mother with one child could earn up to $338 weekly gross and qualify for WIC food products. 

Clearly, infant nutrition or the lack thereof drives a number of important social and , ultimately, economic and public health outcomes, including obesity, brain development and function, learning capacity, family stability, and overall well-being and health. 

Aren't are children worth the cost?  Isn't the investment one that will serve us all very well over the long haul?

Pro Life?

Clearly the Texas legislature functions as a strongly "pro-life" elective body. . .up to a point. 

The legislators' decisions during this session indicate that they are determined to take rather drastic measures to protect the unborn.  However, once a child arrives in a low-income family, all bets are off! 

The following story was reported by Christy Hoppe on the actions of our elected representatives appeared in The Dallas Morning News last Thursday, March 10. 

The notion that non-profit organizations and churches can pick up the slack in the budget is simply ill-informed.  Further, the costs associated with cuts in funding for the needed care typically are passed along by medical professionals to those with private insurance.  The fact is, helping poor children helps us all. 

But, you read the report and let me know your reactions.

Bill on pre-abortion sonograms comes as Texas legislators plan to slash contraceptive, OB-GYN care for poor


AUSTIN — The Legislature’s push to limit abortions by compelling women to see a sonogram of fetal development comes as the state is cutting back on medical services to low-income pregnant women.

Republican lawmakers are poised to slash $850 million from pregnancy care and family planning in the next two-year budget — a 29 percent cut from current spending.

That would shut down avenues for poor women to find contraception and choke off payments to OB-GYN doctors who might care for those who become pregnant, advocates say.

“There is a responsibility that comes with this desire to tell women what to do with their pregnancy. Clearly, we’re not meeting it,” said Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, who has sponsored a bill to extend women’s health services.

Abortion opponents say that although the budget crunch is real, the sonogram requirement isn’t connected to it.

“We can’t solve our problems by eliminating people,” said Kyleen Wright, president of Texans for Life and a strong supporter of the sonogram requirement that both the House and Senate have approved.

The solution, she said, is for private pregnancy crisis centers, adoption services, religious groups and communities to step up their help for poor women.

“We will pick up the pace. We will meet the need,” Wright said.

Fifty-five percent of Texas births are to women on Medicaid.

Payments to doctors

Most of the proposed budget cuts would come through reducing payments to doctors, who are reimbursed for the care they provide pregnant women on Medicaid. It means physicians will either turn away poor patients or lose money treating them.

Tom Banning, chief executive of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, outlined a grim reality: Medicaid reimburses doctors 70 percent for the cost of services. Most physicians make up the losses in their charges to privately insured patients, but the proposed cuts make that equation harder.

The state has cut reimbursements 2 percent this year and is proposing 10 percent cuts for next year. In addition, Congress is considering a Medicare reimbursement cut of 31 percent.

“It’s got the doctors completely spooked,” Banning said, and many plan to stop seeing patients who require federal help. That will drive more patients to emergency rooms, where their conditions are often worse and
more expensive to treat.

In Athens in East Texas, a group of family doctors began offering prenatal screening for Medicaid patients three years ago. When they started, 120 newborns a year from the area were ending up in the neonatal intensive care unit of Dallas County’s Parkland Memorial Hospital, Banning said.

Last year, it was down to two infants. But if doctors’ payments are cut, “you’ll see a tidal wave hit the emergency room of women who haven’t gotten any prenatal care,” Banning said.

To read entire report click here.

Support of unwed mothers

Last Tuesday evening, it was encouraging to see lots of signs being waved about by delegates to this year's Republican National Convention that read, "We Support Unwed Mothers!"

Such a sentiment expresses great promise!

Rather than shunning the unwed mother, especially the teenage mom, the idea that as a society we might stand with these children who are now having children is most encouraging.

Most notably, it begins to press the values of a "pro-life" value proposition out beyond the womb.

What do young women about to become mothers need to be successful?

A father who owns up to his responsibility to support his child and the child' mother can make all the difference in the world. Of course, such support often is not forthcoming.

A family that knows how to love children through difficulty and missteps, providing the support required, is certainly beneficial. But, when families face the challenges associated with extreme poverty, the practical, material, ongoing support that they can realistically provide is often very limited.

No doubt, the signs we saw at last week's political convention appeared, at least in part, because of the revelation about the daughter of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Fortunately, Bristol Palin appears to be surrounded by the kind of support that she needs.

But, what about the millions of other young women who find themselves in a very similar situation, but without the kind of support they need?

The signs seemed to call us to action! What will "support" mean for young women, especially in urban communities of poverty? How can we support them?

Here are a few suggestions based on my experience in inner city Dallas over the past almost 15 years:

1. Provide a clear pathway for these young mothers to continue and complete their education and career training. Most public high schools have developed such programs. Young mothers need to be encouraged to stay in school.

2. Provide access to affordable child care so that school and meaningful work will be a real possibility. Add in Head Start and other early childhood education options.

3. Provide access to quality and affordable pre- and post-natal medical care, counsel and parenting education. A number of states have had great results with visiting nurses and family home nursing programs funded with Medicaid dollars that pay great returns in the form of wonderful family outcomes and great reductions in costs to communities via the early investments in mothers and children. The problems assoicated with low birth weight infants can be avoided.

4. Provide access to fit, decent, affordable housing, so that mothers and children can experience safety and security along with the stability of having a home.

5. Provide legal counsel and direction to ensure that child support options are clearly understood and pursued. It takes two people to produce a child. It should involve two in the child rearing and support.

6. Provide access to nutrition resources so that the child will move through the early stages of human development successfully and on pace to health and productivity.

7. Provide access to early childhood education to ensure that the child enjoys exposure to experiential education. Children who develop a love for reading and learning will be set on a pathway to better lives.

8. Provide ongoing parent education to equip young mothers in the fine art of nurturing, disciplining and supporting their children.

How do we get these sorts of things done as a community?

It will take a multi-faceted effort.

It should involve us all.

Churches and other faith communities and organizations should band together to help out. Public agencies will need to be involved, as will public institutions such as schools, hospital systems and governments.

It won't be easy.

That said, actually carrying through with the promise back of the sentiment--"We Support Unwed Mothers"--could change our nation for the better over the next generation.
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Nourishing Our Children: a "pro-quality-of-life" movement

Rev. Gerald Britt serves as Vice President of Public Policy and Community Program Development here at Central Dallas Ministries.

On Saturday, March 3, 2007, Gerald spoke to the Connections 2007 Child and Adolescent Advocacy Conference, an annual event in Dallas sponsored by the Women's Council of Dallas County and Children's Medical Center.

Gerald entitled his speech, "Nourishing Our Children."

I think you will benefit from reading it.
______________________________

NOURISHING OUR CHILDREN

There once was a sociology professor who, when taking his afternoon constitutional, came upon a young mother spanking her child in the front yard. He stopped at once and patiently, but firmly, confronted the young woman. "You must not spank your child," he said, "you will traumatize him. You must love them."

That weekend, the professor was working on his driveway, spreading new cement. Suddenly, this young woman’s son and some of his friends ran through his yards and ran right through the fresh cement. The professor angrily ran after them, shouting and threatening to give them a good spanking. The young woman saw this happen and said, "Professor, I thought we were to love our children not spank them." To which the professor replied, "I love children in the abstract, but not in the concrete!"

This is why we are here today. We represent, care for and work with families and communities, whose interests are in the plight of our children, children whose futures must be considered uncertain at best and bleak at the very worst. According to the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, 17.8% of children under the age of 18, live in poverty across the U.S. In Texas, 23.2% of those of the same age range are living in households that qualify as poor. That means that 23% of our children are in families struggling to make it on $20,000 a year in a family of four, according to 2006 Federal Poverty Guidelines[1]. Precious little could be more shameful.

Our challenge is to change the nature of conversation regarding children, from abstract political rhetoric, to aggressive, creative, substantive public policy proposals and recommendations that will lead to the reforms that will result in better health care, education and job opportunities for parents now and for children if they or we, for that matter, are to have a real future. These are our children, and we can no longer afford to love them in the abstract. Our children are the embodiment of our hopes and dreams. They are the beneficiaries of our legacies and the heritage of our families and communities. We want these children to have lives that are healthy, happy and whole.

Truly nurturing children means that we provide them with the hope that comes through being educated. When I say educated, I mean really educated. We are not educating children by teaching them to be proficient test takers. We are not educating children when we don’t expose them to art and music at a young age. We are not educating them when we don’t teach them to appreciate, learn from and apply the lessons to be learned in great literature and history. And we can never teach them if we do not believe they can learn, and learn at high levels.

Children living in low-income neighborhoods experience unequal access to quality education compared to children who live in higher income neighborhoods. In Texas where property taxes help fund public school districts, children who attend public school in low-income communities have fewer dollars per student spent on them than public schools in higher income communities. Disparities in school funding lead to inequalities of available resources across school districts, including up to date text books; science-lab equipment, computer, music, and sports equipment; field trips and other extracurricular activities, taken for granted in wealthier communities.

We cannot nurture children if they are not healthy. Our children swing between obesity and food insecurity. In our most distressed neighborhoods, choice, affordability and transportation are issues, even when it comes to food. Grocery stores that sell wholesome, nutritional food at affordable prices are in scarce supply, while cheap fast food choices are stacked upon one another leaving encouraging diets that consist of fried fish, fried chicken, barbecue and hamburgers, along with assorted chips and soft drinks.

We cannot nourish our children, if we don’t nourish them physically. Implementing a ‘testocracy’ in our schools has taken away things like gym class and recess. The absence of safe parks and the presence of crime, the overpopulation of stray animals, and poorly equipped recreation centers, leave our children few options when it comes to creatively occupying themselves.

We cannot nourish our children if we do not tend to their overall health. Regular immunizations, doctor check ups, dental hygiene are all problems for the poor. Without health insurance, CHIP or MEDICAID, the most routine health care problems are brought to the primary care physician of last resort: the emergency room doctor.

But most importantly, we cannot nourish children, unless we provide opportunity for their parents. While Leave No Child Behind is being acknowledged as a relatively effective strategy for successful public education, we are forgetting that if we leave parents behind, we place every child at risk of being left behind.

While poverty itself may not cause negative outcomes in children, it often co-occurs with many stressors that may be harmful: stressors such as single parenthood, four or more children in that child’s household, and the lack of a high school diploma or GED by the child’s parent. One study found that only 22% of poor children experienced poverty with no other risk factors (the aforementioned ‘stressors’). About half experienced poverty plus one other risk factor; almost a quarter experienced poverty plus two other risk factors; and 5% experienced all the risk factors. Negative outcomes associated with poverty, plus two or more of these risk factors, include behavioral and emotional problems and problems in school. Among children ages 6-11, 18% of those who were considered at high risk (exhibiting three or more risk factors) also exhibited a high level of behavioral problems (compared to 6% of other children), and 32% exhibited low school engagement (compared to 14% of other children[2]).

We cannot even think of eliminating poverty among children, apart from what we do for the adults in the households in which they live.

Consider these facts:

·One third of Texas families are classified as low income and 41% of Texas workers work at jobs that pay a median hourly wage of $10 or less[3].

·The Lone Star State ranks close to the bottom in providing essential support services such as affordable health care and adult education[4].

·Texas has the most restrictive limit on unemployment insurance in the nation[5]

·Texas is nearly last in providing adult education[6]

·Texas has the highest number of adults without a high school diploma or a GED[7]

·Texas ranks 45th in the number of unemployed adults in the Workforce Investment Act[8]

·Our state has over 53% of low income families with at least one adult without health insurance[9].

There is no such thing as rich children growing up in a home of poor adults. Adult poverty impedes the cognitive development of children and their ability to learn. It contributes to behavioral, social and emotional problems. It can lead to poor health as well. Research tells us that the risks posed by poverty are greatest among children who experience poverty when they are young and among children who experience persistent deep poverty[10].

And so, our challenge is to nurture our children by beginning a "pro-quality-of-life" movement.

This is a movement which seeks to make textbooks more available to our children than guns; this is a movement that seeks to make well-balanced meals more the norm for our children than drugs and alcohol; this is a movement that wants to make early childhood development programs and after-school enrichment more accessible than opportunities for mischief and crime. This is the movement that wants to improve and build more public schools, colleges and universities, than prisons. This is a movement that wants jobs that pay a living wage, so that parents can model dignity and self-worth as they provide for their children.

This "pro-quality-of-life" movement spans the length and breadth of our cities and communities. And it must be based on the understanding that if all children don’t have a future, none of us has a future.

In one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons, Lucy demands that Linus change TV channels and then threatens him with her fist if he doesn’t. "What makes you think you can walk right over her and take over?" asks Linus.

"These five fingers," says Lucy. "Individually, they’re nothing, but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold."

"Which channel do you want?" asks Linus.

Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, "Why can’t you guys get organized like that?"

The only way that we are going to change the political channel to which Texas is tuned, is for us to organize. Politicians and public officials must see advocates for Texas children that look like Texas. Texas is Black, white and brown. Texas is affluent, middle class and poor. Texas is North Dallas, Plano and South Dallas. It is Houston’s Fifth Ward, the East Side of San Antonio and the Colonias. If legislation is not passed that it is good for all of us, then it is not good for any of us.

The voice of the "pro-quality-of-life" movement must be heard. It must be heard if ours is to be a true democracy. It must be heard if people in distressed and blighted communities are to have hope. It must be heard if our children are truly to be educated. It must be heard if third world islands are not to be permitted in the midst of the great waters of our large urban centers.

This voice must be heard if "justice is to run like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

This voice must be heard if our children are to be nurtured and their very lives are to be rescued from marginalization and the annihilation of poverty and despair.

[1] Center for Public Policy Priorities, “Texas Poverty 101” Policy Brief, February 2006
[2] p. 7 The Status of Women and Girls in Dallas County: A Review of the Academic Literature,
Prepared by: Elizabeth Fawcett, Frances Means, Rodney A. McDanel, and Susan Eve August 2002
School of Community Service, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
[3] Center for Public Policy Priorities, Austin, Texas – News Release, “Many Texas Families Work Hard But Struggle to Make Ends Meet”
[4] ibid
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8]ibid
[9] ibid
[10] National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. “Who are America’s Poor Children?: Why child poverty matters