WASHINGTON -- A longtime provider of runaway and homeless youth services for D.C. teens is calling out the District for falling short of its commitment to help homeless youth, alleging that the mayor's office is recklessly gutting funding at a time when youth homelessness is on the rise.
Sasha Bruce Youthwork, which provides overnight shelter, counseling services and prevention programs to runaway and homeless youth, has been hit with more than $1.1 million in District-funding cuts within the past year, despite youth a recent increase in youth homelessness, said its executive director. According to Deborah Shore, the drastic funding cuts are forcing the organization to limit its services and, in some cases, turn away youth in need of overnight shelter. “The cuts ... were a serious a blow to our core mission,” Shore said in a testimonybefore the D.C. Council Human Services committee last Wednesday. “We have provided services for 35 years at the Sasha Bruce House in partnership with the city ... we [now] are turning young people away in numbers we have never seen before.” Founded in 1974 as the Washington Streetwork Project, Sasha Bruce Youthwork has grown into one of the District’s largest providers of youth services, serving nearly 15,000 at-risk youth since its creation. However, due to a series of recent funding cuts, Shore said the organization is now turning away roughly three youth daily. “We desperately need more help as do the youth we serve,” Shore added. In her testimony, Shore urged members of the committee to consider increasing the group’s funds in the 2014 budget, which will be available to the public no later than March 28. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Shore expressed concern that the past year’s funding cuts are “allowing so many more young people to be unprotected.” “There is a significant problem not just in the narrative of our story about losing this funding but really that, in all of the interest that there has been in developing plans to end homelessness, there has been a kind of lack of recognition [of] young adults,” Shore explained. Shore also said that the cuts signal the District’s failure to recognize the need to prevent runaway and homeless youth from succumbing to risks. A spokesperson for Mayor Vincent Gray's administration, however, said that it is committed to serving homeless youth and that, in some areas, “expenditures on these services are growing, not being cut.” “The mayor and agency leaders all recognize that youth homelessness is an issue that requires attention and we are working to address increasing needs in this area on numerous fronts,” Doxie McCoy told The Huffington Post. According to McCoy, the Department of Human Services provides about $3.1 million each year to youth homeless services, as well as the $1 million spent by the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency on its Rapid Housing Program for youth aging out of the foster care system. Other agencies -- such as the Department of Human Services and the Department of Mental Health -- offer supportive services to youth and families and, McCoy said, programs within these agencies will be expanded through a $500,000 funding increase. Still, Shore argues that the District doesn't recognize the importance of prevention services -- like those provided by Sasha Bruce Youthwork. In her March 13 testimony, Shore explained that “youth who [run away] and/or are homeless without their families are much more likely to drop out of school, become engaged in illegal activity as a way to survive, do drugs, get pregnant, become victimized including being trafficked ... [and] develop serious health problems.” According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, homeless and runaway youth disproportionately suffer from those consequences, and “are more likely to remain homeless and be more resistant to change.” Although the immediate impact of funding cuts concerns Shore, it’s the long-term effects that alarm her most. “It’s kids who get disconnected from school, don’t finish school, don’t have work [and] are not in trouble yet,” Shore said. “Unless there’s some real, creative intervention ... of course they’re going to get into trouble.” This, too, is a legitimate concern -- not just for the estimated 1,880 homeless youth in D.C., but also for District residents. The recidivism of youth incarceration carried a hefty price tag for D.C. taxpayers; according to the National Juvenile Justice Network, $125 million was spent on the D.C. Juvenile Justice System in 2011. But community-based programs, such as Sasha Bruce Youthwork, provide greater cost savings than juvenile incarceration, research indicates. According to a Justice Policy Institute report, “some programs ... have been shown to yield up to $13 in benefits to public safety for every dollar spent. These programs are more cost effective and produce more public safety benefits than detaining and incarcerating youth.” Fiscal benefits and funding disputes aside, there is growing consensus that the District could do more to protect at-risk runaway and homeless youth -- including focusing more on prevention programs. Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children’s Law Center, told The Huffington Post that while the District is taking great strides to advance services for at-risk youth -- including those involved in the foster care system -- there is room to improve. “We certainly have way too many youth who are homeless, both with their families and on their own, and we don’t serve them very well,” said Sandalow. “We need to do more to [prevent] trauma upfront by making children’s lives safer and healthier, and that will both help raise more productive adults and save the city money in the long run.” Despite unprecedented levels of government spending to help low-income Americans, a record 46 million people in the United States are living in poverty. In 2011, two thirds of the working-age poor were unemployed for the entire year. Some will argue that more public sector intervention is necessary to reduce poverty. But as we continue to slowly recover from the Great Recession, history shows us that only job gains from stronger economic growth can solve the problem.
A full five years since the start of the recession, the economy continues to underperform. Economic growth has averaged just 2.3 percent growth since the end of the recession in mid-year 2009, not enough to begin a full labor market recovery. There are still more than 100 million working-age people that remain jobless, and wages in 2012 grew at just 1.5 percent, the slowest increase on record and well below the rate of inflation. Based on data from the past two decades, every 1 percent reduction in the poverty rate requires a corresponding 2 percent rise in the share of the working age population with employment. [See a collection of political cartoons on the economy.] Since the start of the recession, the number of Americans in poverty has grown by 9 million. This increase has come at a time when government spending on the poor has also reached record levels. In 2011, more than 100 million people lived in households that received some kind of low-income government assistance; spending on these programs at the federal, state, and local level combined now exceeds $1 trillion annually. Government assistance for low-income families now equals a shocking 10 percent of all household spending. It has been long recognized that recessions can increase the number of families in poverty, and over the past 20 years it has become clear that the rising and falling poverty rate correlates directly with the jobless rate. The graph below shows this relationship. Cleveland school hosts nation's first children's rights conference 12:19pm Monday 11th March 2013 in News By Chris Pleasance
CHILDREN from an east Cleveland school will host the nation’s first children’s rights conference. Pupils aged four to 11 from Whitecliffe Primary School, in Carlin How, will invite 80 students from 18 local schools to their conference on Friday, March 15. Whitecliffe Primary was praised last year by charity Unicef after receiving a Rights Respecting School Award. They will use the conference to help other schools match their achievement. Head teacher Chris Shannon said: “Our pupils have been extremely passionate about children’s rights since we got the Unicef award last February and they have done an outstanding job in organising this event. We are all looking forward to a fantastic occasion.” The conference was thought up by ex-pupils Alex Ayre and Jodie Found who will also MC the event. The award was for the school’s work in promoting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and encouraging children to become active citizens. The convention sets out the basic rights for children, including the right to education which must "develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full." Joan Guy, cabinet member for children’s services and education at Redcar and Cleveland Council, said: “The enthusiasm of the Whitecliffe Primary School pupils for children’s rights issues is tremendous and I’m sure this event will be a great success.” Alabama passed a school-choice plan last Thursday that The Foundry hails as "historic." The Cato At Liberty blog is almost as optimistic, calling the legislation “a good start” and criticizing only the fact that it may inadvertently encourage schools to waste more time “teaching to the test.”
In brief, the new legislation will allow students who currently attend a “failing” school to attend a “non-failing” school via income tax credits. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) plans to sign the bill into law today, but the Alabama Education Association (AEA) has other ideas. They are suing to block Bentley from signing the bill because: They maintain the bill has several problems, including being so broad that a family zoned for a failing school could get the private school tax credits without even sending a child to the failing school. The plan defines failing schools as: …those in the bottom 10 percent on statewide reading and math assessment scores, with three consecutive D’s or one F on the school grading card, or labeled ‘persistently low-performing’ on the state’s School Improvement Grant application. In other words, when the state-run education system that you’re funding with your tax dollars fails your children for a few years running, you will be permitted to keep a portion of your money to send them to a better school. It's nothing new for heavily-entrenched public education unions to oppose competition and innovations in teaching methods that can benefit children. The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) devoted the first two pages of its January 2013 newsletter to bad-mouthing charters and complaining about reform movements. Groups like the AEA and the NJEA are trying to protect their members from budget cuts and lay-offs. That's what unions were created to do, and they're remarkably good at it. But when that gets in the way of a child's education, it is up to parents and legislators to put them back in their place. | AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesJune 2013 Categories |
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