The Face of Childhood Poverty – A Growing Problem Right Here in Austin, Texas

The statistics are startling: Nearly one in every five children and youth in Travis County – and one in three Hispanic children – live in poverty. That’s more than 44,000 children in our community whose annual family incomes fall below the federal government’s bare bones poverty level of $22,050 for a family of four.

The most basic of human needs – food, shelter and clothing – are missing from the lives of children in poverty. They go to bed hungry, sleep in cramped and substandard housing, and go to school in tattered clothing. Learning suffers, and children fall further and further behind – almost guaranteeing that they will not escape the cycle of poverty.

Even more damaging are the chaos, neglect and stress of daily survival that many children experience, exacting a terrible toll on their emotional well-being, physical health and intellectual development.

The faces of these children are in our schools and our neighborhoods. Yet they are often invisible to us, blending into the fabric of a society with extremes of stunning wealth and painful deprivation. We can “see” these faces and nurture the potential in all children by supporting the nonprofit organizations that strive to meet their basic needs and lift their families out of poverty towards self-sufficiency.

The Stark Realities of Poverty

Advocates have all been touched by the experiences of children in poverty: a child who has never seen a raw vegetable; a young girl afraid to go home because she ate all her food at school and has none to take home to her mother; a 16-year-old boy abandoned by his family to foster care so he’d be eligible for state resources; a student living temporarily in a two-bedroom apartment with 17 other people.

Poverty creates a “cafeteria plan” of suffering – families make tough choices to stretch meager resources to cover food, housing, child care, health care and transportation. Children often bear the brunt, and the consequences are devastating.

Vocabulary development is stunted in children from impoverished environments. Three-year-olds from professional families have an average vocabulary of 1,116 words compared to only 525 words for children whose families receive public assistance.

Children and youth raised in poverty complete two fewer years of schooling, work 25 percent fewer hours, and are more than twice as likely to report poor health and high
levels of psychological distress. Poor males are twice as likely to be arrested and three times as likely to be incarcerated. Poor females are five times as likely to bear a child out of wedlock before age 21.

Addressing a Growing Problem

Nonprofit organizations provide a safety net of services, but demand is outpacing their capacity to serve. Agencies are seeing massive increases in client requests for help ranging from 41 percent to more than 500 percent over last year. Populations of children vulnerable to poverty are growing in Travis County, especially children under age five and children born to single mothers.

Any Baby Can Child and Family Resource Center helps poor families develop the tools and resources they need to build brighter futures for their children. Services include case management, parenting education, and child development coaching and family literacy instruction. Any Baby Can’s Nurse-Family Partnership program helps new mothers get off to the right start with their infants. Programs for poor families target kids at risk of neglect or abuse and improve school readiness.

Communities In Schools – Central Texas (CIS) offers school-based social services to help meet students’ non-academic needs, including crisis intervention, individual counseling and basic needs assistance. CIS targets schools that have high percentages of economically disadvantaged students and are often located in low-income, high-need communities. CIS’ ASPIRE Family Literacy program works to break the cycle of illiteracy, unemployment, and poverty by providing educational services to the whole family.

Adult education classes with free on-site child care for parents are provided by El Buen Samaritano Episcopal Mission, which also conducts outreach and offers primary health care for low-income and uninsured clients at its Wallace Mallory Clinic. Medical expenses for children living in poverty are offered at Dell Children’s Medical Center regardless of ability to pay by the Seton Family of Hospitals. Seton reaches out to low-income residents through three neighborhood clinics and a specialty care clinic at the University Medical Center at Brackenridge.

Caritas of Austin strives to help our community’s poor meet their basic needs through utility and rent assistance, a food pantry and free hot lunch program, and a rapid re-housing program that helps those who’ve become homeless get back into housing. Additionally, Caritas helps clients reach self-sufficiency through financial education classes and employment services. Goodwill Industries of Central Texas takes into account the needs of the whole family to help family wage earners find jobs and remove barriers to employment.

The Capital Area Food Bank provides food to dozens of Central Texas social organizations, helping bring nutritious food to more than 300,000 low-income clients across 21 Central Texas counties.

Forty area agencies work together collaboratively through the Basic Needs Coalition of Central Texas (BNC), whose mission is to lead the community in creating solutions that secure the basic resources – food and housing – of our neighbors in need. The BNC’s vision is to eliminate the effects of poverty and promote self sufficiency.

Each January, the Basic Needs Coalition draws attention to the burgeoning problem of poverty in Central Texas. I Live Here, I Give Here is proud to help in this effort. For more information, visit www.basicneedscoalition.org.

How You Can Help

This New Year, you can resolve to make a difference in the lives of children in our community suffering from the crushing effects of growing up in poverty. By sharing your financial resources, you can help expand services so that more children can break the cycle and reach their full potential. For a complete listing of registered nonprofits, visit www.ilivehereigivehere.org.

By The Numbers

• 63 percent of children in Travis County schools are considered economically disadvantaged.
• In Texas, childhood poverty costs $57.5 billion dollars annually in lost potential income, crime and medical services for poor health.
• 30 percent of female-headed households with children in Travis County live in poverty.
• Children under the age of five account for 24 percent of Travis County food stamp recipients.
• 18 percent of children and youth under the age of 18 in Travis County are uninsured.
• Texas has the highest rate of food insecurity in children.
• Austin has the highest cost of child care in the state and the second highest cost for housing.
• Every $1 invested in high quality supports for families of disadvantaged children before their fifth birthday, the community can save up to $17 down the road on services such as special education, grade retention, dropout prevention and juvenile justice programs.

Resources

For a complete listing of registered nonprofits, visit: www.ilivehereigivehere.org

Visit the Basic Needs Coalition’s Poverty Fact Sheet

Visit the Center for Public Policy Priorities: www.cppp.org