The Power To Give

By Children's Program Director, Josh Chittum

Christmas time at Community LINC means offices and meeting spaces are filled with shopping bags and wrapped presents and all available hands digging in to help distribute items to families. This is expected at a social service agency during the holidays. What I’m proud of most this season, however, is something we did for Christmas that might not be as expected to outside observers.

For an entire month, children and youth participated in our first ever Read-to-Give program. During this time, they raised $1 for each book or story they wrote through outside sponsorships. At the end of the program, 130 literacy activities were completed. With an extra donation on top of sponsorship, the children and youth raised $200 total.

The great part is that they were raising money for someone else - an international organization called Oxfam America that works to promote self-sufficiency in developing nations just as we work to promote self-sufficiency for families experiencing homelessness in Kansas City. Through Oxfam’s Unwrapped store, children used the funds they raised to purchase a goat and bundles of school books that will benefit children in a developing country as they too strive towards self-sufficiency.

There is power in being able to act upon the world in this manner. There is power in realizing that one does not have to identify “only” as a recipient of charity. There is power in us, those not experiencing homelessness, to view children at Community LINC as capable of giving something to the world just like any other child.

This power increases children’s resiliency, which is the primary focus of Children’s Program. It also helps children internalize the fact that they can act in the world. That realization is linked to self-sufficiency, which is central to our organizational mission. That is why this program was started and why we hope we are able to continue it in the years ahead.

Employment Matters: Tenacity and Hard Work Pays Off

By Employment Services Job Coach Constance Taylor

When my current participant and her family entered our program, she had faith that she would find another job. She knew it would require a lot of hard work and time.

At least seven years ago, she divorced her children’s father and decided to focus on raising her young children using child support knowing she couldn’t find a job that would pay enough to cover child care. They moved into a single dwelling with several other adult family members and pooled their resources.

After the death of two of those family members, the pool of funds decreased drastically. They were unable to pay their rent on time and were evicted.

It was time to become self-sufficient.

She arrived in the employment lab each day before 9:00 AM, which demonstrated her eagerness and desire to secure employment. We created a resume and set up profiles on several job sights. Although, she had no computer skills and very little experience,  her strong interpersonal and communication skills were a good fit for the retail industry. 

Finally, I told her, I thought it was time to “hit the street” as we call it in the lab. It took one day of applying at various retail stores and she received a phone call from a small neighborhood merchant who was willing to give her a chance.

She secured employment in less than one month of her search because of her sincere tenacity and hard work. She is excited about the opportunities in her future.  

What do (homeless) children need?

We always look at studies with an eye towards what we can apply to our own programming. The seventh research brief in the series from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness shifts the focus to the children.

We have long felt that the best impact we can have on homelessness will be through the children.  

The brief tells us that “poverty is linked to lower-quality parent-child interaction; children who grow up poor tend to have home environments characterized by more authoritarian parenting and fewer opportunities for in-home learning than those of higher-income families.” But, it goes on to say “enrollment in high-quality child care programs can moderate the negative impacts of poverty.”

The homeless mothers in this study were the least likely to obtain the subsidies that would help them afford child care. Even when they do get the child care subsidy, “poor parents with fewer economic resources are less likely to select center-based care and more likely to rely on relatives and less formal care arrangements than those with more resources.”

The decision to use the less formal child care arrangements has a lasting impact on their children.

“Center-based formal child care programs have been linked to positive developmental outcomes for poor children. High-quality child care can positively impact “language skills, cognitive growth, and socio-economic development among poor children.”

Would you be surprised to know that the brief reported that only 3% of the homeless mothers in their study enrolled their children in Head Start? While there is a grain of truth in the myth that the educational benefits of Head Start fade-out over time, according to Steven Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research, “nearly all studies that measured school progress find lasting impacts on grade repetition, special education and high school graduation.”

We have long guided our families to enroll their children in the wonderful non-profit day care up the street from us. The study reinforces the value of our plan to add a collaboration with another non-profit that can help place the kids in Head Start programs.

We’re also trying to teach alternatives to the authoritarian parenting style often seen in poor families.

In a 1995 book called Meaningful Differences, Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to understand why a curriculum they helped design gained only mediocre results for the children in a poor black Kansas City neighborhood. It led them to conclude that differences in parenting factor into the gaps between upper- and lower-income children.

Hart and Risley found that the average number of words heard in an hour by professors’ kids was 2,150, 1,250 for working-class children, and 620 for children in welfare families. More than that, the parents didn’t just talk less, they didn’t talk as kindly to their kids and communication could be summed up in the word “no.”

But parenting style can change, when the parent grasps the impact on her children. Our Senior Director of Programs was thrilled to read a response to a family problem solving question for one of our life skills modules. The mom said she wanted to change the way she disciplines – from yelling to talking in a calm and clear way to her children. She wants to stop punishing, and begin disciplining her kids. With a mom who takes responsibility and "owns" her role like that, there is lots of hope for her kids.