March, 2000

Children are a precious natural resource that must be nurtured with a commitment to providing the necessary support and services for their present development as well as a vision for their future development. It is hoped that as adults they will take on roles in the development and sustainability of their communities and as guardians of the next generation. The ultimate goal for any organization serving children, youth and families is to help children develop into healthy, responsible adults.

CYF paves the way to reaching these goals by providing:

Many vulnerable children in Allegheny County have multiple risk factors, such as living in poverty, in a high crime area, or with a single parent as well as having been born at a low birth weight or to a teen mother. Most of these risk factors are related to increased stress and fewer supports for the parent, which increases the risk of a child being abused or neglected. In addition to multiple risk factors, the majority of families with vulnerable children are concentrated in only some of the communities within Allegheny County with most being in the City of Pittsburgh.

The rest of this paper will focus on these high-risk communities; however, in the past decade poverty as well as the aforementioned risk factors are increasing in other communities that are now considered low-risk, including communities East of the city of Pittsburgh and along the Mon river. Though these low risk areas will not be addressed in this paper, attention to capacity to meet these vulnerable families’ needs is important, but the avenues to reach these isolated families may differ from those listed below.

Living in poverty is highly related to the likelihood of having additional risk factors. According to the 1990 Census Data, 18,836 children (17%) in Allegheny County were living below the poverty thresholds. Slightly less than half of these children were living in the City of Pittsburgh. High concentrations of children living in poverty were also found in the neighborhoods of Fairywood and Terrace Village and the municipalities of McKees Rocks Borough and McKeesport City.

A more recent picture of poverty for Allegheny county can be found by examining the number of children who are eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) for the year 1998/1999. Almost thirty-six thousand children (32%) in grades kindergarten through sixth grade in Allegheny County’s public and parochial schools were eligible to receive a free or reduced lunch. School districts with the largest number or percentage of children eligible for the NSLP include the City of Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg, Sto-Rox and McKeesport Area.

Two other risk factors that illustrate the inequitable concentration of risk factors throughout Allegheny County are the rates of low birth weights and births to unmarried women under the age of twenty. In both these cases, the rates as a whole have decreased in the last decade. However, there are communities that have much higher rates compared to the county and city levels.

There are a number of communities in Allegheny County that have high rates of multiple risk factors. Being able to provide for the safety and well being of vulnerable children in these high-risk communities is and will continue to be a challenge for CYF. The challenge is not only that these communities are high-risk, but they are also diverse in terms of racial composition, community cohesiveness, leadership and previous experience with working towards a common goal.

There is an opportunity for CYF to become more effective in meeting their clients’ needs by becoming more community focused in terms of services and support. This can be accomplished by contracting with providers within the clients’ own community, thus eliminating access issues and decreasing the insensitivity of providers in terms of cultural expectations and values.

By providing service contracts that address multiple risk factors, the community can build cohesiveness around the issues of children, youth, and families. With cohesion comes increased engagement of stakeholders within the community, community empowerment and increased ownership of the problems it faces. With responsibility, hard work and support from agencies like CYF, communities are able to address the problems of multiple risk factors and reduce the need for future CYF support, services, and referrals.

There are examples of success locally, regionally, and nationally where agencies have worked with high risk communities to address issues of concern by developing community-based services that are integrated and flexible to meet the needs of the communities. Family Support, a county and regional effort uses a comprehensive approach to address the economic and social well being of families in low-income areas.

Family Support Centers have focused on reducing teen pregnancy and increasing school readiness.

The nationally developed initiative called Early Head Start is based on the principles of community empowerment and strength. Targeting pregnant women and children under three years of age, this program is comprehensive in its focus, which includes an effective campaign to increase immunization rates among participants.

The Cleveland partner in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) mapped the location of welfare recipients who will be making the transition to work with available jobs in the area. They found that many of the available jobs are located in close proximity to the area’s low-income housing. Their maps have led to changes in the local transportation policies and systems.

In order to protect and enhance the natural resource of children and youth in this county, CYF will need to act in a coordinating role to be able to provide support, services, and referrals to high-risk communities.

It is a long path from top-down implementation and professionally-driven services which are ‘done to or for the client’ to the community-based/community-empowered services and increased personal responsibility on the part of the client. The following list provides a starting point for this long path.