Child Advocates to Address Shrinking Child Safety Net at Public Panel

At a time when more new research documents the ill affects that growing up in poverty has on children, the safety net designed to protect the most vulnerable is shrinking.

A panel of nationally recognized child advocacy experts will

gather at the University of Washington School
of Law at 3 p.m. Wednesday, February
12 to address the adverse affects that financial cutbacks in federal, state and local safety net programs are having on the health, safety and welfare of the
country’s most susceptible populations, particularly young children.

Open to the public, The Shrinking Child Safety Net – the impact on the health, safety and
welfare of our region’s most vulnerable will feature the following policy experts, advocates and officials:      

• Lisa A. Kelly, Bobbe
  & Jon Bridge Professor of Child Advocacy; Director, Children and Youth
  Advocacy Clinic, University of
  Washington School of Law
• Joanne Goldblum,
  Executive Director, National Diaper
  Bank Network
• Lois Schipper, Supervisor,
  Public
  Health - Seattle and King County
• Alison Carl White, Executive Director, WithinReach
• Nancy Woodland (Moderator), Executive Director, WestSide
  Baby

In the Seattle area alone, more than 18,000 children
under the age of five live in families with incomes below the poverty
threshold, and nearly 8,000 live in extreme poverty. In recent months and
weeks, more than $7 million were cut from Head Start programs in the state due
to the 2013 federal sequestration, and nationally, the childcare subsidy system
shrank by $115 million. 

Additionally, according to a statement by U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., 6,943 King
County residents lost their unemployment insurance last month when Congress
failed to extend the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.  Statewide, some 24,000 Washingtonians lost
the insurance coverage, and more than 37,600 are slated for termination in the
coming months.

Furthermore,
the FARM bill passed recently by House of Representatives will cut $8.6 billion over 10 years from the food stamp program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program), impacting 850,000 families, seniors,
veterans and those with disabilities, nationwide. Policy analysts are working to determine what these cuts will mean to Seattle if enacted.

“When
fewer dollars are available to spend each month, many families face unwarranted,
stressful decisions,” said child poverty expert Joanne Goldblum, Executive Director
of the National Diaper Bank Network. 
“Too frequently families much choose between buying food, paying rent,
heating their home or even buy diapers for their baby.”

The Shrinking Child
Safety Net is co-sponsored by the University
of Washington School of Law William
H. Gates Public Service Law Program and Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic in
partnership with the National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN) and Side by Side
NorthWest (a project of WestSide Baby and Eastside Baby Corner).