SPOTLIGHT ON CHILD & FAMILY WELLBEING
BCDI NYS is shining a spotlight on quality communities and their impact on child and family well-being. Village, we're let's work together on this!
Child and Family Well-being Fund
REPORT
The Child and Family Wellbeing Fund:
New State Funding to Support Community-Led Investments
Village, we know that family separations date back to slavery when they were used to punish, humiliate, and intimidate Black people as well as to profit from the exploitation of Black children and families. The Child and Family Well-being Fund is an acknowledgement that harm has been done and an investment in addressing it.
You should read this report.* But if you don’t have time to read it, here’s what you should know:
The Good. The Bad. And the Ugly:
Good: neighborhood assets can make a difference when it comes to children’s health, mental health, intellectual development, social mobility and the amount of money they’ll earn over their entire lifetime. A vibrant neighborhood with, say, safe parks and playgrounds, access to what families need (food, childcare, etc.), and strong social networks among the community can play a big role in a child’s well-being. And, yes, this is still true if the child’s family faces other challenges. Investment in local communities can change the trajectory of children’s lives regardless of income.
Bad: poverty is often (mis)identified as neglect resulting in harmful interventions by the child welfare system. The majority of reports to the state’s child abuse hotline are for issues related to poverty, not abuse. Child welfare system intervention can lead to unnecessary child and family separations that leave harmful effects on children, families, and communities – making the child welfare system feel like the family (over)policing system.
Ugly: Black families are disproportionately targeted for child welfare involvement. According to the report, 53% of Black children will “experience a child welfare investigation compared to one-third of all” children in the US.
The report calls for the creation of the Child and Family Well-being Fund, a 5-year pilot, that would invest $30 million in 10 communities in New York State with the highest rates of child welfare system involvement. And in the spirit of ‘nothing about us without us,’ the Fund would be rooted in community from development to directing investments.
“…[E]veryday surroundings offer significant advantages to children even if their own family is struggling. Yet decades of redlining and structurally racist disinvestment have resulted in vastly inequitable neighborhood conditions…The Fund would be a promising corrective shift to ensure that more New York children live in neighborhoods that are equipped to support their wellbeing.”
DO YOU SUPPORT CREATING THE CHILD AND FAMILY WELLBEING FUND?
HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW! Click here.
*Full disclosure: Our President & CEO, Yomika S. Bennett is credited as a co-author of the report. BCDI NYS strongly supports creation of the Child and Family Well-being Fund.