Way to go, Ohio Youth Advisory Board Media Spokesperson Dauntea Sledge

Ohio Foster Kids are Rising Up, Giving Back
Mary Kuhlman, Public News Service, October 25, 2011

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Despite the trauma and challenging family dynamics they may have experienced growing up, many young people in Ohio have transitioned out of foster care to lead successful lives and become role models for others.

Dauntea Sledge of Columbus, who was in and out of care for more than a decade, now works on the local and national level educating others about the child welfare system.


Sledge says a love of comic book heroes helped save him, and now he wants to help others.


"It took me out of the world I was actually in and put me in another one, that kind of helped me cope. And it gave me morals, like Superman: 'I'm going to save everybody.' So, it instilled values in me that I wasn't getting at home, or even in my foster homes."

Sledge has received national recognition as one of a handful of 2011 Foster Club All-Stars.

A family history of substance abuse led Julia Burns of Brookfield into the foster care system at age 14. She now fosters her own brother and provides the same support she says caseworkers and foster parents gave her.

"Any time I needed them, day or night, they were there for me. Any time I felt down or unloved or got discouraged, they were always there to push me ahead. And if it wasn't for foster parents and caseworkers, I probably wouldn't be where I'm at today."

Burns recently received the Public Children Services Association of Ohio's 2011 "Rising Up and Moving On" award.

Sledge says the child welfare system is doing good things, but more can always be done to help those in care. As a product of that system, he says, he can provide a perspective that others can't.

"A lot of people don't understand what foster youth go through, so they can't speak on it and they can't really target the problem. You have to bring all perspectives to the table, so the more people that advocate, the better."

Burns says foster parents are in a unique position to influence a child's life. Her advice for them?

"Teach them right and just show them love and affection, because a lot of kids come into foster care feeling neglected. Make them feel like a part of your home, and make them just feel wanted."

Each year in Ohio, more than 1,000 teens age out of foster care as they turn 18. To help improve their chances for education and self-sufficiency, Ohio lawmakers have approved $2 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding.

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory

Cincinnati, Ohio           Population: 296,943  

Mayor Mark Mallory has been a champion for youth and financial empowerment since being elected to office in 2005. His accomplishments include the Mayor’s Summer Youth Jobs Initiative, which was launched in 2007 and employs 220 youth ages 14-24 through five city-sponsored programs.  Mayor Mallory has also sponsored an annual jobs fair for youth ages 16-24 that engages employers offering year-round and summer jobs, youth employment resource agencies and community organizations that provide volunteer opportunities and enrichment programs. In 2010, more than 60 local businesses and organizations and more than 5,000 youth participated in the fair.

This year, the city partnered with a local credit union and financial education provider, SmartMoney Community Services, to incorporate financial education workshops into the mayor’s youth initiatives. At the job fair, youth had the opportunity to participate in a variety of interactive financial literacy activities, with the incentive of raffle prizes upon completion. Parents and youth ages 18 and older were also given the opportunity to open a bank account through the Mayor’s Bank On Greater Cincinnati initiative, a program that creates pathways to the financial mainstream for financially underserved residents.


Throughout the summer, the 220 youth employed through the Mayor’s Summer Youth Jobs Initiative were required to participate in four different financial education workshops designed specifically for youth. These sessions taught core financial skills, such as budgeting, banking basics, and taxes. The city also provided an incentive to encourage youth to save their earnings throughout the summer.   

Pre-and-post tests showed that the classes had a positive impact on the youths’ perceptions about successful financial behavior. Ninety-seven percent agreed that they would “create a budget with their money because they know it will help them afford the things they want and need.” All participants believed that “setting goals can help them afford things that they both want and need in the future.”

According to Mayor Mallory, the summer youth jobs initiative gives youth two benefits: valuable work experience and extra earnings. Now, with the incorporation of financial education, youth are also learning how to manage those earnings more effectively. “Financial literacy is an essential part of any student’s education. As we are teaching students the value of work, we also need to teach them the value of responsible money management,” said Mayor Mallory.   

For more information about the Mayor’s Youth Job Fair, visit the City of Cincinnati’s website . For more information about SmartMoney Community Services programming, visit www.smart-money.org 

Leverage youth employment and job training programs to encourage financial empowerment:   Local youth employment programs are an excellent venue for connecting youth to financial access opportunities. By offering financial education classes, financial mentoring, and bank accounts or other safe financial products to job training and youth employment program participants, cities can empower local youth. Initiatives such as Bank On Washington, D.C., partner with city summer youth employment programs to provide financial education. They also offered youth the option to receive their paychecks electronically on a prepaid debit card.

Promote Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) for youth: IDA programs allow youth to receive matched savings for asset-building activities such as education, entrepreneurship, the purchase of computers, and deposits for rent.  Youth who participate in IDA programs not only build assets, but also receive financial education and develop good saving habits.

City leaders have raised awareness about existing IDA programs or partnered with philanthropic organizations or financial institutions to establish a matched savings component for an IDA program. 


New York City, for example, partners with Citibank, Wells Fargo, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and several community organizations to administer the Youth Financial Empowerment (YFE) program, a financial literacy and IDA savings program for youth transitioning out of foster care.  


For more information about IDAs, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Assets for Independence Resource Center.

Former Middle Class Families Find Selves in Poverty

Census shows Akron facing new kind of poverty: Agencies aid more former middle-class residents
Scott, Dave. Ohio.com, September 22, 2011.

U.S. census data confirm what area social agencies already knew: The face of poverty is changing and it’s a lot meaner.

Poverty in Akron has increased to nearly 3 in 10 residents or 29.4 percent in 2010, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The same category was 23.7 percent before the recession officially began in December 2007.

The report, released today, says 57,312 Akronites were living below the poverty line in 2010. The poverty line for a family of two adults and two children was $21,970 last year. (The figure varies for different-size families.)

Many area social agencies say they are hearing from formerly middle-class people who have no idea how to cope with being poor.


“These are individuals who have never been poor; they don’t know how to use the system,” Dottie Achmoody, chief executive of OPEN-M, said. “They don’t know where the resources are, and even when they find out what the resources are, they are embarrassed. They are ashamed. They come to us as the absolutely last resort.”

Many families are earning less.

The median Ohio household income fell from $49,000 in 2007 to $45,090 in 2010. For Akron, that number — meaning half brought in more, half less — fell from $34,626 to $31,171 in 2010.

“The one thing we are seeing is a whole new face of poverty,” Achmoody said. “We are seeing a lot more situational poor. Individuals or families where two-income households have gone down to one [wage earner], and one household income cannot cover all the bills and expenses.”

Ohio’s unemployment rate was estimated at 9.1 percent earlier this week.

Many of those jobless are turning to social services for the first time in their lives.

“What we are hearing a lot of individuals say is, ‘You know I have worked all of my life. I have never been without a job. I’ve always been able to find some kind of job.’ ” Achmoody said. “But now so many are out of work, it is hard to go out there and find any kind of job, no matter what the pay. We’re seeing people accept jobs much lower than their qualifications are, just to make ends meet.”

She gave the example of a Hudson family: The husband lost his job and the bigger share of family income. His family’s health insurance also was about to expire. He had never been needy before and didn’t know what to do. Eventually, he turned to OPEN-M’s free clinic.

Achmoody said the man wasn’t as savvy as some chronically poor people.

“Some with generational poverty, they’ve been dealing with this stuff all their life,” she said. “They are beyond embarrassed and they know where all the resources are ... but this new poor, they do not know, and it’s difficult.”

Since 2007, median household income has declined in every major Ohio city, with Cleveland at the bottom rung, falling from $29,982 in 2007 to $25,977 in 2010.

Jeff Kaiser, executive director of Akron’s Haven of Rest, said the poor are younger now, too.

“What we are seeing is a younger generation of men coming into the facility,” he said. “It used to be anywhere from 45 to 65, and now it’s more like 18 to 35.”

In some cases, the young people have never held a job. Haven of Rest’s mission includes leading them to job training so they can become self-sufficient.

“Our goal is to get them back into society,” he said. “It takes time. It used to be two and three months, and now it’s taking a lot longer. It can take anywhere between four months up to a year to get them back into society.”

Women and children are feeling the brunt, he said.

He said the mission’s women’s director, Yvette Mc- Millan, reports that many women say they formerly lived with one and two other families under one roof and even then they couldn’t make ends meet and were forced to ask the Mission’s Harvest Home for shelter.

The Akron Canton Regional Foodbank tripled its storage volume with a new warehouse three years ago — and it needed it.

“Our distribution has shot up 48 percent in the last three years. That’s in the overall food we distribute,” said Dan Flowers, chief executive of the food bank.

He saw 23 percent more people using the agency’s services in 2009.

“In this last few years and in this recession, a lot of people who have never had to access the food banks and the public benefits are finding them doing it for the very first time. ... So by all means we have seen, certainly, a lot of first-time clients come in.”

He said national food distributors have had to reduce contributions, but local retailers, including Walmart, Sam’s Club, Acme and Giant Eagle, have made up the slack.

Flowers said no one who asks for food has been turned away. Still, there are hungry in the Akron area.

Instead of hunger, he uses the term “food insecurity,” which means an inability to provide necessary food. Flowers said 16 percent of Summit County residents – 25 percent of all children – faced that problem last year.

But help is available.

“I guess the one piece of advice I’d give to people in poverty is if they need help, don’t be scared to ask for it ... because there are a lot of people that want to help,” Flowers said.

Increase in abusive head trauma of infants and young children

Study tracks increase in child abuse: Economic link speculated
Mann, Denise. Cincinnati.com, September 21, 2011

The stress of unemployment, foreclosures and putting food on the table may be factors in a spike in shaken baby syndrome and other types of abusive head trauma seen among infants and young children during the recent recession.

A new study examined the rate of abusive head trauma seen among children under age 5 in various U.S. locales from 2004 to 2009. Researchers found that the rate of such trauma rose from about 9 per 100,000 children to nearly 15 per 100,000 during that time period - coinciding with the onset of the recession and massive job losses.

"I wasn't surprised, but I am disturbed," said study lead author Rachel P. Berger, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. "This is the first really long recession in a really long time, and the medical diagnoses of abusive head trauma have increased in it."

Calling the findings "highly concerning," the researchers noted that abusive head trauma is the leading cause of death from child abuse and among the most common causes of traumatic brain injury among infants.

The study, published in the October issue of Pediatrics, can't definitely say that the increase is related to tough economic times, but unemployment was up in all of the regions it included. Although child abuse occurs in all economic classes, previous research has also shown that poverty is linked to the risk of physical abuse.

Overall, there were 422 abusive head traumas in children under age 5 in 74 counties during the five-year study period. Of these, 76 percent occurred in children younger than 1. They took place in 76 counties throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and Seattle.

As to what could make a stressed-out caregiver snap, she said that among infants, crying may be the trigger, but as children age, it could be biting, toilet training or defiance issues.

This is not the first study to document a rise in abusive head trauma during the recent recession. A team of researchers from University Hospital's Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland also reported a doubling of such injuries during the recent recession. Those findings were presented in April at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons' meeting in Denver.

So, is there anything that can be done to reduce economic hard times' impact on the health of children? Berger believes that education and more support for struggling families may help put a dent in the troubling statistics she's seen.

"Stress and poverty are risk factors for child abuse," agreed Peter Sherman, a pediatrician and director of the residency program in social pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. "If people are stressed out, it's not a big stretch that they are at high risk for being abusive."

Part of the onus to protect these children also falls on their doctors. "It really suggests that as clinicians, we need to look at stresses on parents," Sherman said. That includes looking at what else is going on in their lives, such as maternal depression, risk of homelessness and/or job loss. "We need to do better," he concluded.

African Americans in Ohio more than twice as likely to live in poverty

Black families are struggling, census data show
Median income a little more than half that for whites in Ohio; 32% below poverty line
Bush, Bill. Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 22, 2011.

North Side residents Marcus and Ashley Grace, with their 4-month-old son, Marcus Jr., participate in a class at Word Church of God in Christ. Yesterday’s lesson, taught by the Rev. Eddie Parker III, focused on finding a job.

The Rev. Timothy Gregory left a job working with developmentally disabled adults after getting passed over for a promotion for someone with less experience.

He is black; the woman who got the job is white.

“I don’t know about racism as far as getting a job, but as far as raises and promotions and things like that, of course, there’s that racism,” said Gregory, 38, of the East Side.

He and his wife, Vicki, both work — he’s stayed in the field of working with disabled adults — but they struggle to pay the day-care bills for their 5-year-old daughter, he said.

Gregory knows many black families are worse off than his own.

The average black household in Ohio made a little more than half the income of its white counterpart last year, according to census numbers released today.

Although the median income of all Ohio households in 2010 slipped 8 percent since 2007 — from $49,015 to $45,090 — black families as a group remain far below that income level. Their median household income last year was $27,172, according to the census-based American Community Survey results.

Blacks in Ohio were more than twice as likely as the general population to live in poverty: about 32 percent of blacks were below the poverty line of $22,300 a year for a family of four.

The median black income statewide was 56 percent that of whites, who had a median household income of $48,334. Asians had the highest median income at $62,426; Latinos were at $33,178.

“Part of it is, as the economy tanked, it didn’t tank evenly,” said John Powell, a professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. He teaches about employment discrimination.

Nationally, the unemployment rate for whites dropped from 8.7 percent in August 2010 to 8 percent last month. But the rate for blacks increased to 16.7 percent from 16.2 percent.

As a group, blacks face a series of hurdles to finding good work, starting with where they live, Powell said. Other than Native Americans, blacks in the United States were the most likely to live farthest from where they work, or from where potential jobs were being created, he said.

“Increasingly, (jobs) are not in the central city, and they’re less likely to be in the first-ring suburbs,” Powell said.

On top of geographic boundaries, blacks also can face old-fashioned racism, such as not getting calls back for potential job interviews and being passed over for promotions, Powell said.

“A person with a black-sounding name is less likely to get called back than a white person with a criminal record,” Powell said studies have shown. “If they get a job, they’re more likely to get a job without benefits, with low pay, and in a marginal industry.”

At the Word Church of God in Christ, Gregory and the Rev. Eddie Parker III have seen how black families struggle to find work and support themselves. The largely black church sits just west of Franklin Park on the Near East Side.

“The opportunities of advancement for a black male are still not equal to that of a white male, and there is a class of what’s called the working poor,” Parker said. “A black man trying to take care of his family can’t get the same raises and advance.


“Their children grow up in that same cycle of poverty, and then it becomes a generational thing."

Parker also said that the high number of black children born in single-mother homes is a problem. The most-recent statistics put that number at 73 percent nationally.

In the Columbus metro area, the four race groups had median annual incomes higher than those for all of Ohio. Local blacks had an annual median income of $30,419, compared with $27,172 for the state.

When counting income, the Census Bureau includes any Social Security payments, public assistance or unemployment benefits. It doesn’t include any non-cash benefits, such as food stamps.

The study also shows that although Latinos had higher incomes than blacks, they were much more likely to be without health insurance: 25.5 percent of Latinos in Ohio had no health plan, compared with 16.5 percent of blacks.

This is partly because illegal immigrants — and even non-citizens who are working here legally but arrived after 1996 — are denied Medicaid, a government health plan for low-income people, said Cathy Levine, co-chairwoman of Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage.

Counting all Ohioans, about 12.3 percent of the state’s population had no health coverage.