We can expect a dramatic rise in Pierce County’s homeless population

Last updated: November 1st, 2011 12:18 AM (PDT)

Imagine for a minute that a tornado hits Sumner and does extensive damage. Afterward, people will be displaced until repairs can be accomplished over a period of several years. The 2010 Census listed Sumner’s population as 9,541 persons.

Now consider that in Pierce County as a whole, an estimated 9,030 persons will lose their DSHS financial assistance by the end of this year. As a result, they will lose – or be at severe risk of losing – their housing. More than 5,000 of those persons will have exhausted their Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) benefits. At least 3,300 will be children.

DSHS will terminate 3,930 adults from Disability Lifeline (DL) today. Some (maybe half) of those persons will be eligible for housing assistance vouchers worth an average of $200 a month for those already housed on DL and $450 a month for those unhoused.

The median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Pierce County currently is around $700 per month. Median rental for a two-bedroom apartment is around $900 per month. Neither price includes the cost of background checks and damage deposits. Given those rental costs, all former DL recipients will be at very significant risk of homelessness.

In addition, foreclosure filings are now averaging around 600 filings per month. We are not certain how many people will lose their housing because of foreclosure, but let’s just guess 1,000 per month or 12,000 per year. Many of those people will move to rental housing, thus driving up the rental rates, and driving down the already very limited supply of available and affordable rentals. Some will become homeless.

AccessPoint4Housing (AP4H) is the central place to call for housing assistance in Pierce County. AP4H reports that it received 3,403 unduplicated requests for housing assistance during July, August and September of this year. It was able to help attain or preserve housing for only 378 of those callers, because resources are so limited. Of the requests, 1,340 came from single parents with children (reflecting the end of their TANF benefits).

A group of people equivalent to the population of Sumner probably will be homeless in Pierce County by the end of this year. Maybe equivalent to the combined populations of Sumner and Orting.

We need to consider how each of us will help our neighbors, because there are not a lot of official options. Our homeless shelters are already full. Government will do what it can, as will the social services organizations. The religious communities will do what they can. But it will not be enough. Displaced people will “double up,” “couch surf” or share housing. People will live in their cars. But it will not be enough.

Despite our best efforts, many people will not find shelter. Even though we do not tend to think of it this way, they will become refugees. They will need both our help and understanding just to survive.

When things get so bad that just trying to survive is the only real choice available to displaced people, local governments will need to accept encampments and tent cities, also insisting that they maintain sanitation, safety and prohibitions on drug abuse.

Al Ratcliffe is a community psychologist who serves as the volunteer chairman of Pierce County’s HUD-mandated housing Continuum of Care Committee. The opinions expressed here are solely his own.

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/11/01/v-printerfriendly/1888087/we-can-expect-a-dramatic-rise.html#ixzz1ckmqTOm9

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU-oqntaPbY&feature=youtu.be

Housing vouchers could help homeless teens grow, thrive

KATHLEEN MERRYMAN; STAFF WRITER
If you look at one set of federal numbers, there are five homeless teens in Tacoma. If you look at another, there are 250.

But if you listen to the people trying to help them, there are hundreds more throughout Pierce County, and most have little hope of getting into decent, stable homes, or growing into decent, stable adults.

Federal counts, which determine where federal money goes, don’t fit the problem. They don’t even fit each other.

Susan Paredes is Tacoma schools’ liaison with the federal program for homeless kids in school. She can name 250 high school students who don’t have homes. They all go to Tacoma schools, and they all meet federal standards for defining a homeless student. Many are couch surfing – sleeping at the homes of friends or relatives until their welcome wears out.

By contrast, federal Department of Housing and Urban Development rules say that if they were crashing with friends on Jan. 27, the night of the annual homeless count, they had a roof and aren’t homeless. Last year, that tally found five kids.

This kind of undercounting sinks efforts to get money to help these young people.

Now experts in social work and housing are teaming up to fix the long-term hole in services for vulnerable youth. They’re brainstorming ways to get these kids into safe homes with counseling, health care, education and training in life skills.

These aren’t easy kids. Some have run away from home. More have been kicked out, fled for their own safety or were abandoned.

“One mother left one of her daughters, left the state, then came back and left the other daughter,” said Cheryl Jones, executive director of Tacoma’s Allen Renaissance.

“I’ve heard many stories of 12-year-olds who are picked up, then leave when they hear they have to be reported to their parents,” said Diane Powers, planner for Pierce County’s mental health and homeless programs. “They say, ‘I’m going back to the camp.’ Many of them are involved in prostitution.”

And many of them, Jones said, will end up at the state’s sexual offender unit for youths with a felony on their juvenile record.

“What our kids are going through is horrific,” she said.

She uses “our kids” in the broad sense, to cover young people who can’t live with their own families and depend on the rest of us to help them toward a decent future.

Even the most basic emergency shelters are expensive, said Troy Christensen of Pierce County Human Services.

“It requires highly trained staff and notification of families,” he said.

But the investment helps cut the risk that young people will harm themselves, have sex or do something else that might leave the provider liable. Expensive programs are powerful deterrents to agencies that are barely getting by and don’t have enough funds targeted at homeless teens.

Work around that, suggested Michael Mirra, executive director of Tacoma Housing Authority. Take money from general funds and use it to get teens settled and aimed at independence.

Tacoma Housing Authority owns houses, and it distributes vouchers that can be used to pay for housing.

“We have homes with up to six bedrooms. We could make a larger single-family home available as a congregate facility that we would not run,” he said.

The young residents could use housing vouchers to pay their rent, and an agency with a good track record could provide the monitoring, counseling and life-skills training in a group-home setting.

Paredes said some homeless students stay in school, but they are minors, entirely on their own and unable to find housing.

The housing authority can help, Mirra said. “If we could support them with housing vouchers, we would count that as very good use of housing dollars.”

This kind of new thinking about solving old problems with existing funds is welcome. It’s opening the possibility of going beyond shelter to help damaged young people grow into productive community members.

These are kids who would love the chance to someday become taxpayers.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677 kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/street

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/03/16/v-lite/1586318/housing-vouchers-could-help-homeless.html#ixzz1GsewxvLb

Homelessness: Schools give students consistency amid uncertainty

The hardest part was giving away his cat.

“We had to leave our house,” Christopher recalls, and there was no place for Whiskers.

The 8-year-old packed up his clothes and toys, gave his cat to a nearby farm, and left the quiet Puyallup neighborhood where he played in the yard and walked to and from school.

“It was devastating for him,” recalls Wildwood Elementary counselor, Dorothy Wilgus. “He came to school crying and had a hard time concentrating.”

Two years and several moves later, including time spent in a hotel and in a travel trailer, Christopher lives with his sister, mother, and mother’s boyfriend in an apartment shelter program in Tacoma.

He spends an hour-and-a-half on the bus to and from school so that he can continue to be surrounded by familiar teachers and friends at Wildwood Elementary in Puyallup.

“He is a very resilient student, always with a positive attitude,” Wilgus said. “When he found out he could stay at Wildwood, he worked really hard in class and volunteered to help with school activities.”

Christopher is one of more than 200 homeless students this year in the Puyallup School District. Each student has his or her own story of struggle and, in many cases, success.

The number of homeless students continues to grow districtwide and is on pace to exceed last year’s total of 304 students by June, said Barb Pope, director of student services.

Puyallup School District’s rise in homelessness mirrors a trend across the state and the country as parents lose jobs in the difficult economy and get evicted from their homes.

The increase is also due, in part, to more diligent efforts by educators to identify homeless students and provide them services to be successful in school, Pope said.

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction reported in December that 21,826 homeless students enrolled in Washington schools in the 2009-10 school year. That number is up five percent from the previous year and up 56.5 percent from 2005-06.

Not since the Great Depression have so many people in this country been without homes, reports the National Center on Family Homelessness. Homeless families make up more than a third of the homeless population nationally.

Where are homeless students?

“Homeless” is defined by federal law as someone who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.

Students live in cars, under bridges, in the woods, on the riverbank, in emergency shelters, in garages, and in motels or hotels.

They await permanent foster care placement, and they are doubled-up living with relatives or friends — all sharing one house because they can’t afford to live on their own.

They have been abandoned by their families and have been labeled “couch surfers” because they move regularly from house to house, often sleeping on friends’ sofas.

“The story from many parents is that the kids aren’t following house rules, so they kick them out or they leave on their own,” Pope said. “The hidden truth in many of these cases is the kids are being abused.”

She tells of one Rogers High School teen who recently lived in his friend’s bedroom closet.

“The boy who lived in the home would hide his friend in the closet and sneak him dinner so the parents wouldn’t find out,” Pope said. “This is what our kids are facing. Instead of concentrating on learning, students worry about their next meal or where they are going to sleep.”

Emerald Ridge High School counselor Richard Mitchell added, “The most heartbreaking thing for me was when a family moved to California and told their teenage son, ‘You’re not coming.’ This was a decent kid, but they were just ready to move on with their lives. As a kid, what do you do? How do you cope with that kind of abandonment? That’s heartbreaking.”

Services for homeless children and youth

When a child’s life is in upheaval, the federal McKinney-Vento Homelessness Act has provisions designed to ensure a consistent and stable education.

The law mandates that children of homeless individuals, as well as unaccompanied youth, have equal access to the same free public education, including a public preschool education, as provided to other children and youth.

Homeless students are eligible to receive transportation back to their “school of origin” — the school they attended when they became homeless — or enroll in the school closest to where they relocate.

Research shows that children can lose anywhere between four and six months of academic progress with a transfer to a new school, Pope said.

For Cynthia, who was evicted from her apartment on South Hill in September, having her three school-age children be able to remain at their same schools has been “a godsend.”

She was evicted from the apartment, she said, because the two youngest preschool-age children made too much noise. The family had no choice but to put their furnishings in storage, pack their suitcases with clothes and toiletries, and live in motels and with friends. Several months ago, the family settled in downtown Puyallup and is sharing an apartment with a former neighbor.

“The kids have bounced around quite a bit,” she said. “It was important to me that they stay at their same school. I wanted to make sure they had something stable in their life.”

Cynthia said she was embarrassed at first to contact Wilgus, the school counselor at Wildwood Elementary, to explain her plight.

“She made me feel so comfortable,” Cynthia said. “I am so glad I opened up to her, because I don’t know where we would be without the school’s help.”

Students who qualify for McKinney-Vento homeless services also receive free breakfast and lunch, school supplies, school clothing, and tutoring.

They may also participate in after-school sports and activities and attend school functions, such as dances, with reduced or waived fees.

“We provide the supplies, gym clothes and other materials that they need for school,” said Bev Showacy, coordinator of the district’s elementary counseling program. “It takes a burden off of the parents who are already concerned about how they will get by financially. When you are deciding between paying for electricity or school supplies, which are you going to choose?”

The law also makes it easier for homeless families to enroll their children in school. Families are not, for example, required to provide documentation such as proof of residency, transcripts from previous schools, and immunization records.

Even if a student finds permanent housing during the school year, they still receive McKinney-Vento services through June, Pope said.

While some families relocate a few miles away from their original home and school, others move to neighboring cities, sometimes even into another county.

This year, the district transports students to Puyallup from as far away as Eatonville, Kent, Tacoma, Federal Way, Graham, and Covington.

Elementary students are generally transported by school bus, while junior high and high school students are given metro bus passes. Once their metro bus arrives in Puyallup, students can connect to an existing school bus route or, if close enough, walk to school.

While the law mandates that the district transport students, it does not come close to adequately funding the program, Pope said. Last year, the Puyallup School District spent more than $150,000 to transport homeless students to and from school.

“We work hard to cut costs wherever we can,” Pope said. “Ultimately, we are here to help these students.”

Signs of homelessness

Pope has developed a flier for school counselors listing common warning signs of homelessness. The information is adapted from fliers created by the Illinois and Pennsylvania Departments of Education. Homeless students may exhibit the following signs:

• Poor health and nutrition: Unmet medical and dental needs, chronic hunger (may hoard food), and fatigue (may fall asleep in class).
• Transportation and attendance problems: Erratic attendance or tardiness, inability to contact parents, avoidance of class field trips.
• Poor hygiene: Wear the same clothes for several days, lack of shower facilities or washing machines to stay clean.
• Not ready for class: Lack of basic school supplies, incomplete or missing homework.
• Social and behavioral cues: Poor self-esteem, difficulty trusting people, protective of parents, “old” beyond their years.

“Being homeless can affect how children learn, can lead to depression, and can be misdiagnosed as learning disabilities,” Pope said.

When a family flees from a stable home environment to an emergency shelter, she said children may be faced for the first time with overcrowded, difficult, or uncomfortable circumstances.

After being evicted from her apartment last fall for not having enough money to pay rent, Peggy, the parent of two Sunrise Elementary students, lived with her children for a month in a one-room unit at a local hotel until she could find transitional housing.

“The room was extremely tiny,” she said. “We had three people in one bed. It was rough for them, because it was a very small place and they didn’t have the things they were used to because it was all in storage.”

With help from her school counselor and repeated calls to area shelters, Peggy was able to move out of the hotel last fall into a rent-free two-bedroom home. The home is part of the three-month emergency housing program through Helping Hand House.

During that time, she took financial and life-skills classes to help her prepare to get a job and return to school. When last interviewed, Peggy was applying for the program’s transitional housing program and hoped to move into a house or apartment where she could remain for the next two years.

“I’m looking forward to being settled so the kids can focus on school,” she said.

Schools and community respond

From warm clothing drives to collections of canned foods and toys, students and educators throughout the school district have responded with an outpouring of support.

Last fall, Kalles Junior High collected 1,043 blankets, coats, scarves, socks, and other warm clothing for St. Francis House in downtown Puyallup. The organization helps individuals and families in need by providing food, clothing, furniture, and adult education classes.

Numerous schools have also held canned food drives, prepared Thanksgiving baskets, and coordinated giving trees over the winter holiday season to collect toys and clothing for those less fortunate.

“A lot of times clothing is an issue,” said Woodland Elementary School counselor Claudia Knauss. “It’s pouring down rain, or there is ice and snow on the ground, and a student has no socks. Or, they outgrow their hand-me-downs and their toes are coming through the end of their shoes.”

It’s not uncommon, she said, for teachers or other school employees to appear at her counseling office door with a new pair of shoes or a winter coat in hand with a request they be given to a child in need.

“It’s a tough time to be in a tough situation,” she said. “Any of us could be in that situation.”

Other annual giving programs districtwide include the United Way Campaign; Puyallup
Giftmakers gift-giving event; and Communities In Schools of Puyallup (CISP) back-to-school supply drive and March Gladness student-led service projects.

Faith-based organizations around the community have also helped with financial donations, gift cards, and bags of clothing or food.

This is the fifth straight year, for example, that Calvary Community Church has donated gift cards to CISP to give to school counselors for district families in need. The church donated 500 $25 grocery gift cards this year, as well as an invitation for each recipient to receive a holiday gift box valued at $39.

Ferrucci Junior High also raised nearly $8,000 during a fun run/walk last June for teens who are homeless or from low-income families.

In addition to the many drives and fundraisers, counselors have access to funding for students in need through the Washington Education Association, Title I federal funds, Invest Ed (formerly called the Saul Haas fund), and the school district’s Children’s Emergency Fund.

Kellie, a junior at Emerald Ridge High, said she is content with finding most of her clothes at the Salvation Army or wearing hand-me-downs from relatives.

What’s tough, she said, is living in a small bedroom in an apartment with two of her siblings and sharing one family computer among all five children, three of whom are in school.

The 16-year-old said she looks forward to graduating next year and continuing her education at Pierce College. Her goal, she said, is to pursue a career in health services “or something that will make people’s lives better.”

After she finishes her chores, does her homework, and takes a short shower (so that all five children have enough hot water each night), Kellie said she climbs in bed and thinks about what she is thankful for in her life. “I may not have everything, but I have my family,” she said. “My family is my home.”

All names of students and parents in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.

Read a related article on efforts to increase housing for homeless families.

If you are homeless, or know of someone who may be homeless, contact the school counselor. For information about emergency shelters in Pierce County, call a new centralized intake number at 211 or (253) 682-3401.

Original article at: http://www.puyallup.k12.wa.us/ourdistrict/news/newsdetail.cfm?NID=1011

Efforts under way to increase emergency shelters for homeless families

Peggy, a parent of two Sunrise Elementary students, lived in a motel with her children for more than a month last fall after being evicted from her apartment on South Hill.

The single mother said she tried diligently to find an opening in one of the area’s emergency shelters, but was repeatedly turned away because of a lack of space.

“I called agency after agency,” she said. “It was shocking to me the number of people who need help. I would call the emergency shelter and be told there was a six-month waiting list. That was a real eye-opener.”

Efforts are under way to increase the amount of emergency shelters in Eastern Pierce County to meet the needs of the growing homeless population, especially families with children.

While many of these efforts are in the talking stage, advocates for the homeless say they represent a starting point toward finding solutions to the growing shortage of emergency shelters.

New centralized phone number

As of January 31, 2011, there is one centralized phone number — (253) 682-3401 (or 211) — for homeless persons to call about shelter availability in Pierce County, complete an assessment, and get help finding services targeted for their needs.

Associated Ministries, in partnership with Pierce County Community Connections, launched the new phone number to help people like Peggy avoid having to make numerous calls for help.

Barb Pope, the school district’s director of student services, said she is excited about the new centralized intake phone number, which took effect on January 31.

“It is so disheartening for a homeless person to pick up the phone and be told there isn’t an opening for them,” she said. “These people are already in difficult situations, and the last thing they need is rejection after rejection.”

Puyallup Homeless Coalition

The Puyallup Homeless Coalition, which is in its tenth year of advocating for the homeless, is made up of community groups, organizations, and individuals working to find more short- and long-term living spaces for the homeless.

During a meeting last month, the Coalition discussed plans to survey area churches to gauge the interest in helping the homeless, including the willingness to set up temporary encampments or — for those living in their cars — temporary safe parking areas.

The Puyallup City Council, following the state Legislature’s passage of House Bill 1956, approved an ordinance last September allowing religious groups to host tent cities and other types of temporary encampments that meet certain conditions.

The Coalition is also trying to find a more long-term solution to sheltering the homeless. The group has held roundtable discussions with community leaders this past year and hopes to meet with city officials this spring to discuss developing a citywide strategic plan to help the homeless.

Freezing Nights

Freezing Nights, which formed in 2004 in Puyallup, is exploring how it can expand its emergency housing program for adults to include families with children.

The volunteer program, which operates nightly from November through March, uses churches in Puyallup and the surrounding area to provide a clean, safe, warm place for homeless men and women to spend the night. The program is set up as a traveling shelter, with cots and bedding moved daily to each church that participates in the program.

The hope, organizers say, is to develop a Freezing Nights for Families program with the goal of finding churches that can keep a family sheltered for up to a month at a time.

The need is great

Local agencies that provide direct services to homeless people report that requests for help have increased anywhere from 30 to 50 percent or more in the last two years, said Ted Brackman, co-founder of the Puyallup Homeless Coalition.

Between January and October 2010, Helping Hand House reported turning away more than 3,000 people in Pierce County who were seeking shelter or rent and utility financial assistance. The organization provides emergency housing and homeless prevention services.

Open Hearth, an all-volunteer organization that provides immediate short-term housing by giving motel vouchers to homeless families in eastern Pierce County, also struggles with having more requests for shelter than there are beds and money available.

The organization, founded by the Puyallup Homeless Coalition and financially managed through Associated Ministries, provides emergency housing for homeless families for as long as one week in a Puyallup or Sumner motel. During that time, a family can use the phone and shower, have a place to sleep, and have up to seven days to try and arrange a more permanent housing situation.

Bev Cascio, chair of the Open Hearth Board of Directors and a former Puyallup School District counselor, said volunteers meet with families once they are placed in a motel to provide them with resources and, often times, emergency food.

“We remind them, ‘you have each other. It’s not hopeless. This is not the rest of your life. It’s just a moment in your life.’”

Original article at: http://www.puyallup.k12.wa.us/ourdistrict/news/newsdetail.cfm?NID=1007

Take a look at the

Enjoy!

Click here to download the report (PDF)

Puyallup-area homeless advocates get $70,000

Paul Allen Foundation grant should help about 125 families this year
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
Published: February 3rd, 2010 06:00 AM

A four-month-long waiting game concluded happily for Puyallup’s Helping Hand House on Jan. 26 when it received a $70,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Helping Hand House, which has been assisting homeless families throughout East Pierce County for the past 25 years, was one of 66 non-profit groups in the Pacific Northwest to receive an Allen Foundation grant. The foundation, started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister, Jo Lynn Allen, is donating $4.6 million this year, much of it to groups that assist low-income individuals and families.

Helping Hand House Executive Director Nola Renz said last week that the grant should help about 125 area families during the next year.
“The money will be used in our homeless prevention programs to assist more families who are at risk of eviction or utility shut off,” Renz said.

Receiving a grant from the Allen Foundation is a tough task, Renz explained, because only certain organizations are invited to apply. Helping Hand House applied for its grant last fall after meeting and talking with foundation officials.

Philanthropic efforts have been a part of the Allen Foundation’s mission for 20 years, said Bill Vesneski, the group’s evaluation, planning and research director. Helping Hand House stood out as a worthwhile cause because it’s widely known for excellent service, he said.

“They’ve had a very strong commitment as to measuring and monitoring their impact,” Vesneski said.

The money is especially welcome to Helping Hand House at a time when rising unemployment rates are putting more families at risk of living on the streets. The non-profit agency, which has helped more than 4,600 families in Puyallup, Sumner, South Hill and surrounding areas in the past 25 years, isn’t coming close to meeting demands. Two months ago, the group told Puyallup City Council members it had turned away more than 1,600 families during a six-month span of 2009.

“It has been an enormous challenge to continue to serve more families,” Renz said. “There’s limited resources so we’re always turning families away. That’s the discouraging part.”

The Allen Foundation focuses on a number of opportunities in its gifts, including community arts and music programs, youth education classes and job skill development courses.

The foundation has shifted its priorities to focus on victims of the national recession, Visneski said, and more groups like Helping Hand House are on the slate for grants in 2011.

“The goal is to kind of get the money into emergency relief, to get the money where it’s needed,” Visneski said. “We wanted to make sure we were doing work in Pierce County.”

Helping Hand House prides itself on being a lasting solution to homelessness because families who seek transitional housing opportunities learn to be financially sound and gain employment skills. The organization estimated at least three of four families that complete a transitional housing program don’t become homeless again.

“The exciting thing is that when families leave us they have a permanent solution,” Renz said. “They go into a situation where they have a home and a living-wage job.”

Dear Nola,

In 1985, four women were inspired to create something new and special in Seattle: an organization devoted to helping children in need, and to growing social service philanthropy among their peers.  From this inspired beginning, Northwest Children’s Fund has evolved into one of the Northwest’s premier grant-making organizations, igniting the philanthropic spirit and connecting nearly ten million donor dollars to agencies like yours, who share our mission of ending child abuse and neglect.

I am writing on behalf of the NWCF Board of Directors to invite Helping Hand House to accept a designation as a “Silver Anniversary Partner” as Northwest Children’s Fund celebrates its first quarter century of connecting our community with children in need. You are one of 25 agencies that our Board of Directors has selected from our 300 past grant recipients for this designation.

While the designation does not carry any monetary value, we look forward to commemorating our relationship to date and to highlight the work of both of our organizations.

We hope that you will elect to accept our invitation, so that we may highlight your organization as one of NWCF’s longstanding partners in the fight against child abuse and neglect – and so that you may share with us this year in our celebrations and outreach efforts.

Sincerely,

Victoria Peattie Helm

Executive Director

Needless to say, we accepted the honor! Thank you to Northwest Children’s Fund for their long partnership with our families and mission at Helping Hand House. We’re proud to be serving, and honored to be recognized in such a way.

As an organization, we’re so grateful to be here to walk with hundreds of families every year, experiencing the pain of loss and the triumph of overcoming again. The gift of seeing kids eyes light up as load after load of Christmas presents pour through the doorway (provided by incredible volunteers in the community!). We couldn’t be happier to be serving those we serve, loving families and sharing the ups and downs of normalcy after a the crisis mentality fades away… Ending family homelessness. Let this be the year for it! But in the meantime, we’re sharing life with some wonderful people, and that’s something we’re grateful for. Thank you!

Generous hearts in that room contributed over $122,000 in gifts and pledges for the day to day operations of our work with homeless families – and we couldn’t be more grateful. We know the lives that this will change – good on you, folks. A true class act, you are. We are honored to be a part of a community like this!

Thank you from the families and staff of Helping Hand House!

Tips for parents
DEBBIE CAFAZZO; The News Tribune

After more than two decades in the kindergarten classroom, teacher Kelly King of Point Defiance Elementary School in Tacoma knows what it takes to get kids off to a good start in school. Here’s her advice for parents:

• Get kids excited about learning. Talk to them about school and how much fun it’s going to be. Even if you had a hard time in school, be enthusiastic with your child.

• Develop your child’s language skills. Talk about what you see when you’re driving. Speak in complete sentences.

• Teach your child to learn to listen by reading stories, attending library story time or making up stories with your child.

• Help your child develop independence. A kindergarten student can open his own juice box, hang up her coat or put away toys. She might not be able to tie her own shoes yet. Don’t worry – buy shoes with Velcro ties.

• Foster the child’s ability to play with others. Get involved with a play group.

• Help encourage fine motor skills development by stringing Cheerios on a pipe cleaner, playing with clothespins or with Lego toys. Those skills will help your child hold a pencil when he goes to kindergarten.

• While a kindergarten child might not know the alphabet, it’s important to foster letter recognition and number sense. When you drive past a store, point to the first letter and say its name out loud. Help count things.

• On the first day of school, keep good-byes cheerful and quick. Don’t come back and peek in the window.

“I’ve never had a child cry for more than five minutes after Mommy and Daddy drove off,” says King.

Please click here to download the 2008 Annual Report as a pdf…

Research finds that neighborhood is key to income mobility
Location keeps some lower on ladder

WASHINGTON – Researchers have found that being raised in poor neighborhoods plays a major role in explaining why African American children from middle-income families are far more likely than white children to slip down the income ladder as adults.

The Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project caused a stir two years ago by reporting that nearly half of African American children born to middle-class parents in the 1950s and ’60s had fallen to a lower economic status as adults, a rate of downward mobility far higher than that for whites.

This week, Pew will release findings of a study that helps explain that economic fragility, pointing to the fact that middle-class blacks are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there.

Even as African Americans have made gains in wealth and income, the report found, black children and white children are often raised in starkly different environments. Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 were raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared to just 6 percent of white children.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents’ education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

See article here.

That’s right – kids actually lose a significant amount of a grade level over the summer – forcing the next year’s teacher to major in review before they can teach the new material. Helping Hand House has worked to combat this for several years in the children of our families, by providing a fantastic reading program of our own (and encouraging participation in the library’s version as a bonus! :) ). Children have the opportunity to win prizes and continue to grow mentally, while discovering and cultivating the joy of reading!

In honor of a summer full of reading, New York Times Op-Ed writer Nicholas Kristof assembled the following list of great books:

July 5, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

The Best Kids’ Books Ever

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

So how will your kids spend this summer? Building sand castles at the beach? Swimming at summer camp? Shedding I.Q. points?

In educating myself this spring about education, I was aghast to learn that American children drop in I.Q. each summer vacation — because they aren’t in school or exercising their brains.

This is less true of middle-class students whose parents drag them off to summer classes or make them read books. But poor kids fall two months behind in reading level each summer break, and that accounts for much of the difference in learning trajectory between rich and poor students.

A mountain of research points to a central lesson: Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television this summer, and get them reading. Let me help by offering my list of the Best Children’s Books — Ever!

So here they are, in ascending order of difficulty, and I can vouch that these are also great to read aloud.

1. “Charlotte’s Web.” The story of the spider who saves her friend, the pig, is the kindest representation of an arthropod in literary history.

2. The Hardy Boys series. Yes, I hear the snickers. But I devoured them myself and have known so many kids for whom these were the books that got them excited about reading. The first in the series is weak, but “House on the Cliff” is a good opener. (As for Nancy Drew, I yawned over her, but she seems to turn girls into Supreme Court justices. Among her fans as kids were Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.)

3. “Wind in the Willows.” My mother read this 101-year-old English classic to me, and I’m still in love with the characters. Most memorable of all is Toad — rich, vain, childish and prone to wrecking cars.

4. The Freddy the Pig series. Published between 1927 and 1958, these 26 books are funny, beautifully written gems. They concern a talking pig, Freddy, who is lazy, messy and sometimes fearful, yet a loyal friend, a first-rate detective and an impressive poet. These were my very favorite books when I was in elementary school. A good one to start with is “Freddy the Detective” or “Freddy Plays Football.” (Avoid the first and weakest, “Freddy Goes to Florida.”)

5. The Alex Rider series. These are modern British spy thrillers in which things keep exploding in a very satisfying way. Alex amounts to a teenage James Bond for the 21st century.

6. The Chronicles of Narnia series. Look, the chance to read these books aloud is by itself a great reason to have kids.

7. “Gentle Ben.” The coming-of-age story of a sickly, introspective Alaskan boy who makes friends with an Alaskan brown bear, to the horror of his tough, domineering father.

8. “Anne of Green Gables.” At a time when young ladies were supposed to be demure and decorative, Anne emerged to become one of the strongest and most memorable girls in literature.

9. “The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be.” This is a hilarious, poignant and exceptionally well-written memoir of childhood on the Canadian prairies. (Note, if you prefer sweet to funny, try “Rascal” instead.)

10. “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” This classic spawned the Fauntleroy suit and named a duck (Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy). An American boy from a struggling family turns out to be heir to an irritable and fabulously wealthy old English lord, whom the boy proceeds to tame and civilize.

11. “On to Oregon.” This outdoor saga, written almost 90 years ago, is loosely based on the true story of the Sager family journeying by covered wagon in 1848, in the early days of the Oregon Trail. The parents die on route, and the seven children — the youngest just an infant — continue on their own. They are led by 13-year-old John: spoiled, surly, often mean, yet determined and even heroic in keeping his siblings alive.

12. “The Prince and the Pauper.” Most kids encounter Mark Twain through “Tom Sawyer,” but this work is at least as funny and offers unforgettable images of English history.

13. “Lad, a Dog” is simply the best book ever about a pet, a collie. This is to “Lassie” what Shakespeare is to CliffsNotes. The book was published 90 years ago, and readers are still visiting Lad’s real grave in New Jersey — plus, this is a book so full of SAT words it could put Stanley Kaplan out of business.

You can post your own suggestions for best children’s books on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. My own kids have the temerity to think they know better than I which books they’ve enjoyed, so I’ve deigned to post their recommendations there. But listening to one’s children is dangerous: I advocate reading to them instead.

Happy Mother’s Day.

One of every 50 American children experiences homelessness, according to a new report that says most states have inadequate plans to address the worsening problem. The report being released today (3/10/09) by the National  Center on Family Homelessness gives Conneticut the best ranking. Texas is at the bottom. Washington is in the middle at 25th. The report’s overall state rankings reflect performance in four areas: child homelessness per capita, child well-being, risk for child homelessness, and state policy and planning. The report analyzes data from 2005-6. It estimates that 1.5 million children experienced homelessness at least once that year.

And if that was ’05-’06, who knows what that number is now…? These are heartbreaking numbers – but believable – and ones we are working hard to reverse. Take a look around the next time you pick your child up at school…how many of those children waiting for a parent don’t have a safe home to sleep in tonight? A car is a hard place for a first grader to grow up…