Keep it Simple (Children in Poverty)
There have been many attemps to fight poverty. It seems like as a nation we have not been able put a large dent in the problem. Currently, there are 16.5 million children living in poverty. The common theme and favorite pastime for as long as I can remember is blaming parents, schools and government for our poverty issues.
I understand that they all may be culpable, but as Americans, aren’t we the schools, government and parents? I was amazed to learn that there are only three other countries in the developed world that have more children living in poverty.
I try to keep my solutions simple because working with humans is very complicated. Government agencies and non-profits have worked very hard to make working with them very complicated. Below, I have put my simple thoughts to this complicated issue.
1) As every good grant writer knows, you have to have a great needs statement. The needs have been identified. It is time to stop having meetings, committees and special envoys talking about the data and use this wasted money to scale non-profits and schools and serve our families in need.
2) Use a continuous improvement benchmarking system to measure and improve results. We have to stop thinking 100% of all children are going to be successful quickly. We need to start moving children and families incrementally ahead. Innovation is filled with failed attempts so we have to be willing to fail and change until we solve the problem. Measure simple outcomes.
3) Bill Gates speaks about developing schools of innovation. I believe to keep poverty stricken young students engaged until graduation our schools have to be exciting and relevant. Most of us know that graduation from high school with decent grades and a plan is one of the fastest ways to break the cycle of poverty.
4) Target poor performing impoverished youth. Schools and Departments of Social Service need to use non-profit agencies and churches to target the families in crisis. Fight through the HIPPA regulations and red tape; our children are worth extreme effort.
Outreach to impoverished families. Remember, most of the parents of poor children had extremely bad experiences in school. The only time an impoverished mother is coming to school, is to fight. We need to bring compassion to her and the entire family. Meet the parents where they feel safe.
5) Engage the families with intervention and prevention programs. This again cannot be done soley by schools or Departments of Social Services. The entire community will have to intervene, supporting families until we can get them out of crisis and into long term prevention services. Prevention is the space that we want all families to live in. Below is Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs; we need to move more families from the basics towards self actualization.
6) At minimum, schools and neighborhoods have to be safe. Many of our young people are living in extremely violent neighborhoods and schools. It is impossible to learn, sleep and behave if all you can think about is fight or flight.
7) Community policing starts with the community first, supporting each other, then bridging the gap with police and working with district or commonwealth attorneys to find alternatives for low level offenders. Suppress low level offenders with smart sentencing that mandates intervention pushing offenders into long term prevention. This will take non-profits and government agencies working together to keep people out of prison.
8) We need to get the families healthy, not only physically but also psychologically and spiritually. We have to engender hope. Hope builds dreams and helps people to see opportunities that depression, drug addiction and poor nutrition mutes.
9) A guiding coalition of stakeholders has to be developed that has the power to hold agencies accountable to a continuous improvement process. The changes will be incremental at first and agencies will need to stay focused on the system, not immediate gratification. This would cause us all to change how we do business.
Again, this system is known to everyone. In America, we have been living in the knowing and doing gap far too long. We know that we must collaborate driving change in a collective model that incorporates prevention, intervention and suppression. We know that our citizens, government and non-profits must work together to cause this change. We can no longer live in our silos of ignorance, saying we are doing a great job, when 16.5 million children are living in poverty.
Lastly, the system cannot be static. It has to be flexible and ever changing to meet the collective needs and interest of even the most disinterested families.
I keep hoping and pushing to start a model like this in my community.
