Women and Poverty News
"Three of the 19 affected Planned Parenthood programs (northern Colorado, Orange County, Calif., and Waco, Texas) will continue to be funded because they are the only services for low-income women in their communities, Brinker says. The other programs will be funded through the end of the year. 'There will be no gap in services to these low-income women,' she said."
"The Komen foundation, known for its pink ribbon symbol, has collected more than $1.9 billion for breast cancer research and programs. Planned Parenthood provides abortion, birth control, pap smears and other health services to women. It had received about $700,000 annually from Komen to provide mammograms for low-income women."
"The move will halt financing to 19 of Planned Parenthood's 83 affiliates, which received nearly $700,000 from the Komen foundation last year and have been receiving similar grants since at least 2005. Planned Parenthood contends that the Komen foundation is yielding to longstanding pressure from anti-abortion groups, which Komen denies."
"As a result, thousands of pregnant women are pushed out of jobs that they are perfectly capable of performing -- either put on unpaid leave or simply fired -- when they request an accommodation to help maintain a healthy pregnancy. Many are single mothers or a family's primary breadwinner. They are disproportionately low-income women, often in physically demanding jobs with little flexibility."
"Livingston County's child poverty and teen pregnancy rates were lowest among Michigan's 83 counties over the past decade, according to the Kids Count in Michigan Data Book released this week. The county had the lowest rate of child poverty statewide with about 8 percent of county children in poverty compared with 22 percent statewide."
"Terry Lawler, who works with children at the Hot Springs School District who are in transition between permanent residences, said the school district has 120 students in that category. The school doesn't like to use the word homeless because of the stigma it could place on a child, but many of the children are living with another family or in weekly-stay housing."
"Marin County educators fear that the budget cuts proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown could eviscerate the county's early childhood education programs, leaving dozens of low-income families with no one to care for their children during the day."
"A program that excludes pregnant women's coverage between 175 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) means these women will not get needed prenatal care, increasing the risk of children being born with preventable health problems. This sets bad public health precedent and will increase the overall cost of Denali KidCare."
"'People ask me what am I doing here,' she said, recalling responses when others learn that she's in transitional housing. 'They say, You don't look like the type of person that's supposed to be here. But I say to them ... you can't put a face on homelessness, and you can't look at me and say because you think I look like a better person that I'm not homeless, because I am.'"
"But perhaps the 41-year-old's biggest coup was finding a place to live after more than five years of homelessness, thanks to a social worker who connected with her through Twitter.
One of Walsh's motives for tweeting and posting on social media sites was to help others understand people who are homeless."
"To participate, recipients must be working and not receive any federal or state cash assistance, must reside in Collier County or Bonita Springs, have a child younger than 3 (they age out of the program on their third birthday) and must have an income that does not exceed 185 percent of the poverty level as per Women's, Infants and Children's (WIC) guidelines."
"The Republican field is united in its determination to overturn Roe v. Wade; to appoint Supreme Court justices supportive of that goal; and to end government payments to Planned Parenthood for family planning services, cancer screening and other vital health services provided to low-income women. "
"[I]f you ask why America is more class-bound in practice than the rest of the Western world, a large part of the reason is that our government falls down on the job of creating equal opportunity."
""There are many clinics that are not as controversial as Planned Parenthood, and our goal was to make sure low-income women had access to those sorts of screenings from other providers around the state that don't carry the controversy you get with Planned Parenthood," he told reporters."
"'I didn't even consider college; I just thought about working,' she said. 'It should have been education; I wish I'd thought like that.' Ms. Gonzalez worked low-wage restaurant jobs and dealt with her financial pressures by hanging out and drinking. Her mother began caring for Taliyah."
"Specifically, it’s an income-inequality and economic-mobility problem. The steadily dropping marriage rate both contributes to income inequality and further entrenches it."
" Federal officials have rejected Texas' attempt to exclude Planned Parenthood, which has some affiliates that provide abortions, from delivering care to low-income women under a special Medicaid program."
"It might not be much, but it doesn't look like poverty -- though it is. It's easy to look at France and see a put-together 27-year-old. She is quiet, kind and well-spoken; she works a steady job, volunteers in the community and values time with her family. But it took her a while to get there -- and France still is not where she wants to be."
"Just over one year ago, Katie Goble found herself 146 miles from home, homeless and with barely enough cash in her pocket to get home to Fremont. Now Goble, who spent 21 days at a local homeless shelter in June 2010 after a difficult life change, celebrated Thanksgiving last month after a full year in her new apartment."
"The goal of Project Compassion, a nonprofit organization that was started by Jackson-Bramwell in 2005, is to empower and enhance the lives of low-income and disadvantaged women and young girls in St. Clair County."
"For nearly six months, Johnson, the mother of a 5-year-old son, said she daily called the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center, dreading the response she heard too many times from the District’s central office for families seeking emergency shelter: “We don’t have any spaces.”"
"Policy experts and academics consider home-visiting programs -- where nurses counsel teenage mothers and other at-risk parents -- to be among the most effective social interventions. The programs slash the incidence of neglect, bolster infant health and in some cases save taxpayers money by cutting costs."
"A plan to ease wintertime shelter crowding by sending some homeless women to area churches won't work because the arrangements violated fire codes, fire officials said this week."
"When young people “age out” of the system at age 18 or 21 (depending on state law), they often face daunting circumstances. Compared to peers, they are less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to be unemployed, have a child out outside of marriage, depend on welfare or be convicted of a crime."
"Recent U.S. Census data shows single mothers remain one of the most poverty-stricken demographics across the country. Officials at Lake County social service agencies say the story is no different locally."
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