Getting people fed (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
In this season of gratitude and reflection, we are grateful for the unprecedented commitments that New York City and New York State are making to the people who perform the essential services of New York’s safety net.
Home care workers’ hourly wages increased by $2 in October, and New York City human services nonprofits are receiving $68 million earmarked for workforce investment. Our New York State contracts included a 5.4% wage increase, and the State’s Health Care Worker Bonus provided a one-time $3,000 payment for certain frontline health care workers in recognition of their service during the height of the pandemic.
In the face of such bounty, one would expect nonprofit leaders to be full of joy. Yet, we are not. We are exhausted from many years of obstacles and non-response, confronting ever-steeper challenges to our ability to provide the life-saving and life-enriching care and services that New York promises to its residents.
As we prepare to spend the holidays with family and friends, many human services workers will spend them just as they do every other day: working to make New York a better place. After all, homeless shelters and food pantries do not close for the holidays. These workers are not being compensated enough for their tireless work. Our staff are paid far less than their counterparts in health care and other sectors with which we must compete for talent. In some instances, New York City employees’ compensation is better than what we can offer for directly comparable positions.
Along with non-competitive salaries, human services staff deal with daily frustrations that detract from our ability to focus on providing quality services. These issues include operating in hazardous NYCHA program sites that are in serious disrepair, responding to city-funded auditors who dispute the validity of city-approved expenditures, and complying with increased documentation requirements under certain city contracts that will further extend already delayed city payments.
We are gratified that New York State responded to our advocacy and authorized a much-needed increase for Medicaid-funded home care personnel, and at the same time we are frustrated that the state is not fully reimbursing home care employers for this mandated expenditure. Home care agencies operate on razor-thin margins. Without rate increases commensurate with this wage increase and the statutory requirements that accompany it, we are stressed to identify funds to fulfill this requirement.
So while we are grateful for recent city and state investments, we are not breathing easy. We face the continued stress of recruiting a caring and skilled workforce, retaining committed staff who over time have developed trusted relationships with vulnerable clients — relationships that enable staff to work effectively alongside community residents to resolve even very complex situations. We can’t talk about streamlining while simultaneously layering on new requirements and extending payment delays. We can’t clap for essential workers without closing the pay gap in a meaningful way. We can’t build a social care system on personal sacrifice and burnout.
In order to keep leading our organizations to be there for communities in need while battling the obstacles that sap our energy and tax our spirit, we need to have hope that these conditions are not permanent. We are hopeful that before we reach a crisis that rips unmendable tears in the safety net, we can come together to fashion real solutions. We have leaders in government who understand our struggles and value our work. We have nonprofit leaders who are creative and open to new ideas. We must all be prepared to make changes and seek compromises. Our communities demand and deserve nothing less from us. In this season of giving, we must give back to those who give to New York every day.
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Diane Louard-Michel is the Executive Director of Lantern Community Services. Myung Lee is the President and CEO of Volunteers of America-Greater New York, Inc. Kathryn Haslanger is the CEO of JASA. On Twiter @lanterncs & @VOAgny & @JASAseniors.
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A helping hand (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)
While inflation is unsettling for many of us, for fellow New Yorkers who were already struggling financially, it can be catastrophic.
Imagine entering a store with only $50 to buy your family’s groceries, and watching the register ring up $75 on your usual shopping list.
This month — which The Wall Street Journal dubbed the “humbug holiday season” — is ominously clouded with inflationary prices and the threat of a recession. While our first instincts may lead us to reduced spending and restrained year-end giving, the need to help our neighbors, especially those who lack food and shelter, could not be more urgent.
If you want to make the most of year-end giving, here are five suggestions to help ease the burden for New Yorkers facing hardship this holiday giving season.
1. Contribute to programs housing and feeding New Yorkers. People are experiencing homelessness in New York City at rates not seen since the Great Depression. More than 63,000 people—including 20,000 children—slept in the municipal shelter system this November. Consider making a gift to one of the nonprofits that advocate for or serve New Yorkers who are without permanent housing or unable to buy enough food.
2. Make generosity a family tradition. Younger children can help choose and deliver toys for families living in shelters. Older children can be part of an annual discussion of which nonprofits or causes to support. The whole family can watch a documentary together or research an issue you care about. Consider setting aside a regular time each year to foster a tradition of helping others.
3. Prioritize racial justice and equity. In November, New York City voters supported three ballot measures to address systemic racism. To build on this momentum, consider supporting nonprofits working to disrupt systems that have contributed to racial inequities. When selecting nonprofits to support, consider who benefits from the nonprofit’s work, the composition of its staff and board, and if the group is targeting systemic changes in order to have a long-term impact.
4. Open a donor-advised fund. Donor-advised funds offer an immediate tax deduction on a charitable contribution from which you can recommend grants over time. Starting a donor-advised fund is a great way to ensure that you can support the causes that are most important to you well into the future, even in an unpredictable economy. Donor-advised funds can be used to make a meaningful gift, commemorate a life event, or honor the memory of a loved one. You also can establish a donor-advised fund for someone else.
5. Join forces with other donors to stay informed and maximize your giving power. Join a giving circle and collaborate with like-minded friends and colleagues to pool resources to make a larger impact. Working together can lead you to learn collectively and more deeply about the most effective nonprofits working on key issues in New York.
If you need help with any of these pursuits, remember that your local community foundation — and there are many — has a team ready to help you be the most impactful donor you can be.
This holiday season, we hope New Yorkers uneasy about the economy will act counterintuitively: by tapping into their empathy for their neighbors and leaning into generosity.
After all, what is more holiday-appropriate than buoying our spirits with the joy of giving?
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John Oddy is vice president for donor relations at The New York Community Trust, the community foundation for New York City, Long Island, and Westchester. On Twitter @NYCommTrust.
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Mayor Adams at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
One profound outcome of COVID-19 has been the consensus among government and school system leaders of the urgency of getting more social workers in our schools – and in particular stemming the shortage of mental health resources for children in communities of color. This week’s New York State Assembly Education Committee hearing reinforced the need to redress the impact of a life-changing event on the educational and social development of our young people.
Research from the nonprofit organization NWEA revealed just how deep and disparate the pandemic era learning losses have been for children who were already struggling, and now are finding it harder to catch up. This amplified the National Assessment of Educational Progress report on the precipitous decline in math scores, especially for lower-income Black and Hispanic students who tended to have more remote learning, and less technology and human support, than their higher-income peers.
This fall, New York City’s Department of Education made a bold first step towards building a healthier ecosystem as young people return to a post-COVID “normalcy.” With the goal of evaluating students’ social-emotional strengths and challenges, it trained teachers to use a widely-recognized tool, called the DESSA (Devereux Student Strengths Assessment), to ask the right questions about how their students are coping with relationships, self-awareness, and decision-making.
Yet many New York City students — especially those in economically insecure diverse neighborhoods who disproportionately lost a parent or primary caregiver to covid, or the 100,000 who experienced homelessness in the last year — are not going back to pre-covid lives. They have experienced a level of trauma that calls for the professional skills of social workers.
Our city’s teachers – already mainstays for our children – are stretched thin trying to achieve academic outcomes. They are not clinically trained to address these underlying conditions nor the complexities of toxic stress, which is the neurological response to continuous trauma that shuts down a child’s ability to learn and socialize.
This kind of stress can also emanate from other inequities linked to systemic racism, such as lack of access to medical care, nourishing food, or clean air and water. These are among the many factors that landed the Bronx at the bottom of the County Health Ranking in New York State – number 62 of all 62 counties, according to a new study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which advocates for a landscape of health equity strategies nationally.
Taken together, this is an urgent call for a next tranche of strategic investments in the mental health and wellness of our most vulnerable children.
Let’s look at what this means from a child’s perspective. If they are hungry, how are they going to be able to learn? If they experience trauma, how can we expect them to “self-manage” or get along nicely with peers? The risks are that they will act out, miss class time, feel alienated, and not want to be at school at all.
As a 115-year-old nonprofit that provides in-school social workers for 30,000 K-12 students in 67 schools across the city, we know that kids don’t get to choose their environment. But they can benefit from a trusted adult who can help them sort out their experiences.
A young woman, who we will call Keisha, was struggling with her identity as an adopted child. During her first year in high school, her grades were slipping, she was cutting classes and was hanging out with friends who reinforced her slide. When the covid shutdown hit that year, she felt alone and angry at home. Her parents, loving relatives, were alarmed but couldn’t get her back on track. With the professional sounding board of a social worker who worked with her first remotely and later in person, Keisha built the skills to make her own decisions and change her behavior. When she returned to in-person school, she shed her old crowd and formed a few healthy friendships. Today as a senior, she has stellar grades and has already been admitted to two colleges.
In short, this approach works. A recent survey of our middle and high school students found that 87% have relationships with adults who care about them, cultivating resilience; 80% get the space and support to honestly share what they are feeling and thinking, the basis of agency; and about 75% said that our work with them supports their academics, helping them stay in school.
Parents and teachers agree: 96% of parents said our counseling helps with their children’s social and emotional needs; and 91% of teachers said our work makes their classrooms easier to manage.
Right now, though, the city is facing a perfect storm in funding all these services. Reduced student enrollment numbers affecting budget allocations and competing priorities threaten to diminish resources for our at-risk children, precisely at the time they need them most.
It’s going to take not just government, but also private funds to tackle this confluence of issues. All New Yorkers will benefit when our next generation is healthier and better prepared to succeed in society. It’s a landmark moment. Our children, and our city, deserve the chance.
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Wesner Pierre is CEO of Partnership with Children. On Twitter @PWCNYC.
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