Poverty in Richmond is real. That's the short interpretation of Richmond Children First's report titled It's Not Fair: The Face of Child Poverty in Richmond A Call to Action, which is being released today (Nov. 20).
The emphasis on making it real stems from the public's perception that the city is too affluent to have a problem with families and children living below the line.
But according to Helen Davidson, manager of Richmond Children First, statistics show one in four local children find themselves in need.
That's why, at the start of 2013, Richmond Children First launched "The Face of Child Poverty in Richmond" to help the community understand what it means for children to live in poverty.
"It was also a call to action to discuss and plan how we can better support children and families and how, at a community level, we can work towards alleviating poverty," Davidson said.
What the report discovered was that more awareness about poverty locally needs to be created to not only understand the state of poverty locally, but dispel some of the notions behind its cause.
It also made a number of recommendations on how Richmond organizations can help alleviate the situation.
Among them was the developing family-friendly resources to increase awareness of existing programs and services.
It's a situation familiar to Richmond's chief medical health officer, Dr. James Lu, who told the News that is one area the city's health workers put at the forefront when working with families, especially those suspected of being in need.
"One of the things that our public health nurses do when they interact with families is to make them understand what resources are available, and helping them to make the right choices for their children given their limited resources," Lu said, adding that covers subjects from nutrition to mental health.
"Taking food aside and looking into other things, a child who lives in a home that is struggling with having enough to eat or pay for shelter or clothing, there will likely be a lot of tension in that family," Lu said. "And that can likely translate into a lot of stress."
In turn, that can manifest itself into physical and mental conditions such as depression and low self esteem.
"The ramifications of living in a family that has limited resources could be quite wide-ranging," Lu said, adding one place it can show up is in dental care.
While there are no conclusive stats connecting poor dental care to local poverty, Lu said about a quarter of kindergarten aged children in Richmond show one or more incidents of tooth decay, a figure that conveniently matches the number associated with the rate of child poverty in the city.
Incidences of childhood obesity can also be a measuring stick of poverty as more nutritional foods tend to be higher priced while calorie-laden choices are less expensive.
"In studies of larger populations, there is proportionately a larger number of children who live in poverty and are overweight," Lu said. "It's a lot cheaper to put high calorie food on the table to satisfy hunger and not consider the healthier, more expensive options."
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