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Agencies Serving the Poor Face Tough Times

Catholic Charities Named Top Social Service Provider

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Agencies Serving the Poor Face Tough Times

December 5, 2008 by Elizabeth Beachy  
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Newswise — As the nation enters a period of economic uncertainty, many of the 50 million Americans living near or below the poverty line are more vulnerable than at any time in recent years. Yet, the help they need to get a job, locate housing, access health care, or provide for their children is less and less likely to be found in their neighborhoods as agencies serving the poor face potential financial problems of their own, University of Chicago research shows.

Location is important because, contrary to popular impressions, most assistance to low-income families comes in the form of social services, which support work activity and promote greater well-being among the poor, and not cash payments.

Today, for every dollar on welfare cash assistance, the U.S. spends about $15 on social service programs delivered typically by nonprofit agencies, but often funded through government, said the study author Scott Allard, Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and author of the book, Out of Reach: Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare State.

These programs are quite vulnerable in today’s current economic environment, however, as social service programs are often among first places governments look to cut when tax revenues decrease. Private philanthropy dedicated to social services – another critical source of funding – also declines during economic downturns. Ironically, funding to service programs is cut right when the need for help is rising.

Programs also are not well-matched to need, Allard found. His study of social service agencies in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles shows that about 70 percent of the high poverty neighborhoods have low levels of social service provision, meaning that such neighborhoods have no social service agencies or are proximate to only a few extremely overburdened agencies.

“In Chicago, almost 80 percent of the high and extremely high poverty neighborhoods are in areas with low levels of service accessibility,” he said. In Los Angeles, 72 percent of extremely high poverty neighborhoods have low levels of service while in Washington, D.C., 63 percent of the neighborhoods have low levels of service. “That means that in a poor neighborhood there may be five or six people in line for every client slot, while in a better off neighborhood there only may be one or two people per slot,” Allard said.

“To a greater extent than most scholars, community leaders, or policy-makers realize, a fair share of the American welfare state has been transformed into a privatized, contracted-out, service oriented means of antipoverty assistance,” Allard said.

Total federal expenditures for welfare cash assistance declined by 50 percent from 1997 to 2004 ($9.8 billion to $5 billion, in 2006 dollars). The share of federal welfare spending for non-cash assistance, often services supporting work, went up during that period, increasing from 23 percent in 1997 to 58 percent in 2004 and reaching about $12 billion annually (in 2006 dollars). By comparison, more than $100 billion in public and private money is spent on social services outside the welfare system each year.

The survey showed that nearly 75 percent of non-profits receive some type of government funding, and that half of all nonprofits receiving government grants are dependent on those funds for at least half of their budgets. That dependence makes agencies vulnerable when cuts are made to balance federal, state and local budgets. Today, many states and communities are proposing cuts to government funding for social service programs, which will not only hurt poor populations, but destabilize the nonprofits upon which the safety net depends.

In addition, Allard’s research shows that non-profits often do not locate employment, education, mental health, and many other types of services in high poverty areas because affordable office space is hard to find. In neighborhoods that are gentrifying, rents on existing office space often is increased beyond the means of the non-profit organizations. Those services located in better off neighborhoods are hard for the poor to reach, particularly because many low-income households do not have cars and must depend on public transportation.

The lack of services is particularly problematic for African-American and Hispanic communities. The study found that more than 80 percent of predominately African-American neighborhoods are in areas that have low levels of access to social services, as are two-thirds of predominately Hispanic neighborhoods.

The study also showed that 82 percent of nonprofit service agencies in African-American neighborhoods serve mostly women. “Such findings combined with service accessibility scores provide a striking picture of how disconnected poor black men are from both public and private sources of support in society today,” Allard said.

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Source: Newswise, from a University of Chicago press release

Catholic Charities Named Top Social Service Provider

December 5, 2008 by Elizabeth Beachy  
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ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Catholic Charities USA, the nation’s largest social services network, was named the country’s top provider of social services in Charity Navigator’s Holiday Giving Guide 2008 and finished second overall on The NonProfit Times Top 100 list of the country’s largest charities.

Charity Navigator, America’s most-utilized evaluator of charities, uses an objective, numbers-based rating system to assess the financial health of over 5,000 of America’s best-known charities. The goal of Holiday Giving Guide 2008 is to help people navigate the crowded charitable marketplace and make intelligent giving decisions.

The NonProfit Times is the leading business publication for non-profit management and compiles an annual list of the top 100 non-profits ranked by total revenue. Catholic Charities USA was listed fourth in 2007.

“These ranking are invigorating, they speak to the hard work and professionalism of Catholic Charities agencies’ staff and volunteers around the country,” said Rev. Larry Snyder, President of Catholic Charities USA, the membership organization for more than 1700 local Catholic Charities agencies. “It is my sincere hope that this encourages others to join us in our efforts to help those affected by the economic downturn, especially during the holiday season.”

In 2007 Catholic Charities provided services to 7,736,855 people nationwide. In all, 171 main Catholic Charities agencies, which included 1,668 branches and affiliates, provided food, clothing, counseling, disaster relief, financial assistance and an array of vital community-based services 13,919,070 times last year.

Catholic Charities USA’s members — more than 1,700 local agencies and institutions nationwide — provide help and create hope for more than 7.8 million people a year regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds. For more than 275 years, local Catholic Charities agencies have been providing a myriad of vital services in their communities, ranging from day care and counseling to food and housing. Visit Catholic Charities for more information.

Source:  Market Watch