Addressing and Combating Rural Child Poverty

Good afternoon. I want to begin by thanking NACo for inviting me to participate, and thank all of you for joining the discussion this afternoon. In the next few minutes, I want to talk about the importance of addressing rural child poverty, some significant steps forward that have happened under the Obama Administration, some early lessons from the Rural IMPACT initiative, and some ways in which programs under the jurisdiction of the Administration for Children and Families can be used to support your efforts. After I’m done, I greatly look forward to the smaller group discussions and hearing your thoughts and perspectives.

Rural Child Poverty in the United States

Research has shown that when poor people live in areas where poverty is prevalent, they face barriers beyond their individual circumstances. Concentrated poverty contributes to poor housing and health conditions, higher crime and school dropout rates, as well as employment dislocations. As a result, economic conditions in very poor areas can create limited opportunities for poor residents that become self-perpetuating.

Rural areas of our country have higher poverty rates than urban areas --- in 2015, the rural poverty rate was 17.5 percent, while the urban rate was 14.3 percent. Over six million Americans in rural areas live in poverty, including about 1.5 million children. And 301 rural counties have had poverty rates of over 20 percent in every Census since 1980; this represents 85 percent of the nation’s persistent poverty counties.

Rural children, especially minorities, are more likely to be poor and live in persistent poverty areas than are other children. And, the percentage of children living in families in deep poverty — defined as family income below half the federal poverty level — is three percentage points higher in rural areas.

Improvements in rural educational attainment since 2000 have had the effect of reducing rural poverty, but other factors—including the recession and an increase in single-parent families—have had the opposite effect. Rural child poverty peaked in 2013 at 26.6 percent, and while it has declined for the past two years, it remains the case that one in four children in rural areas are poor.

We have seen important progress in recent years as the economy has strengthened. In addition to the poverty declines:

• Rural income has increased 3.4 percent over the past year;
• Rural counties added over 250,000 jobs in 2014 and 2015; and
• Rural unemployment rate has dropped below 6 percent;

But, given the persistence of poverty, it’s crucial to do more. Lack of opportunity for rural families is often compounded by other challenges, including distance from health and early learning programs, lack of access to public transportation, lack of child care, and higher rates of drug and substance abuse, among others. Researchers have estimated that persis­tent childhood poverty is estimated to cost our nation $500 billion each year due to lost productivity, increased health care and crime-related costs. The American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that children who experience poverty, particularly during early life or for an extended period, are at risk of a host of adverse health and developmental outcomes through their life course, with impacts on birth weight, infant mortality, language development, chronic illness, environmental exposure, nutrition, and injury. Child poverty raises the risk of experiencing toxic stress and of difficulties with self-regulation and executive function, which may have important implications for adult success. So, there are many reasons to take on the challenge.

The Administration’s Work to Address Rural Poverty

In October of 2011, the President signed Executive Order in 2011 establishing the White House Rural Council. The Council’s core functions include streamlining and improving the effectiveness of federal programs serving rural America, engaging stakeholders on issues and solutions in rural communities, and promoting and coordinating private-sector partnerships. Perhaps most importantly, the Rural Council was established to serve as a Federal “front door” for local leaders. Among the Council’s initiatives:

• The Local Food, Local Places brings together USDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation and others to provide technical support and a broad array of resources to rural communities to help them build strong local food systems to grow their economies—all with a single application. Already, over 50 communities have benefitted.
• Since 2014, the annual Rural Opportunity Investment (ROI) Conference brings together industry and government stakeholders to discuss how the public and private sectors can work together to benefit rural and agricultural economies and the nation as a whole. As a result, USDA launched a public-private partnership with CoBank, which committed up to $10 billion to lend and co-lend in support of infrastructure projects in rural America. Since then, the ROI conference has been held annually and $3 billion has been invested in power, water, communications, and community facility industries.

• To decrease rural isolation in education, The White House Rural Council partnered with the U.S. Department of Education to deliver a new online community of practice groups for rural schools and, as part of the push for broadband in public schools, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investing $2 billion to expand high-speed Internet connectivity for America's schools and libraries — connecting 20 million more students to next-generation broadband and wireless. Private-sector companies have also committed more than $2 billion to deliver cutting-edge technologies to classrooms.
• And, USDA’S StrikeForce for Rural Growth and Opportunity Initiative is working to bring integrated resources to 880 rural counties experiencing chronic rural poverty in 21 states and Puerto Rico. StrikeForce efforts have helped direct over $16 billion in investments to create jobs, build homes, feed kids, assist farmers, and conserve natural resources in economically challenged rural and tribal areas. I joined with representatives from the Strike Force this summer in North Dakota, in a set of discussions about strategies to address trafficking in rural and tribal communities.

I’ve described some specific programs that target rural communities and their families. But, they’re just part of the Administration’s efforts to expand opportunity, tackle income inequality, and accelerate economic mobility. While I won’t catalogue the full range of efforts, I particularly want to highlight the importance of the Recovery Act and the Affordable Care Act.

As you’ll recall, the President took office when the country had entered the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and poverty rose in the following years. The Recovery Act, among other things, provided more than $150 billion for low-income and vulnerable households, through expanded tax assistance, food assistance, child care and Head Start, the TANF Emergency Fund, funds to avert homelessness, and more. Under the Recovery Act, Broadband projects funded by USDA brought high-speed Internet access to 260,000 rural households, 17,500 businesses and 1,900 community facilities. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that because of the Recovery Act, the unemployment rate has been lower each year since 2009 than it otherwise would have been.

The Affordable Care Act has played a crucial role for the nation as a whole and for its rural areas. Broadening health care coverage promotes both health among children and adults and reduces the risk of catastrophic financial burdens for all Americans. Today, we have a record-low uninsured rate. Approximately 20 million uninsured people have gained health coverage since the law’s passage – the largest change in the uninsured in four decades, with the largest gains in those states that adopted Medicaid expansions. The percent of people not covered by health insurance in rural areas decreased from 12.8% in 2013 to 9.6% in 2015. Still, there’s more that can be done in rural areas to make full use of the law: about 2.6 million uninsured rural Americans are potentially eligible for Marketplace coverage. Eighty-eight percent of them—2.3 million—may qualify for tax credits that help make coverage affordable.

The Rural IMPACT Initiative

As many of you know, in August of last year the White House Rural Council launched Rural Integration Models for Parents and Children to Thrive, or Rural IMPACT. Rural IMPACT is a 10-site demonstration project focusing on reducing child poverty through a two-generation approach. We’ve encouraged this approach because it seems fundamental that we cannot get good outcomes for children without recognizing that children grow up in families, that strong and supportive families will promote better outcomes, and that when family life is disrupted, chaotic, or worse, it is far more difficult to get good outcomes for children. And, in efforts to work with adults, particularly to promote success in employment, it’s essential that strategies are mindful of the needs of their children and the roles, responsibilities, and challenges faced when workers are also parents. At ACF, we’ve been placing an overall emphasis on two-generation strategies, and we’ve been actively involved in developing and supporting Rural IMPACT.

In Rural IMPACT, the federal team worked with two technical assistance providers – the Community Action Partnership and the American Academy of Pediatrics – to connect the ten sites to federal and local resources; address policy issues and concerns; support two AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers on the ground in each community; and provide technical assistance including webinars with subject matter experts, intensive peer learning, a dedicated coach for each site, federal team visits to each site, and two in-person meetings with the 10 sites. The team also worked with private partners such as foundations and think tanks.

Each site looks a little different - backbone organizations include Community Action Agencies, a college, a foundation, a tribal entity and a non-profit. Sites also vary in their program models - focusing on strengthening partnerships around common goals and measures, developing universal intake processes, co-locating children’s and parents’ services, and implementing a cohort model for student parents. Many sites have also worked to provide a trauma-informed approach to care and services.

The sites had a number of notable first year accomplishments:

• In Maine’s Family Futures Downeast (FFD) cohort model, two cohorts of parents enrolled in a set of five college-level courses focused on family issues (and approved for core curriculum credits) and support to continue with higher education. Their children attended high-quality child care while their parents were in class, and the family received coaching.

• Kentucky’s Scholar House created a long-term plan for a residential higher education program for young parents, coupled with family supports and high-quality early education for children. The program was to open in 2019 (for 40-plus families). In Year 1, a smaller group of young parents (about 10) were to participate in a support group as the site proceeded with Scholar House planning and implementation.
• Ohio’s one-stop approach co-located services for parents and children and created a unified data system to track family progression (20 families planned for the Year 1 pilot). A key partner provided substance abuse counseling and recovery services. By providing services in a one-stop method, families could use their time and transportation resources more efficiently.

Some key lessons have emerged from the first year of this demonstration project. Sites have learned that pursuing systems change is essential to a successful two-generation approach, and that strong leadership is needed. Sites also noted that in order to be successful, a range of partners need to be at the table, including the families. And based on feedback from the sites, the Federal Team is working on ways to better tailor our technical assistance efforts to ensure it is most relevant and useful to sites. We look forward to working with the ten communities in the coming year and sharing the lessons we learn together. And, we have recently released a new report highlighting best practices from the 10 pilot sites—something you all may find helpful as you engage in efforts in your own county.

Using ACF Programs in Efforts to Address Rural Poverty

I now want to turn to how you can use programs at ACF in efforts to address rural poverty and rural child poverty. ACF has federal responsibility for a wide range of programs, and a number of them can play a key role in your efforts.

First, in thinking more broadly about you can address poverty in your county, our Office of Community Services, through the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) provides funds to alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty in communities. CSBG funds are very flexible, and as long as the expenditures are allowable by law, we don’t dictate how these funds are to be spent or used. I’d expect many of you are already partnering with your local community action agency, but if you’re not doing so, I’d encourage you to reach out to them to explore where partnerships are possible.

Community Economic Development (CED) is a competitive grant program that provides grants to Community Development Corporations to support business development that creates job opportunities for low-income individuals. Since 2011 CED has included a set-aside for the development of projects that reduce food deserts. For example, in Maine, CED funds were utilized to bolster rural manufacturing jobs – specifically seafood packing – in an economically downtrodden rural area that used to be a thriving manufacturing hub.

For counties with a large tribal presence, partnering with Tribal governments on a regional approach to economic and community development could enable you to tap into resources available through the Administration for Native Americans. ANA Grants are only available to Native American governments and nonprofit organizations, however these communities often cannot succeed in their economic development efforts without the partnership and collaboration of the broader community. We have seen success in communities in addressing unemployment such as “Choctaw Fresh”, a community supported agriculture project of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw in Neshoba County Mississippi.

Early childhood efforts should be central to efforts to reduce rural child poverty. Research shows that home visiting provides a positive return on investment to society through savings in public expenditures on emergency room visits, public benefits, child protective services, and special education, as well as increased tax revenues from parents’ earnings. Our colleagues at the Health Resources and Services Administration provide grants to States through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, and ACF provides grants to Indian tribes, consortia of tribes, tribal organizations, and urban Indian organizations under the program. These programs not only provide critical services to families, but also benefit the broader community through enhanced systems of care, workforce development, greater data collection for understanding community needs and increasing the ability for communities to advocate for, and serve families and young children in need.

Your state receives funding through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). CCDF is the primary federal funding source for states, territories, and tribes to assist low income families with paying for child care in order to work or pursue education and training, and to improve overall child care quality. Family child care homes can be particularly important in rural areas given the smaller population and geographic remoteness. Congress reauthorized the child care program in 2014, with a stronger emphasis on health, safety, quality, supply-building and continuity of care. States have substantial discretion in how they use their funds, and there may be opportunities to ensure that they’re being used in the most effective ways in rural communities.

Head Start programs operate in each of your communities, dedicated to helping prepare low-income children for school by improving their overall health, their social-emotional and cognitive development, and working to strengthen parenting practices and help parents meet their goals. In addition, Early Head Start- Child Care Partnership Grants offers funding to support the partnering of Early Head Start (EHS) programs with child care providers, leveraging existing local resources to provide a comprehensive array of health, mental health, nutrition, and social services to infants, toddlers, and their families. These partnerships provide an important way to raise the quality of child care and to ensure that programs are responsive to the needs of working families.

And finally, we know that teacher preparation programs are harder to come by in rural areas (including tribal programs) and in response ACF has worked to develop EarlyEdU: An Alliance for Head Start and Early Childhood Teaching. It is made up of 15 high quality early childhood education courses that designed for prospective early childhood educators as well as current teachers working in a wide variety of preschool settings. Additionally, Early Educator Central is a web portal resource for online coursework and tools for states in designing early childhood professional development systems.

Engaging with your child welfare agency can be a key part of your partnership efforts. You can work with your child welfare agency to access family support, family preservation, time-limited family reunification and adoption promotion and support for families at risk of or already in crisis, including those struggling with substance abuse. Families that are at risk due to poverty related issues may receive the benefit of these services most typically when they come to the attention of the state child protective system. The state system completes an assessment of the families’ needs in order to identify services that need to be put into place to address any child safety issues that have been identified.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program funds can also be used in support of your efforts. TANF funds are enormously flexible, and the employment and training strategies appropriate to urban areas may not be appropriate for rural ones, so there’s considerable room for designing strategies more responsive to the needs of rural areas. And, increasingly TANF agencies are looking at how they can reorient their efforts to take on a stronger two-generation approach. Moreover, as your state or county implements the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, it’s a key time to promote stronger integration of human services and workforce development efforts in your community.

Child Support is one of the most significant income support programs for families with limited means. In fact, child support is 41 percent of the income of poor single parent families with children that receive it. Child support is not only an enforcement program but also a services program that works with both parents and coordinates with workforce, child welfare, TANF, family violence, prisoner reentry and veteran’s programs to help remove barriers to consistent payment. Almost every state operates at least one local noncustodial parent employment program coordinated by the child support agency.

Additionally, a number of counties have operated child support demonstrations related to employment and parenting and The Office of Child Support Enforcement also operates a small ($10 million), state administered Access and Visitation formula grant program, which allows states and counties to assist parents in maintaining a relationship with their children, including children placed in foster care.

It’s also important to recognize the intersections between rural poverty and human trafficking. Poverty is one of the risk factors for human trafficking involving children or their families experiencing commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. Traffickers prey on situations of desperation that are often created when families experience challenges putting food on the table, accessing health care, or affording school expenses.

Rural communities can currently leverage several Federal resources to assist in their efforts to address trafficking: (1) Communities can widely disseminate information about the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 to report potential cases of trafficking and seek connections to local organizations to meet a range of service needs. (2) Organizations can request training and technical assistance for child welfare agencies, runaway and homeless youth programs, and other youth-serving organizations on how to identify and respond to cases of human trafficking. (3) Foreign child victims of human trafficking can request assistance and potentially be eligible for services to the same extent as refugees. And, (4) Foreign adult victims can access comprehensive case management services for themselves and certain family members through the National Trafficking Victim Assistance Program.

You should also consider the provision of shelter and supportive services provided by our Family Youth Services Bureau for homeless youth, pregnant youth, and families experiencing domestic violence a resource and asset in your community that keeps people safe, housed and from immediately spiraling into poverty. We have grantees located all over the country. Beginning in 2008 and concluding in 2014, the Family and Youth Services Bureau launched its Support Systems for Rural Homeless Youth (SSRHY) demonstration to explore ways to improve the delivery of services and supports to youth in rural communities who have little or no connection to stable housing and family situations. This includes runaway and homeless youth as well as youth making unsuccessful transitions out of foster care. A report that details the activities and outcomes of the six demonstration projects offering services to youth who are experiencing homelessness in rural communities funded under SSRHY is forthcoming. Our Family Violence Prevention and Services (FVPSA) program reaches rural populations through our State and Tribal Formula grants that serve 1,600 domestic violence programs, many of them rural and remote Tribal lands.

Conclusion

I want to conclude by congratulating those counties that have committed to addressing rural child poverty; to emphasize that there are a number of important federal programs that can help your efforts; and that we’re committed to providing technical assistance and partnership as you go forward. Thank you, and I look forward to the rest of today’s discussion.