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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's effort to end intergenerational poverty will start with 80 families.
Next Generation Kids, a pilot program led by the Utah Department of Workforce Services, is underway in Ogden. State officials also plan to work with children and their families in Kearns and Salt Lake City's Glendale neighborhood.
That's the result of more than three years of intensive study about intergenerational poverty in Utah that reveals one-third of children in the state are at risk of becoming impoverished adults.
"The policy direction has now been set," said Jon Pierpont, executive director of the Utah Department Workforce Services. "Now we're working directly with families. Those are the most important things to me as we introduce the third report."
Pierpont refers to the third annual report on Intergenerational Poverty, Welfare Dependency and the Use of Public Assistance, which provides the most extensive analysis yet of Utah children living in intergenerational poverty. The full report, officially released Tuesday morning, can be found at jobs.utah.gov.
Intergenerational poverty is generally defined as two or more generations living in poverty, with intergenerational welfare recipients defined as people who received more than 12 months of public assistance as children and more than 12 months of assistance as adults.
More than 52,000 Utah children live in intergenerational poverty in Utah, according to the report. An additional 236,056 children are at risk of remaining in poverty as adults. Combined, these children are 33 percent of Utah's child population.
The state departments working directly with children and families have developed four areas of focus for the new poverty-fighting program: early childhood development, education, family economic stability and health.
The program will be launched at James Madison Elementary School. Twenty families have agreed to take part thus far. The department plans to roll out full details about the program this fall, although officials say the pilot program will be paid for with federal public assistance funds and funding attached to legislation sponsored by Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Ogden, who has led efforts in the Utah Legislature to study and develop policies on intergenerational poverty since 2012.
SB43, passed during the 2014 Legislature, set aside $1 million for competitive grants to be awarded to schools that provide instruction in math and reading outside the regular school day.
The children
Most Utah children who live in intergenerational poverty are ages 12 and under, white and live in single-parent households. Most live in Salt Lake, Utah or Weber counties, although children in jeopardy of remaining in poverty live in every county in the state.
Just as many boys as girls are affected by intergenerational poverty, which distinguishes them from adults experiencing intergenerational poverty, who are predominantly single mothers.
Children who live in poverty tend to start school behind their peers and struggle through out their K-12 experience, according to several benchmarks of academic success.
From school readiness to scores on standardized achievement tests and graduation rates, children living in multi-generation families of poverty perform well below more affluent peers.
Because most of this early learning takes place in the home, children raised in struggling and stressful home environments are more likely to experience poor academic outcomes beginning in infancy.
–Statement from 3rd Annual Report
The report notes the growing body of evidence that shows important brain development occurs within the first three years of a child's life.
"Because most of this early learning takes place in the home, children raised in struggling and stressful home environments are more likely to experience poor academic outcomes beginning in infancy," the report states.
School attendance is a significant factor in academic achievement. Children who attend school regularly are more likely to read on grade level after third grade, and they are more likely to graduate.
The report indicates that "20 percent of third-graders from the IGP cohort were chronically absent compared to only 10 percent of all Utah third-graders."
These children also move frequently. Forty-one percent moved at least once in 2013, significantly higher than the Utah mobility rate of 17 percent. "Children who move frequently experience lower rates of academic achievement and higher dropout rates," the report said.
Abuse and neglect
Utah children living in intergenerational poverty are also at substantially higher risk of abuse and neglect. Among children in intergenerational poverty, 26 percent have been victims of abuse or neglect, compared to 1.5 percent of the state's overall child population, according to 2013 figures.
"Policymakers should consider these high rates of abuse and neglect among these children when developing programs to reduce the numbers of children in the cycle of poverty," the report states.
The report notes that as legislation that requires the study of intergenerational poverty and policy initiatives intended to end cycles of poverty in children are implemented, policymakers need to better understand the lives of their parents.
"After all, children are not poor. Rather, it is the families and households in which they live that are poor," the report says.
The typical adult experiencing intergenerational poverty is a single white female, age 21-34, who has at least one child age 12 and younger. She lives either in Salt Lake, Utah or Weber counties, works a low-wage job and has no schooling beyond high school or earning a GED. However, among Utah adults living in poverty, only half have a high school diploma.
As a child, she received food stamps or Medicaid for at least six years. She is presently receiving food stamps and/or Medicaid for herself and her children.
While 90 percent of all public assistance recipients have some work history, their attachment to the workforce is "tenuous," the report states, noting only 29 percent of adults experiencing intergenerational poverty worked the entire year in 2013.
The report concludes that parents of children at risk of remaining in poverty as adults "confront their own challenges that likely will affect their ability to meet the needs of their children. These challenges include limited education beyond high school, lack of consistent employment and insufficient wages."
The report examines dependency on public assistance, demographics of people who receive public assistance as adults and children, education performance and attainment, access to health care, and rates of neglect and abuse. That information is used by the Intergenerational Welfare Reform Commission to drive policy changes.
The report is part of a larger effort initiated by Reid to address the issue of intergenerational poverty. Most "helping agencies," as Reid calls them, have not differentiated between children and families experiencing situational poverty — generally short-lived and due to a job loss, divorce, death or other life event that significantly affects the household income and stability — and impoverished families that have relied on public assistance for generations.
In 2012, Reid passed legislation that requires an annual report about intergenerational poverty, which is being used to make more informed policy decisions. Legislation also created a commission of top state department heads and an advisory committee to develop recommendations to address problems identified by the data.
The Utah Department of Health and the state Division of Child and Family Services are already implementing programs that serve families in intergenerational poverty in their homes.
DCFS's "Homeworks" program, for instance, is designed to prevent children at risk of entering state custody from removal from their home through an intensive case management structure. Caseworkers in DCFS's Ogden office have been coordinating with Workforce Services caseworkers to ensure children in intergenerational poverty are part of the "Homeworks" pilot in Ogden.
While Reid started this movement, he said he has intentionally left the research and policy recommendations to leaders in state government and professionals in the community. NextGeneration Kids is the first comprehensive program to result from this work.
Reid, whose legislative service ends in December, said other Republicans in the Senate, Sens. Aaron Osmond of South Jordan and Deidre Henderson of Spanish Fork, have agreed to pick up the mantle.
"For me, this is about rescuing children in poverty, rescuing children and all the attendant problems that go with that cycle," he said.
