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Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany is seeing the faces behind each day's news of rising unemployment, growing food pantry lines and record homelessness.

There were the 72 families, with a total of 146 children, housed in motels or emergency shelters in Albany on just one night in November. 

There are the recently laid-off parents finding it impossible to pay the rent, buy food and cover their utilities bill on their unemployment benefits.

There are the tenants who are being evicted when their landlords' properties are lost to foreclosure.

And there are the financially stressed families struggling with domestic violence, relapses in substance abuse, and school misbehaviors resulting in expulsions of children as young as Kindergarteners.

Catholic Charities agencies serve more than 100,000 families in the 14 counties of the Diocese. Through government grants and the generosity of individuals, businesses and foundations, these agencies are doing the best they can to meet the growing demands of the current economic crisis.

However, proposed cuts in a major part of that carefully balanced equation - government support - will critically hobble their ability to assist the families who are most devastated by this economic crisis.

Sister Maureen Joyce, RSM, the chief executive of Catholic Charities for the Diocese, has written to state legislators urging them to restore vital human service funding that Governor David Paterson cut in his executive budget. Her letter was followed by visits to legislators by staffers from our agencies throughout the Diocese and by messages to legislators from dozens of members of our email advocacy network.

They all wanted their legislators to understand that:

• Creation of a Youth Services Block Grant with reduced funding will force counties to make choices that could result in eliminating Youth Bureau services such as supports for pregnant and parenting teens, supports for parents at risk for child abuse and neglect, and programming for at-risk youth. These preventative services save taxpayers more costly interventions such as youth detention.

• Cuts in the Nutrition Out-reach and Education Program are proposed just as demand grows for food stamps, both among renters and, alarmingly, among families who own their own homes but are unable to make ends meet.

• Reductions in Single Room Occupancy housing services will result in dwindling assistance to formerly homeless individuals and force more back into the more costly emergency shelter system.

• Cuts in kinship care services will reduce support given to relatives, most often grandparents, who are being encouraged to raise children as a less expensive option to foster care.

• Cuts to family counseling programs will result in more foster care placements. 

• Cuts to the Homeless Intervention Program will limit support for tenants who are facing evictions due to their landlords' foreclosures.
Catholic Charities is advocating on the national level for a federal stimulus plan that will provide unemployment and food stamp enhancements, full funding for enhanced federal participation in Medicaid, and in-creased participation in the child tax credit.

Federal aid to states in the plan will enable New York to restore human service programs that, while not a significant contribution to the state deficit, are so critical to the welfare of so many families. We look forward to working with legislators to ensure that a safety net remains for these families especially throughout these difficult economic times.

(Join Catholic Charities' email alert network to hear about issues and contacting your legislators. Go to www.ccrcda.org/poverty.htm.)

(Sister Marianne, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, is public policy advocate for Catholic Charities.)[[In-content Ad]]

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