The life expectancy for American females is 81 years.
In West Virginia, Marshall County has the longest life expectancy for women, with 80 years, while those in McDowell deal with about 6 years shorter life span.
The life expectancy for American males is about 76 years.
For West Virginian men, the longest life expectancy is also 76 years in Monongalia County and once again, McDowell County men have the shortest life expectancy in the state at 66 years.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont hosted a hearing to highlight the new report that says Americans living in some neighborhoods have lower life expectancies than people living in Ethiopia and Sudan.
Sabrina Shrader shared her story of growing in ‘holler’ in the small town called Twin Branch in McDowell County. She was invited to speak at a hearing with the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions after McDowell County was listed to have the shortest life expectancy for men and second lowest for women in the country.
“I have had family members, friends and classmates all die young,” Shrader said. “This past year both of my stepsisters died.”
Sabrina Shrader grew up in McDowell County.
“It was kind of heartbreaking to hear that just because you are from a certain place you are likely to die young,” Shrader said after returning from the hearing.
Analysis: Behavior, Health Care, Education, Income All Play a Factor
McDowell County has suffered major job loss and mass exodus of people after many coal mines closed. In 1950 there were close to 100,000 people. The population has plunged to about 21,000 in 2012.
The median household income in McDowell County between 2007-2011 was about $22,000; far less than the national median of about $53,000 and even West Virginia’s median, $40,000.
Dr. David Kindig with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, has studied and mapped population health for decades. He joined Shrader to speak with federal lawmakers on this issue.
“Health is produced by many factors including medical care and health behaviors but equally importantly or more importantly issues like income education the structure of our neighborhoods as my colleagues have been showing,” Kindig said.
The common theme across the panel seemed to focus on education and income.
“The bottom line is that we will not improve our poor health performance unless we balance our financial and policy investments across this whole portfolio of factors.”
This is National Homeless and Hunger Awareness Week, when the National Coalition for the Homeless and other advocacy organizations hope the country will…
This is National Homeless and Hunger Awareness Week, when the National Coalition for the Homeless and other advocacy organizations hope the country will focus on issues surrounding poverty. The United Way of the Eastern Panhandle is doing just that Thursday evening during a public forum.
During the forum “Poverty in the Panhandle: Children at Risk,” the United Way of the Eastern Panhandle, Family Resource Network and Health and Human Services Collaborative hope to discuss the problem and come up with possible solutions.
Del. Tiffany Lawrence (D-Jefferson) has been working with State Sen. John Unger (D-Berkeley) to address child poverty. Lawrence said there’s a perception that the Eastern Panhandle doesn’t have much of a problem because it’s a bedroom community of the Washington, D.C. metro area.
“We often hear and that our socioeconomic status is elevated for some reason or another,” Lawrence said. “But truly that’s not the case in all parts of the Panhandle and we do see children and also adults and families really suffering from a lack of stability.”
During the forum there will be group discussions with a goal of coming up with a plan to address the problem. Sharon Awkard, director of community impact with the United Way, hopes the forum will lead to a heightened awareness of how poverty affects the community.
“If people are constantly living in poverty they may have no job, they could become incarcerated, they can move totally out of the area,” Awkard said. “So poverty affects the entire community and we cannot constantly go on and put it on the back burner.”
“This is something that’s real and this is something that we can tackle and this is something that we can do something about,” she added.
The forum will feature a viewing of the PBS documentary Poor Kids and a preview of a West Virginia Public Broadcasting documentary that will focus on child poverty within the state.
It runs from 5:30-8 p.m. at the WVU Health Sciences Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. with registration beginning at 5 p.m.
An automatic reduction to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, will begin taking effect today, cutting benefits for more than 47 million people across the country.
West Virginians rely heavily on this assistance program, with about 20 percent of the population enrolled.
A Kanawha County man who is already struggling to provide for his family said this national cut means he will have to make even harder choices in the near future.
Rick Hodges is a single dad raising his 7-year-old daughter in Cabin Creek. Hodges was a subcontractor for a cable company for 17 years, but was hurt on the job in 2001. Now, he relies on disability and food stamps to provide for his family.
“I don’t eat a lot of times. I just make her food,” said Hodges. ” I might eat what she don’t eat. In fact, I just did that this week one day.”
This week, Hodges received notice from the state Department of Health and Human Resources that his benefits were being cut from $79 to $59 a month.
“That’s $20 less food I can buy for my daughter. That’s $20 I’ll somehow have to come up with out of my check and that means not paying the sewer bill,” said Hodges. “If you don’t pay your sewer bill, they want to cut your water off so that really puts you in a bind. That’s a large cut. That’s a very large cut.”
But he’s not alone. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, nationwide will be cut by more than $5 billion Friday, affecting more than 14 percent of U.S. households, as a temporary boost when 2009 federal stimulus package automatically expires.
For West Virginia, that means the average family of three’s benefits will be cut by 29 dollars or 16 meals a month based on numbers from the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Executive Director of the Healthy Kids and Families Coalition Stephen Smith says about 350 thousand working West Virginians will feel the impact first hand.
“Poverty doesn’t look like someone who is not working and relying on government,” said Smith.
“Poverty looks like, especially in West Virginia, a majority are people who are working sometimes two or three jobs and making minimum wage which everyone knows isn’t enough money to get by on and those are a lot of the people who are receiving SNAP benefits to try to fill the gap at the end of every month.”
In West Virginia, the program is funded exclusively through federal monies. SNAP Senior Policy Specialist Marsha Stowers said the budget will shrink by nearly $2.7 million this month.
“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and it was temporary. It increased net benefits across the board in efforts to stimulate the economy and the law was set to expire November 1, 2013. So, as of right now, the state doesn’t have anything they’re going to add,” she said.
Communities, however, are working to fill the gap left by federal funding. Smith said over the past few decades, as the economy has worsened, charities and food banks have started to step up to help families make ends meet.
Even with the 40 to 50 thousand new programs created across the country in the past few years, the number of people who are food insecure has only increased, showing that what they can do is not enough.
“It is absolutely clear that those cannot fill the gap and we’ve seen that in West Virginia,” said Smith. “Talk to anyone who is running a backpack program or a feeding program, they see increasingly more and more working families showing up and they’re still not making the difference they need to.”
Hodges said he’s had that experience, traveling from food bank to food bank in southern West Virginia just to make it through the month.
As for what he thinks lawmakers should be doing when it comes to SNAP benefits:
“I would tell them thanks for the stimulus that we did have, but there’s going to be children that go hungry because of this cut. They have to look themselves in the mirror and know that there are kids going to bed because of cuts that are going to be hungry and crying and sick for school the next morning,” said Hodges.
Hodges said the reduction in the program will be a challenge for him, but he isn’t giving up.
“No matter what they throw at us, we have to make it. We can’t just blink our eyes and disappear from the world. We have to somehow find a way.”
Wheeling-based Crittenton Services began as a residential service for women, especially pregnant women, throughout the state. Today it’s grown to serve women and families with behavioral challenges in a variety of ways. Recent research has been shedding new light on patterns of poverty and possible methods of breaking those cycles.
“What’s really happening to us today? Why do kids have these behaviors? Why are we managing such poverty issues? It would be so simple to say that if we gave everybody an education, if everybody had food in their bellies and a roof over their head, that would end poverty," says Kathy Szafan, CEO, Crittenton Services Inc.
Szafran says, it’s not that simple.
Crittenton Services Inc. has been managing the side effects of poverty in West Virginia for over a century—dealing largely today with girls displaying behavioral problems. She says together with the National Crittenton Foundation, they’ve amassed certain insights about human psychology that could hold keys to breaking patterns of abuse and poverty—two things which, as it turns out, go hand and hand.
In fact, according to a recent study, identifying trauma is maybe the first step toward breaking cycles of poverty.
“You can take any of these girls and without dealing with their trauma, you can get them in school—doubt if they’ll stay in—you can get them in a house—sure they’re going to struggle—and the odds of them reliving that cycle of abuse would be very good.”
What is trauma? What does it look like? What usually springs to mind are severe scenarios like rape, physical abuse, loss of a parent. These are, unfortunately, common experiences that can take a long term toll of an individual but, as Tracee Chambers explains, even more common and equally harmful are small abuses that build up from very early ages. Chambers is the clinical intake specialist for the residential program at Crittenton. She says she trains staff to recognize behavioral symptoms that can come from what’s called complex trauma.
“Our kids that we serve have experienced from the time that they were little, mom and dad were using and not responsive when they cried, or mom and dad didn’t bother to feed them regularly, so from the period of infancy when you’re learning how to trust the world and that you can have your needs met based on your cues, they don’t feel like they have any control and they don’t have trust that their caregivers can meet their needs.”
Chambers says the trauma compounds as a child grows and develops.
“As they start to develop into toddlers and they start to try to explore environment and stuff like that, parents either restrict their movement and throw them in a crib for the day so that they don’t get to explore and learn, or they’re very punitive and negative when they get into things, or they’re exposed to this chronic chaos.”
Chambers says this chronic developmental trauma from intermittent love and neglect can create individuals who find it difficult to build trust, or feel helpless or hopeless to have an impact on what goes on around them. She says that a variety of behavioral problems are typical.
“It’s hard to get a kid in to a school to learn their ABCs when they’re not sure what’s going to go down tonight or they’re remembering what happened last night, or if they haven’t eaten in a couple days,” Chambers says.
Crittenton CEO Kathy Szafran refers to some of the girls who then, eventually land in Crittenton’s residential program. She says without learning how to cope, the infant, turned toddler, turned adolescent is likely unable to rise out of the impoverished circumstances in which they live.
“She got pregnant because it was something she could choose to do,” Szafran says. “And there will be someone to love her. And it may be her way out because this guy is promising her the world. So when you see that WV’s [teen] pregnancy rates are increasing, it is not increasing because we don’t have enough condoms. It’s increasing because of the situation of these children regarding poverty and abuse.”
The programs at Crittenton aim to allay behavioral symptoms by instilling healthy alternatives that teach someone how to self-regulate so that they can rise above the chaos. Protective factors are used to that end—things like having a daily routine and good nutrition, to teaching what a healthy relationship looks like and what unhealthy habits like addiction and abuse look like.
“Our kids don’t realize that they’ve been abused until they’ve had a couple classes and then they go, ‘Well yeah, that happened to me.’”
Chambers says they also teach teenage moms how to connect with their babies: positioning, eye contact, how to use real words and a positive tone of voice—reciprocal nonverbal contact that builds trust and a positive connection. She says these basic skills are fundamental. They build resiliency in the mother and in the child.
“The more connected and attached they become to their child, the more likely they are to protect them from people who would harm them and the more likely they are to work hard to get them what they need.”
And that, she says, can break the cycle of abuse. A resilient, happy child, she says, can overcome obstacles and find her way out of poverty. Or at least, she’s more likely to.
Crittenton Services has been serving women and children in West Virginia for over a century. Over that time span they’ve collected some powerful insight…
Crittenton Services has been serving women and children in West Virginia for over a century. Over that time span they’ve collected some powerful insight into challenges the state faces regarding poverty, especially concerning women and children.
0904Crittentontwo.mp3
Part Two: Breaking Cycles
A History of Helping Women
It all started when a bout of Scarlet Fever killed a four-year-old little girl named Florence in 1882. Her father, Charles Crittenton, was devastated. A preacher in New York suggested that he deal with his grief by helping women of the streets.
He began preaching to the immigrant wives and daughter and mothers of men who were off working in factories and mines throughout the country. Many of these women resorted to prostitution to support themselves and their families.
Kathy Szafran, President and CEO of Crittenton Services, Inc. in Wheeling, says that Crittenton would go and preach, “Go forth and sin no more,” until it occurred to him that many of these women had nowhere to go. 130 years later, she says, their organization’s mission is still basically the same as his: to help women become independent and self-sufficient.
She explains that today the national Crittenton Foundation connects 27 independently operated and governed Crittenton centers in the country—all of them dealing with unique challenges in a variety of ways.
A Residential Program for Teenage Girls and Teenage Moms
Over the years, the center in Wheeling formerly called the Florence Crittenton Home has morphed from being a safe place for prostitutes, to being a place where the wealthy would send unwed mothers, to today, being the only licensed maternity care, behavioral health center in the state. The Wheeling-based agency has evolved into four programs which all serve a mission of helping children and families in need achieve self-sufficiency.
One of the programs that has been the cornerstone of Crittenton Services for all these years and remains the core of the agency is their residential program which caters to girls 12-18.
The program operates with a constant waiting list. It’s licensed to house 42 people, ten of which currently are babies. All of the adolescents have behavior issues that have landed them in this facility.
Meet Bessie
Bessie is from Southern W.Va. She’s 17. She was skipping school, she had complicated problems at home, and then she got in trouble for fighting.
“That led me to getting on a bond, and I broke my bond by not going to school and saying, ‘Who cares?’ And then I got put on probation till I was 18.”
Bessie explains that she found motivation to behave because she didn’t want to be “sent off.” Bessie also, at this time, got pregnant and had a baby. Her little girl is now nine months old. She was born with a cleft pallet and had to undergo several surgeries, required special bottles, and special care.
“We didn’t have daycare or nothing because it’s a small town. The nearest day care was probably thirty minutes away and I didn’t have a car. I had no help,” Bessie says.
That’s when her parole officer told her about Crittenton—the only place in the state that would take both mom and baby.
The Residence
Bessie showed us around the Crittenton’s residential hall in Wheeling. It’s a dorm-like building with rooms large enough for two girls and two cribs each on the top floor. The first floor houses a daycare, a kitchen, and a health clinic where there’s a nurse and all the basic medical needs of the girls can be met.
Down stairs there are classrooms, meetings rooms, and recreational spaces. Bessie says normally it’s a crazy environment, but we were there while things were relatively calm. Girls were rotating in and out of the program and many were out on an off-site trip to a nearby flea market.
“When I first got here everything seemed so loud and so crazy and then I was like, ‘OK, they’re just like me. They just had to be here for a little bit and deal with new changes and being away from home. It’s fine.’ But I cried so hard when I first got here,” she remembers. But she says she adjusted.
Bessie explains that she’s now what’s called a “positive peer.” It’s a privilege that comes with good behavior, but she says it’s a role that comes naturally to her because she has a nurturing personality.
Bessie’s situation isn’t typical because she enrolled herself and her baby into the program. Through the education program which continues year-round at Crittenton, she’s caught up on her high school classes.
“This place has taught me a lot about independence, so I’m going to go get a job. For sure. I’m going to get a job, a part time job, because I know that my baby is more important than any job or any schooling. But I need that, too,” she says referring to the job, “to have a future.”
She was able to get a food handler’s card while at Crittenton, so now her plan is to get part time work at a fast food restaurant, go to school, and spend evenings with her baby.”
“I think I made the right decision to come here and get the help that I need,” she says, “and I think that I’m ready to go back home.”
Even if she wasn’t ready, Bessie turns 18 this month, and as a legal adult without a court order, there’s nothing keeping her in the program which would usually continue for another two to five months.
Bessie plans to return home to live with her father.
Cycles of Abuse and Poverty
“What’s really happening to us today? Why do kids have these behaviors? Why are we managing such poverty issues? It would be so simple to say that if we gave everybody an education, if everybody had food in their bellies and a roof over their head, that would end poverty.”
But CEO of Crittenton Services, Kathy Szafran, says it’s not that simple.
Her organization has been managing the side effects of poverty in West Virginia for over a century—dealing largely today with girls displaying behavioral problems. She says together with the National Crittenton Foundation, they’ve amassed certain insights about human psychology that could hold keys to breaking patterns of abuse and poverty—two things which, turns out, go hand and hand.
“You can take any of these girls and without dealing with their trauma,” Szafran says, “you can get them in school—doubt if they’ll stay in; you can get them in a house—sure they’re going to struggle; and the odds of them reliving that cycle of abuse would be very good.”
Complex Trauma
What is trauma? What does it look like? What usually springs to mind are severe scenarios like rape, physical abuse, loss of a parent. These are, unfortunately, common experiences that can take long term toll of an individual, but as Tracee Chambers explains, even more common and equally harmful are small abuses that build up from very early ages. Chambers is the clinical intake specialist for the residential program at Crittenton. She says she trains staff to recognize behavioral symptoms that can come from what’s called complex trauma.
She says ,any of the girls at Crittenton have similar backgrounds: “Mom and dad were using and not responsive when they cried, or mom and dad didn’t bother to feed them regularly, so from the period of infancy when you’re learning how to trust the world and that you can have your needs met based on your cues, they don’t feel like they have any control and they don’t have trust that their caregivers can meet their needs.”
Chambers says the trauma compounds as a child grows and develops.
“As they start to develop into toddlers and they start to try to explore environment and stuff like that, parents either restrict their movement and throw them in a crib for the day so that they don’t get to explore and learn, or they’re very punitive and negative when they get into things, or they’re exposed to this chronic chaos.”
Chambers says this chronic developmental trauma from intermittent love and neglect can create individuals who find it difficult to build trust, or feel helpless or hopeless to have an impact on what goes on around them. She says that a variety of behavioral problems are typical.
“It’s hard to get a kid in to a school to learn their ABCs when they’re worried about what happened last night,” Chambers says, “or if they haven’t eaten in a couple days.”
Szafran refers to some of the girls who then, eventually land in Crittenton’s residential program. She says without learning how to cope, the infant, turned toddler, turned adolescent is often ill-equipped to rise out of the impoverished circumstances in which she lives.
“And then she gets pregnant.”
Szafran is adamant when it comes to teen pregnancy. She says high teen pregnancy is not about lack of access to contraceptives or education. It’s about girls making the decision to have a baby.
“She got pregnant because it was something she could choose to do,” Szafran says. “And she will have someone to love her. And it may be her ‘way out’ because This Guy is promising her the world.”
Then, Szafran explains, she’ll most likely recreate the only reality she’s ever known.
Breaking the Cycle
The programs at Crittenton aim to allay behavioral symptoms by instilling healthy alternatives that teach someone how to self-regulate so that they can rise above the chaos. Resiliency tools are used to that end—things like having a daily routine, good nutrition, and how to recognize healthy relationships and unhealthy life patterns like addition and abuse.
“Our kids don’t realize that they’ve been abused until they’ve had a couple classes and then they say, ‘Well yeah, that happened to me,’” Chambers says.
She says they also teach teenage moms how to connect with their babies: positioning, eye contact, how to use real words and a positive tone of voice—reciprocal nonverbal contact that builds trust and a positive connection. She says these are basic, fundamental, and critical skills. They build resiliency in the mother and in the child.
“The more connected and attached they become to their child,” Chambers says, “the more likely they are to protect them from people who would harm them, and the more likely they are to work hard to get them what they need.”
And that, she says, can break the cycle of abuse. A resilient, happy child, she says, can overcome obstacles and find her way out of poverty. Or at least, she’s more likely to.
