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Family Service Neighborhood Place Community Center was the site of the assembly, with leaders from education, health care, and nonprofit and public sectors spurring conversations and driving change.
Children at Risk is a Texas-wide child advocacy group dedicated to understanding and addressing the root causes of child poverty and inequality.
Children at Risk President and CEO Bob Sanborn said that when we begin to look at solutions for child poverty, it begins with pushing back on a marginalizing portrayal of San Antonio’s population.
“San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the country. Ten percent of all the children in America live in Texas — and majority Latino by significant numbers,” said Sanborn. “When we live in a country where today there’s this pressure on immigrant and Latino communities, it’s demonizing our future and affecting this very group that’s going to be a part of this very strong workforce.”
Family Services of San Antonio is based in San Antonio and is the oldest human service nonprofit in the city. President and CEO Mary Garr said her organization helps parents navigate a complex system of care.
“We have some of our programs where people are sent to us via court order. Or via counselors,” said Garr. “But, also with our work in schools, we will have the schools connect us with families — and we also do recruitment for families who think they could benefit from our services as well.”
Garr said advocates frequently get bogged down in focusing on food insecurity and housing instability and then run out of energy and bandwidth to address other issues beyond those problems.
“Those are symptoms, not root causes.” Garr adds, “We focus on education for children in schools. If they don’t have that family support in the community, then it’s much harder for them to have that good quality education in the schools.”
Alfonso Mercado is a professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He’s lived in the RGV for 12 years and said the area tops the list for health care disparities, with mental health as a major factor.
“The science that we’ve collected throughout the years has definitely (turned) into a crisis that is currently happening in our country, and especially in South Texas and at the border — the crisis of mental health," said Mercado.
Pressing issues in Bexar County include a 19% child poverty rate, with over 20% of children being food insecure. Less than half of kindergarteners are considered kindergarten-ready, while nearly 20% of children under 19 years old are uninsured.
You can find the most recent findings from the Child Health Initiative of Bexar County report on the Children at Risk website.