2021 Impact

Appleseed's 2021 Impact

EVIDENCE-BASED POLICYMAKING CHILD HUNGER CHILD & FAMILY HOMELESSNESS FAMILY ECONOMIC STABILITY

EVIDENCE-BASED POLICYMAKING

FAMILY SUCCESS LAB AT THE NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH Addressing the policy challenge (and solution) to multi-system-involved children and families. The vast majority of New Mexico’s social services system is based on triage with no ability to predict and prevent problems. A hospital social worker cannot know that a baby is at higher risk for being abused, for example, if he does not know that the baby’s family is homeless. A school counselor cannot know that a fourth grade child is at high risk for mental health problems, if she does not know that the child’s father is in prison. The lack of coordination of data that tells a child’s whole set of circumstances means that funding, policymaking and service provision is rarely (and randomly) effective.

Appleseed created the Family Success Lab (FSL) at the NM Department of Health (DOH) to use linked administrative data to discover and deploy evidencebased, data-informed and scalable solutions to common challenges facing vulnerable children and families. Linked data offers significantly more granularity in understanding key risk factors for poor outcomes and evaluating programs. It helps identify risk and protective factors to better assess family strengths and challenges, target evidence-based programs to high-risk groups, and evaluate programs, policies, and interventions for efficacy and cost.

In 2020-21 Appleseed secured legislative funding for a full-time position for the FSL at the DOH. We spearheaded the creation of a research agenda to study cross-agency and cross-generation correlations at DOH and the NM Early Childhood Education and Care Department (ECECD). The FSL is currently looking at questions regarding the impact of home visitation programs on: 1) preventing abuse and neglect referrals 2) enrollment in high quality pre-K 3) maternal depression 4) improve outcomes for other children in the household

CHILD HUNGER

HUNGER & COVID-19 In the last year-and-a-half, the COVID–19 pandemic has been driving-up food insecurity among children throughout New Mexico. In a year with so many children not attending school full-time and parents still out of work, Appleseed has been helping to fight for children and their families every step of the way. Appleseed ensures the availability of school meals, reminds the public, government institutions, and our communities that we are watching a humanitarian disaster slowly unfold before our eyes—and that we have the ability to prevent and mitigate the dangers to New Mexico's children and families.

COORDINATED 15 LARGE COMMUNITY EVENTS THAT HELPED MORE THAN 7,932 STUDENTS, 2,500 PARENTS, AND SERVED 1,800 FOOD BOXES AND 8,500 SCHOOL MEALS Appleseed partnered with over 60 different nonprofits, schools, and government agencies for our multi-pronged 1,2,3 Eyes On Me statewide events—and became first-in-the-nation to combine health screenings, oral and eye health services, food boxes, flu shots, mental health services, and COVID-19 vaccinations in a single location.

DIRECTED STATEWIDE EFFORTS TO EXPAND SUMMER MEAL AND AFTER SCHOOL MEAL SITES DURING THE PANDEMIC As communities' feeding sites closed and Tribal communities remained under strict access, Appleseed got creative and created innovative feeding sites: meals were delivered on school buses to communities without feeding sites, pop-up-sites and after school meals were established to increase access to meals during the evenings. Throughout the pandemic, Appleseed spearheaded feeding efforts together with school districts and state agencies to promote summer and after school meals.

AWARDED FOUR DISTRICTS AND COMMUNITY PROGRAMS WITH $30,000 IN HUNGER GRANTS TO FEED DURING THE SUMMER As schools struggled to provide meals to the community, Appleseed provided hunger grants to school districts to continue their feeding programs. RFK Charter School, Family Youth Inc, Lynn Middle School, and Valley View Elementary were provided grants to provide over 10,000 summer meals and food boxes to their children and families. Family Youth Inc. used their grants to provide food and back to school supplies for their community. Rehoboth Christian School used the entirety of the grant to keep its doors open during the summer and provide meals to their community. Susan Eddy, the Food Service Director, provided 2,097 in-person meals and additional summer programming.

HUNGER WATCHDOGS Appleseed continues a tradition of closely monitoring our state agencies, school districts, and communities to ensure they are abiding by all hunger and poverty laws and regulations. Our rapid response team is dedicated to reviewing local policies throughout New Mexico and are quick to ensure compliance with our Breakfast After the Bell law, Elimination of Reduced-price School Meals, and Lunch Shaming laws. As hunger watchdogs, we become experts in federal laws and ensure that state agencies not only understand them, but enforce them as well. Our legislation directly helps one-third of all New Mexico children, and we are dedicated to ensuring that for years to come.

SERVED AS A HUNGER THOUGHT LEADER IN THE STATE AND NATIONALLY THROUGHOUT THE YEAR FIGHTING FOR NEW MEXICO’S CHILDREN AND PUTTING FORTH ISSUES IN EVERY MEETING AND EVENT POSSIBLE Our staff works directly with the Children’s Cabinet at the Office of the Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Community Food Programs, Food Hunger Water and Ag Policy Council, School Nutrition Association, One Albuquerque’s Kid’s Cabinet, Santa Fe Food & Nutrition Committee, Chobani’s Hunger Summit, and USDA’s Secretary Tom Vilsack to ensure child hunger issues are always being discussed and addressed.

APPLESEED'S FEDERAL LEGISLATION

TRIBAL NUTRITION IMPROVEMENT ACT Nationwide, one in three Native Americans lives in poverty due to low wages and unstable employment, and about three out of four live in a community that does not have a supermarket with in one mile— unlike the rest of the nation, where it is about two in five. This makes it difficult for Native American communities to benefit from federal food programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and School Meals (Feeding America, 2021). Child nutrition programs should work to help sovereign Native Nations overcome barriers to ending food insecurity. Appleseed is leading the way with an innovative piece of legislation that will change the landscape of hunger plaguing Native communities.

Our Tribal Nutrition Improvement Act will:

1. Ensure that tribal children, no matter where or with whom they live, will automatically receive free school meals.

2. Empower Native communities to operate nutrition programs.

3. Ensure higher meal reimbursement rates.

4. Track Tribal meal patterns and economic development.

LUNCH SHAMING In 2017, thanks to Appleseed's work, New Mexico was the first state to ban the practice of lunch shaming. This landmark piece of legislation was quickly adopted by many other states and praised as commonsense law. However, not everyone sees it that way and the fight continues over holding a child responsible for school meal debt. Our Hunger Watchdogs monitor activities of the government and organizations alerting the public and writing legal memos when necessary to prevent the practice of lunch shaming. Together with local delegates, Appleseed is working to end these unethical debtcollection methods on a federal level. In the last year, our work has been gaining support as Congress revisits the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act. Our staff has been working to ensure that lunch shaming becomes federal law—and a thing of the past.

CHILD & FAMILY HOMELESSNESS

When people think about homelessness they often picture encampments or people staying in an emergency shelter. Yet, that is only a small fraction of the families experiencing homelessness and housing instability in New Mexico. Over 80 percent of children and youth who meet the federal definition of homelessness under federal educational laws are living in homes that are overcrowded or in desperate need of repair, or they lack access to utilities such as running water or electricity. Inadequate housing qualifies as homeless under federal education laws (called McKinney-Vento) because these living situations have a profound impact on children and their ability to learn and thrive.

Appleseed’s work with communities has revealed several challenges around identifying families who may qualify as homeless under McKinney-Vento and connecting them with the extra supports they need. There is deep stigma around housing instability, uncertainty about what supports are available, and fear that housing instability may result in children being removed from the home. Furthermore, some housing situations such as extended families living together are common and offer benefits such as intergenerational ties, in addition to the challenges of overcrowding. Connecting with families in a way that is sensitive and culturally competent requires an investment of time and resources, which are in short supply in many districts around the state.

INCREASING IDENTIFICATION OF HOMELESS AND HOUSING INSECURE STUDENTS Improving Identification in Districts Around the State. As COVID-19 kept children out of school, homeless children became even more at-risk of being unidentified and unsupported. Appleseed worked with districts to identify nearly 1,600 inadequatelyhoused children to help them get the support they need and are entitled to under federal educational law. The mini-grant program led to improved identification of students experiencing homelessness through creative and strategic ways, including payment of transportation expenses to conduct home visits and providing bilingual school staff a stipend to conduct outreach to families in their native language. Outcomes include: · 11 mini-grantees increased the number of students they identified · Mini-grantees identified 103 more students in 2020-2021 compared to 2019-2020—a 10 percent increase.

Statewide and nationally, identification of students experiencing homelessness was significantly down during the 2020-2021 school year—in large part because of school closures—yet, the evidence suggests that housing instability and homelessness actually increased. The fact that over half of our grantees increased identification during the 2020-2021 school year is a huge success.

Combining Data Sources to Develop a Better Estimate of Youth Homelessness. Due to our deep knowledge of the communities in which we work, Appleseed’s hypothesis is that there are far more students who qualify as homeless under federal educational laws than are identified. The robustness of districts’ outreach and identification efforts are highly variable. To better understand the scope of the problem we are working in partnership with DOH epidemiologists and PED to compare the self-reported homelessness data among middle and high school students from the biennial New Mexico Youth Risk and Resilience Survey with school district reporting of homeless students' data to develop a more accurate snapshot of housing instability. This type of analysis sheds light on the scale of the problem and identifies areas of the state that will benefit from more targeted outreach in 2022.

Developing a Universal Housing Screener. Our work on a universal housing screener also experienced significant progress. There is no comprehensive data set on the number of students experiencing housing instability in the state and efforts at identification are variable, depending on the district. A universal housing screener will help solve that. Staff worked in partnership with PED’s State Coordinator for the Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program to revise and update student housing screener templates to circulate statewide. The screeners ask about a student’s living situation, including whether the student has access to utilities. As a result of our continued advocacy PED is exploring adding the homelessness questions to existing surveys administered in schools, and some districts