For the last three years, I have served on the executive committee for Community Partnership, the Family Connections Program for Macon and Bibb County. This afternoon at 4 pm, fellow board members, Mark Nichols, Tony Rojas, and I will do a presentation for Macon City Council regarding the work of FCP and the issues we face in Macon and Bibb County. It's not a pretty picture. The rankings below compare Bibb County to other reporting counties in the state. (Not every county provides data for every indicator.) Keep in mind that in overall child and family well-being, Georgia ranks 43rd in the nation in terms. On some of these indicators, we are among the worst of the worst:
Child Poverty: 116 of 159
Free and Reduced Lunch: 114 of 159
Single Parent Homes: 151 pf 159
No Working Parent: 124 of 159
Teen Pregnancy: 107 of 146
Infant Mortality: 40 of 50
Low Birth Weight Babies: 130 of 159
Teen Births: 80 of 155
High School Dropouts: 70 of 159
Community Partnership works to facilitate collaboration among agencies and individuals engaged in addressing these and other issues impacting child and family well-being.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Bibb County Rankings
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10 comments:
Just wondering whether the position such as 141 out of 159 refers to percentage of the population or the raw numbers. That is, could the position reflect population size rather than percentage of population? LawyerX
Crunching numbers in Board rooms is all well and good. But these numbers have been bad for quite some time and don't seem to have motivated very many Maconites or Bibb Countians into ACTION at the GRASSROOTS level.
Sometimes i think that Bibb County is Soul AND Brain dead.
I am relatively certain that the ranking is based on %'s, but this webpage includes both the data and the explanation for how each variable is calculated.
http://www.gafcp.org/kidscount/kidscountfm.html
I rest my case.
Don't forget that Georgia was given a grade of D by the National Alliance on Mental Illness for mental health services and infrastructure. Children with mental illness are not being adequately served. See my website at www.dorotheaslist.blogspot.com
"Crunching numbers in board rooms" is not what this is about. In fact, the Kid's Count numbers are provided by the Annie Casey Foundation. Various agencies, including the Mentor's Project, use the numbers for strategic planning so that we can together address the issues that impact child and family well-being in our community. As you know dollars are tight in the nonprofit world, and in order to attract grant funds to fuel grassroots efforts, agencies have to be able to demonstrate that that their programs make a measurable difference and that they are not duplicting services. So, we need the before and after measures.
It just doesn't make sense. We need more hands on volunteers vs more dollars. The more of the first ensures less need for the second.
All of these money for politics sake folks, Bush's mismanagement/fraud/waste and abuse of the Hurricane Katrina
relief funds, and the Gulf Oil Based War dried up money for the grass roots non profits here in our own backyard.
The numbers have been out there for a long time and are used for political purposes by political folks that drive around from board meeting to board meeting in Mercedes while bemoaning the plight of the underserved.
It's PAST time to suit up and show up on the ground level instead of the ivory towers.
Victor Jones
Macon, Ga.
You falsely assume that the two are mutually exclusive, and they are not.
Where do you misinterpret mutual "inclusiveness?"
A-B=C
vj: "We need more A) hands on volunteers vs more B) dollars. The more of the first ensures C) less need for the second."
all politics is local, all grassroots is one on one, hands on...
Then, I guess we just disagree because I think that it takes planning, analysis, money and volunteers to make a difference. Good grassroots cost money.
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