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United Way Facts: Giving Young Children a Healthy
Start
Post date: October 25, 2004
With the right support, there can be a better way.
Giving young children a healthy start is one of the United Way ’s priority service areas. In 2002, United Way served more than 285,000 participants in programs for young children (ages 0-14).
Child poverty remains a persistent problem in Toronto, despite the economic upturn that began in the late 1990s.
While some families reaped the benefits of this period of economic prosperity, others at the lower end of the economic ladder did not, preventing many low and modest-income families from breaking out of poverty.
Did you know?
• 38 per cent of children in Toronto under the age
of 10 live in poverty (108,412) – an increase of 66 per cent
since 1991
• In 2002, 37 per cent of all food bank users in the Greater Toronto Area were children.
• Children represent the fastest growing group using emergency shelters, increasing 130 per cent between 1988 and 1999.
• The number of single-parent families in Toronto rose 41 per cent during the 1990s
• The incidence of low birth weights in babies is 80 per cent higher in Toronto ’s lowest income areas (at 6.5 per cent), compared to the highest income areas (at 3.6 per cent).
• the number of poor families in Scarborough increased by 136.6 per cent between 1981 and 2001
More and more children need a helping hand to get a healthy start in life.
The years between birth and age six are critical to a child’s future development; children deprived of emotional support, nutritious food and proper stimulation during this vital stage of life can suffer serious setbacks—from which they may never recover.
Children growing up in poverty don’t perform as well in school and are more likely to exhibit behavioural problems.
A child’s healthy social development is also impaired by poor care during pregnancy, low birth weight, dysfunctions in the family, addiction and neglect.
When two or more of these risk factors are present, a child is four times more likely to develop social and academic problems.
United Way supports social and healthy services in Toronto that provide the greatest impact to our community.
As part of this network, United Way funds 75 agencies with programs aimed at providing a healthy foundation for children. These agencies offer workshops, playgroups and drop-ins, including unique parenting programs for dads and kids, social activities like drama, games and songs for youngsters and Big Brothers and Sisters programs.
They also offer counselling services, skill building activities for preschoolers to increase their chance for success at school, pre-school speech and language assessment, clinics teaching new mothers how to breast-feed their babies, family outings and many other programs and services for parents and their children.
