The San Joaquin Children’s Alliance together with members of the Children’s and Youth Task Force and community partners, ask the board of supervisors to invest funds to expand critical programming to struggling children and families in San Joaquin County. As members of the task force we have a deep and well attuned understanding of the needs of children and families in our community. Now more than ever our community partners report the tremendous and urgent needs stemming from the impacts of COVID-19. On February 9th, we will come before the board and outline current impacts as well as opportunities to expand programs that are already addressing those impacts. The board has been very clear that we must do everything we can to position our county for recovery. These programs stabilize families by connecting them to resources available now, provide educational enrichment for children, encouragement and education for parents increasing resilience in a stressful period, decrease child abuse, as well as increase awareness on COVID 19 safety measures and connect families to vaccine information and locations. Without significant engagement now to stem losses and impacts, we as a community will suffer the ongoing consequences of COVID 19 for years to come through higher crime, increased unemployment, increased homelessness, massive educational losses, and more.

We urge the board to direct staff to work with members of the task force to bring back final proposals within 30 days that the board can then fund in order to stabilize struggling families now.

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