Oct. 28, 2007 :: No. 84

More children are living in poverty, and gang membership has spiked for youngsters, ages 8 to 17, according to the 13th annual Report on the Conditions of Children in Orange County.

The report, filled with statistics on the health, economic status, safety and education of Orange County’s children, will be discussed at an 8 a.m.-noon forum Monday, Oct. 29, in the university’s Titan Student Union.

Produced by Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Community Collaboration, the report is used by agencies throughout the county to help determine what can be done to improve children’s lives.

“The community continues to look at the report as a gage to benchmark their progress,” said Michelle Berelowitz, director of the Center for Community Collaboration. She said the purpose of the forum is to raise awareness about the conditions of children in Orange County and to find ways to improve them.

Hundreds of educators, community leaders, representatives of human service groups and law enforcement agencies, as well as probation officers will participate in the forum.

Members of a formerly homeless family, once separated because the parents were drug addicts, will tell their story of rehabilitation and explain how they recovered and were reunited, thanks to help they received from the county’s government, educational and nonprofit agencies.

This year’s report contains data that provides an analysis of trends over the past decade. Some of the conditions that need improvement, Berelowitz said, include:

• The number of students who qualify for and receive free or reduced-priced lunches at school increased by 9.1 percent (169,528 children) between the 1997-98 school year and the 2006-07 school year (184,956 children).
• In 2006, there were 1,205 known gang members, ages 8 to 17. That’s 375 more than in 2002.
• Between 1996 and 2005, the percentage of newborns with low birth weight increased from 5.2 percent to 6.3 percent.

The report also reveals conditions that have improved. Among them:

• The number of women receiving early prenatal care has increased.
• In 2005, there were 97,425 active child support cases in Orange County, constituting a 20 percent decrease from 1997. The decrease in caseload, coupled with an increase in distributed collections, has led to an increase in per-case collections from $807 in 1997 to $1,823 in 2005.
• The Academic Performance Index (API) in Orange County schools has increased in the past eight years. The average API scores across all Orange County school districts ranged from 654 to 887 for the 2005-06 school year. Orange County performs above statewide totals of the percent of schools at or above the 800 target.

“There are lots of improvements, but the issue of poverty is important to address since it affects the entire community,” Berelowitz said. “It correlates to low reading scores, a higher level of free and reduced-cost lunches in the schools, low academic performance, crime and homelessness.”

The homeless issue will be addressed at the forum by Scott Darrell, executive director of the Kennedy Commission in Orange County. The commission is an advocacy organization that supports affordable housing developments and works on providing housing for the poor.

Other experts also will speak on homelessness, developmental screenings, child support services, community service learning and gangs.

Additional information is available from the Center for Community Collaboration at 657-278-5681.

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