How big of a deal is it for low-income parents to have access to a diaper bank?
Clean diapers help prevent medical expenses – Providing diapers to families eliminates $4.3 million in medical costs due to reductions in both incidences and days of diaper rash.
Clean diapers promote employment – More than half (56%) of parents using childcare to go to work have missed work because of an inadequate supply of diapers. Parents unable to access child care because of a lack of diapers missed work or school on average 4 days per month.
Receiving diapers helps parents complete current educational programs. Successful completion of educational programs would increase the expected wage and salary base of all students in diaper-recipient households by $9,985 annually per graduate.*
FISH is proud to help families in need with these critical supplies that improve employment, education and health outcomes.
The Diaper Bank is open during regular pantry hours from 1:30-4:00 Monday-Thursday and Friday from 9-11:30.
Just how many diapers does a child need? A healthy child will require an average of 50 diaper changes a week. That’s approximately 2,600 diaper changes a year. Diapers are expensive — a month’s supply for one child can cost between $70 and $80, and diapers cannot be purchased with SNAP benefits or WIC. As a result, parents try to make do without diapers by stretching their supply by leaving babies in dirty diapers longer or by reusing diapers.
Most childcare facilities require parents to provide diapers for their child. Nationally, 25% of parents with diaper need reported that they have missed an average of five days of work or school in the past month due to not having enough diapers to drop children off at child care.
*Source: https://lnkd.in/g2Uf7-kK
Food Security Expert | Interdisciplinary Thinker | Geographer | Working to build Food Ladders in communities so that everyone can thrive. Leading to a 4* Impact Case study—REF 2021.
1yIn the UK we have a slightly different nomenclature—a pantry or food club is one that has a small charge for the food, but critically provides access to other activity and support. Things like mental health, computer training, legal, housing etc. They also frequently blur the boundaries between volunteers and those who use the service—some are both. This helps repair community as it also helps repair the other damage of deprivation. There is so much other value that can be made from the encounters in these spaces when they are curated slightly differently.