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- The betrayal of decreased funding
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We are citizen-volunteers who responded to Missouri's
promise of community partnerships for providing state services. We ask
you to support the community's priorities by holding harmless the
budget for ARCHS, the St. Louis community partnership equipped to
achieve Missouri's core values.
Reducing funds for citizen-driven community efforts betrays all the
citizens who took Missouri at its word when the State aimed at the
core results of healthy and safe children, families, and
communities. Reducing those funds also cripples the chance of
achieving those core results because it alienates the volunteers and
donors who contributed so much to develop workable local means for
creating safe, economically thriving communities.
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Brief background
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Caring Communities is not a program. It is a model for delivery of
services to families. The essential feature of the model is that
local, culturally relevant steering committees guide the delivery of
services. The demonstrated effectiveness of the model in the 1990s
made it natural to expand the model's use when the late Governor
Carnahan inaugurated community partnerships to achieve Missouri's six
core results: (1) parents working; (2) young children ready to enter
school; (3) children and youth succeeding in school; (4) healthy
children and families; (5) youth ready to enter the work force; and
(6) children safe in their families and families safe in their
communities.
At the state level, the Family Investment Trust undertook oversight
of the community partnerships. The Family and Community Trust (FACT)
succeeded to that responsibility.
In St. Louis, ARCHS oversees both the previously existing Caring
Community sites and nine neighborhoods in the Sustainable
Neighborhoods Initiative. The Neighborhood Cabinet advises the ARCHS
board. That Cabinet, as well as the Board and Steering Committees for
Caring Communities and the Board for ARCHS, includes volunteers who
vote, shape public opinion, and expect legislators and executive
department officials to meet their commitments to Missouri's citizens.
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Effectiveness of neighborhood-based service delivery
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Experience shows that prevention and intervention services for
children and their families move neighborhoods toward the core
results. Without adequate funding of locally directed services, we
will not accomplish the core results. Without appropriate funding, we
will not succeed in creating sustainable neighborhoods. Without
promised funding of neighborhood-based service delivery, we will fall
short because such services are better and more cost-effective for
overcoming the affordable housing crisis, addiction, unemployment, and
violence. Prevention is cheaper than imprisonment and catastrophic
health problems.
As we see it, the killings in St. Louis demonstrate that the
community pays a price if we do not support our children and
families. Please understand that to us the continuing violent deaths
of children and young adults on the city's streets are equivalent to
the awful high school shootings in Springfield Oregon, Jonesboro
Arkansas, and Littleton Colorado. This violence must stop.
Easy solutions do not exist. Consistent support allowing our
children to thrive in their families and allowing families to thrive
in their communities is needed. The ARCHS initiatives of Caring
Communities and Sustainable Neighborhoods have the vision to do this
work. You legislators and administrators in the executive Departments
have the power to mobilize the resources needed to keep the process
going.
If all are to realize their human value, we must trust ourselves and
our public officials. We have demonstrated our trust in Missouri's
plan for community partnership by investing energy, countless hours of
volunteer time, and the generous donations of foundations. Please do
not betray our trust or the trust of the families whose lives are
affected by these services by reneging on state funding for community
partnerships.
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Plea to Legislators and Executive Department
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You have the power to put trust back into our communities. Please
work with us to begin the restoration of trust before it is too late,
before we loose more of our young people, before we disrupt more of
our families, before our communities sink into despair.
We believe that you share values with us. We repeat our request that
you support the community's priorities by holding harmless the the
budget for ARCHS, the St. Louis community partnership equipped to
achieve Missouri's core values.
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