Without clean diapers, young children are susceptible to health problems and unable to access daycare, which triggers further deleterious consequences for household employment and wellbeing.
In New York City, Catholic Charities Community Services helps make sure that families in need have access to clean diapers. With support from a three-year grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), Catholic Charities distributed hundreds of boxes of free diapers, each containing several dozen, to families around the city.
Catholic Charities’ Homebase program helps prevent eviction and address the underlying causes of housing instability for families in a variety of situations, including a single working mother with three children, a grandmother on a fixed income taking care of a granddaughter, and a working couple with five kids. In addition to housing services, each of these families received diapers with support from SNF.
Diapers were also distributed through ten human services agencies in the Catholic Charities network from Harlem and the Bronx to Yonkers. At St. Teresa’s Church on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Catholic Charities welcomes newly arrived immigrants and offers assistance with food, finding shelter, accessing health care and prescriptions, enrolling kids in school, and more. This spring, a baby shower was held at the church to celebrate eleven pregnant newly arrived mothers who received baby clothes, wipes, toys, and diapers.