La. nonprofits seek anti-poverty funds

• By SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Sep 23, 2008 - Page: 8A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Getting funding for poverty reduction programs, no matter how well-researched they are, is sometimes an uphill battle, leaders from state nonprofit agencies said Monday.

But state lawmakers and nonprofits are improving how they go about helping the more than 775,000 Louisiana residents living in poverty, said Martis Jones, vice president of the Community Solutions Institute, a part of the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations.

“It’s been only in the last two to three years that we have gone out with the appropriate advocacy groups and public policy to present to our state Legislature the dire problems of poverty and the need to solve it and to show doing nothing about poverty makes it even more expensive,” Jones said.

The federal poverty level for a family of four in 2007 was $21,203.

Jones said she and other advocates faced tremendous trials in securing state funding for programs like the national Nurse Family Partnership, which provides first time mothers with a nurse to help them transition into parenthood.

“They were ready to throw money at programs which have no evidence of any success,” she said. “Why not put the money in something that shows a return in investment and we have the research to back it up?”

The Nurse Family Partnership has been proven to improve not only the health of babies but the entire family as well, Jones said.

“When we find out what works and bring those initiatives and implementations to Louisiana, it is well worth the effort,” she said. “We just haven’t done it enough.”

During the last regular session, the Legislature passed a record number of policies to benefit low-income families, such as creating a Child Poverty Prevention Council that is focused on cutting the state’s child poverty numbers in half in 10 years, Jones said.

Jones said state Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, sponsored the Child Poverty Prevention Council legislation after seeing data on the program’s success in other states.

“He said, I want these results and even better for Louisiana,” Jones said.

But the state continues to spend surplus dollars on highway construction, economic development and capital outlay projects, said Ernest LeBlanc Jr., director of the Louisiana Budget Project.

“Based upon historical funding priorities, the state budget in the past has been balanced at the cost of programs which serve low- and moderate-income families,” LeBlanc said.