Portfolio – WestSide Baby

15Feb 2024 by Tiffany Mathisen

Driven by Love: Our Car Seat Program

Portfolio

Driven by Love: Our Car Seat Program Car Seat Accessibility WestSide Baby champions a vision of healthy, thriving and resilient families, made possible by our communal efforts to collect and distribute essential items, especially safety equipment. Given car accidents as a leading cause in injury and death for infants and children, with child passenger death rates highest among American Indian and Alaska Native children (2.67 per 100,000 population), followed by Black children (1.96), Program Coordinator and Car Seat Technician, Jarrod Kluk, stresses the importance of car seats. However, we recognize there are structural inequities that cause the basic needs gap to disproportionately affect communities of color. Financial factors such as inflation and job security remain a barrier for families to navigate additional expenses like car seats. When parents are forced to do…

12Jan 2022 by Toni Sarge

Introducing the Diaper Need Act: Helping families with babies and young children afford diapers

News, Portfolio

Introducing the Diaper Need Act: Helping families with babies and young children afford diapers Diaper cash assistance: Addressing #diaperneed for Washington families The 2022 legislative session has begun and WestSide Baby and the Washington Diaper Bank Coalition are excited to announce the introduction of The End Diaper Need Act, with bills in both the House and the Senate (See the bills here: HB1947 & SB5838). WestSide Baby legislative champions Representative Noel Frame, Representative Jesse Johnson, Senator T'wina Nobles, and Senator Ann Rivers are leading the way for this important legislation acknowledging the high cost of diapers for families. The challenge. Unlike other essentials such as food or health insurance, no public assistance programs help families pay for diapers – and diapers can cost up to $100 a month for a newborn. The only other state in…

06Jul 2021 by Toni Sarge

Collaboration is key in ending the basic needs gap

Portfolio

Our Provider Partners Part III Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times Collaboration is key in ending the basic needs gap A Deeper Dive into WestSide Baby's Provider Partner Programs Read Part II of our Provider Partner Series In order to ensure WestSide Baby is moving toward our vision, we collect and analyze data on a biannual basis. As Part III and the final part of our Provider Partners Series, we wanted to share some of the data and information we learned in our data collection process in 2020 and in early 2021. Who are our providers? In 2020, we partnered with 83 agencies, 95 programs, and 115 unique sites around King County. Here is the breakdown by Program/Agency focus: How do we ensure our partnerships are equity-focused towards our vision of ending the basic needs gap? …

09Jun 2021 by Toni Sarge

One Year Later: Frequently Asked Questions about WestSide Baby’s Operations and COVID-19 Response

News, Portfolio

FAQ June 1, 2021 ARCHIVED: THIS POST IS NO LONGER UPDATED AS OF SEPTEMBER 2021. King County & WestSide Baby in Phase III WestSide Baby exists to provide basic essentials for children in need. Our operations during the COVID-19 pandemic have, and will continue to, center our community – families furthest from access to essential items. We continue to work through our network of 100+ partner organizations to find out what families need and focus our efforts to source and supply those items. During this pandemic, we will also center the health & safety of our staff, volunteers, and donors by keeping volunteer and item collection within the guidance provided by Public Health Seattle & King County and the Washington State Department of Health. As of June 2021, WestSide Baby is in Phase 3 of our COVID Modified…

28Apr 2021 by Tiffany Mathisen

A Historic Moment to End Diaper Need

News, Portfolio

We are celebrating a historic moment in Washington for families! A major in investment has been made to systemically address diaper need across our state for the first time. We applaud the Washington Legislature for a budget that honors diapers as a very necessary and basic human right! Although lawmakers did not include the $80 monthly "diaper stipend", $5 million in grants will go to Washington's diaper banks over the next two years to provide approximately 29 million diapers to families who are unable to access an adequate supply otherwise. As we celebrate, we acknowledge that this investment must only be a starting place. In King County alone, more than 1 in 5 families - 1 in 3 for many BIPOC communities - struggled to afford enough diapers before the pandemic,…

30Mar 2021 by Toni Sarge

Building up communities to become whole, together!

Portfolio

Our Provider Partners Part II Building up communities to become whole, together! Partner Agency Highlight: Friends of the Children - Seattle Read Part I of our Provider Partner Series Our partners span multiple disciplines and social services areas including public health, social work, food security, domestic violence, early learning, infant mental health, education, and more. Research supports that the agency partnership model has many positive implications for both the partner agencies and the recipients including increased communication between providers and clients, client program retention, and connection to other services—all of which ultimately contribute to lasting, positive outcomes for families. Friends of the Children Seattle Friends of the Children–Seattle is a chapter of a nationwide organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of generational poverty through salaried, professional mentoring. The national organization was founded…

09Mar 2021 by Toni Sarge

Working with our Partner Providers to respond to the highest rates of diaper need our community has ever seen

Portfolio

Our Provider Partners: Part I Working with our Partner Providers to respond to the highest rates of diaper need our community has ever seen Who are WestSide Baby's "Provider Partners"? WestSide Baby envisions a day when all children are equipped with the basic items they need to grow into healthy, happy, and resilient members of our community. In order to do that, WestSide Baby partners with more than 100 social service agencies and 400+ agency workers throughout King County to provide essential items to local children free of charge. WestSide Baby's 2020 Provider Partner Program by Focus Area: Our partners span multiple disciplines and social service sectors including public health, social work, food security, domestic violence, early learning, infant mental health, and more. Why is this distribution model important? Research supports that the agency partnership model has many positive implications for both the…

08Feb 2021 by Toni Sarge

The Diaper Need Crisis Continues In 2021: WestSide Baby Responds To An Increased Need Due To COVID-19 In King County

Portfolio

The Diaper Need Crisis Continues In 2021: WestSide Baby Responds To An Increased Need Due To COVID-19 In King County Basic Needs Gaps Before the outbreak of COVID-19 in our community and the subsequent shutdown of businesses and community resources almost one year ago, we already knew that 21% of children in King County lived in families struggling with diaper need. We also know families are disproportionately impacted by diaper need: Families are impacted by where they live: - Families living in South King County, for example, are 9% more likely to experience diaper need than average in King County. Families are impacted by race and racism:- Compared to White families, families who identified as Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander were 31% more likely to experience diaper need than White families, and Black families are 22%…

08Jun 2020 by Toni Sarge

Black Lives Matter.

News, Portfolio

Committing to Action. Black Lives Matter. At WestSide Baby this means black children, black families, and black health matters. We cannot be in alignment with our WestSide Baby values of humanity, of intentional action, and of resilience; our vision that all children have their basic needs met cannot be realized until black lives matter and until race no longer determines how likely it is that a child will have their most basic needs unmet. @ohhappydaniLawrence Bryant of Reuters@blessthemessy We acknowledge and apologize that we have stayed safe, we have avoided rocking the boat, and we are therefore complicit in allowing racism to persist. We at WestSide Baby mourn deeply and stand in solidarity with those in Seattle and beyond protesting and calling for justice for the murders of Ahmaud Arbery,…

19May 2020 by Toni Sarge

A Defining Moment: How WestSide Baby Will Emerge

News, Portfolio

A Defining Moment: How WestSide Baby Will Emerge “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other”Mother Teresa How will WestSide Baby re-emerge from this public health crisis? This is the question on our hearts and minds. At the center of who we are is a mission to meet the basic needs of children in our community. Before COVID-19 spread through King County, our social safety net had holes resulting in nearly 1 in 4 families unable to access the basic essentials they needed to keep children safe, warm, and thriving. Now, this crisis has laid bare these gaping holes, with more of us experiencing the stress of financial instability, and those already furthest from access being most impacted. WestSide Baby came…