Over 1.7 million children live in New York City, the largest child population in the country. Far too many of them are faced with challenges that could have serious and long-lasting impacts on their well-being — poverty, unstable housing, inadequate educational support, and lack of access to essential services, among others.

For more than 20 years, CCC’s Community Risk Ranking has been a critical resource in understanding not only how these risks are interrelated, but also the vast disparities experienced by children across our diverse city.

We’re fortunate to live and work in a city that has begun to take importance steps to make a difference for children. In his State of the City address, Mayor de Blasio pledged his ongoing commitment to initiatives aimed at expanding on access to affordable housing, living wage jobs, and a strong community infrastructure. The Preliminary Budget released last week also included investments that will result in improved opportunities and outcomes for New York City’s children and families such as continued support for prekindergarten for all 4-year olds and middle school after-school programs, as well as new investments in rental assistance and homelessness prevention, child welfare reforms, and expanded community health services.

Our Community Risk Ranking illustrates how these initiatives and others must go deeper and broader to bridge this divide.

We’ll continue to leverage our data to call attention to the need for increased investments in programs and services that have proven effective in improving child well-being, including:

• Expanding affordable, high quality early childhood education to infants and toddlers and increasing the capacity for elementary and high school after-school programs;
• Bringing school breakfast to all classrooms and universal lunch programs to all schools, and improving access to summer meals programs;
• Increasing outreach on prenatal care, bringing health and mental health services to every school, and increasing the capacity of community based mental health services;
• Increasing investments in community based preventive services that strengthen families and prevent abuse and neglect, including home visiting and parent support programs;
• Connecting families to banks and children to college savings accounts, providing unemployed youth with job training and summer youth employment, and increasing the minimum wage; and
• Expanding access to rent subsidies, affordable housing and healthy food retail options, and increasing investments in parks and playgrounds.

We hope that our updated Community Risk Ranking will help families, elected officials, policy makers, researchers, foundation and corporate program officers, and New Yorkers at large better understand the needs of the communities in which they live, work and serve, so that they may advocate for the resources necessary for every child and family.

If you have not already done so, please take a few moments to explore CCC’s Community Risk Ranking. Starting next week we will also be posting regularly on our blog to provide a more in-depth look at this data. You can stay up-to-date by following CCC on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Jennifer March, Executive Director
@JenMarchCCC