A family decision: Food or diapers?
Jul. 22—Editor's note: This is the first story in an occasional series looking at food insecurity and related issues in New London.
New London — Inside the Early Childhood Center at B.P. Mission on Tuesday, Maria Torres and Xavier Plasencia watched their 7-year-old daughter, Camila, run through a series of martial arts poses while their youngest child, Matias, rocked contentedly in a stroller.
As Camila and several other young students parroted an instructor's movements inside the Shaw Street facility, her parents shot occasional glances at 2-year-old Matias, the only one of their three children still in diapers.
"If it wasn't for the diaper bank here in New London, we'd be spending more than $100 a month on diapers," Plasencia said. "That would be money we couldn't use for food, rent or oil."
City social service leaders say it'll take an overhaul of federal public assistance programs to fully address issues faced by local parents who are too often forced to stretch their incomes to the breaking point to cover food, diaper and shelter costs.
"Low-hanging fruit"
Ask Jeanne Milstein what the three biggest social service challenges are in the city, and she'll give you a quick answer.
"The lack of affordable housing, mental health access and food insecurity," the city's director of human services said earlier this month.
And within that triangle, each of those problems contains its own series of related issues.
With food access, that can include a lack of transportation to supermarkets; rising grocery prices; a spike in diabetes, obesity and other disease rates; and the ending of certain cash and subsidy payments introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Milstein said there is one food-related problem with an easy solution.
"Extend and increase the amount of SNAP benefits to include diapers," she said, referring to the federally funded, state-administered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. "That's the low-hanging fruit."
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's topics web page, SNAP benefits cannot be used to purchase diapers or baby wipes as they are "not food items."
SNAP benefits are based on federal poverty levels. In Connecticut, a family of four must not exceed a monthly net income limit of $2,313 to receive a maximum benefit of $939 each month, according to the state Department of Social Services.
The mere expansion of the SNAP program to allow diaper purchases wouldn't accomplish much since families buying the items would have fewer program dollars for groceries. Milstein said there needs to be a comparable jump in SNAP benefit amounts to offset the diaper buys.
Infants require up to 12 diapers a day at a cost of $80 to $100 a month, according to the Diaper Bank Network.
"I think that, or offering waivers through Medicaid, is something our legislative delegation in Connecticut would support, though I can't say that would be the case for the rest of Congress," she said.
The connection between diaper needs and food insecurity is a close one, said Tina Salcedo, program coordinator for New London Youth Affairs, which runs a five-day-a-week diaper bank out of its 111 Union St. office.
"If you don't have to spend as much on diapers because you can use those SNAP benefits, you've got more money for food, rent and other day-to-day needs," she said. "And SNAP benefits alone aren't even enough to cover food costs for most people. It's a supplemental program."
Salcedo said even the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, program, only helps needy pregnant and non-breast-feeding postpartum women obtain formula, not diapers.
Community groups work to fill need
Once a month, several 30-pack boxes of diapers arrive from the New Haven-based Diaper Bank of Connecticut, of which the agency is a member, and are rationed out to approximately 150 eligible residents.
"But if someone finds themselves in a position where they're not going to make it, they can call us," Salcedo said standing near seven white paper bags of diapers awaiting pick-up inside the group's lobby. "And there are a lot of times when we can connect someone picking up diapers and is also out of food with resources."
Salcedo said her agency has seen a jump in diaper demand in the aftermath of the pandemic as potty-training frequently took a backseat for many parents in the face of more immediate concerns.
"People were working from home, worried about rent and food, so toilet-training fell behind in many cases, meaning kids are in diapers longer," she said. "We can't keep up with the demand."
Just down the hall from where parents watched their kids glide through karate stances on Tuesday, Carmen Rios sat through a toilet-training instructional session with her 23-month-old son, Nathan.
Rios, a Norwich resident who's taken advantage of New London diaper bank options, said she's at times spent close to $200 a month on diapers.
"He goes through seven or eight a day," she said. "I'm hoping he'll be done with them in less than a year."
Salcedo said the option of using SNAP benefits for diapers carries with it a promise of convenience.
"It would cut down a transportation step, especially for our clients without cars," she said. "They could get their diapers at the same place they shop for groceries without also having to go a diaper bank."
Diaper prices can vary depending on size and specific use, such as for overnight hours or for crawling tots. A 52-package of size four Huggies diapers at ShopRite supermarket sold for $24.99 on the store's website on Tuesday, nearly the same amount if ordered on Amazon. A 76-pack of diapers at The Family Dollar store on Broad Street ran customers $25.50.
Diaper access In New London isn't an issue just for young mothers and families, said "Chef" Tom Johnson, president and founder of the nonprofit "Whalers helping Whalers" group, which operates from 81 Washington St.
Though the group's main mission is to stamp out food insecurity in the city ― members have distributed 1.3 million pounds of food since it was founded in 2020 ― it has since expanded its work to include diaper offerings to both children and seniors.
Johnson said his group learned about the need in the city for adult incontinence briefs while delivering meals to local affordable housing complexes.
"That's when I had seniors tell me they needed these items," he said. "Now, we're delivering to 150 seniors every month."
According to the National Diaper Bank Network, an advocacy group that works with a lattice of member organizations to "end diaper need" in the United States, the federal government in 2022 appropriated $10 million to expand children's diaper distribution access programming and another $20 million for that work in fiscal year 2023.
Though the National Diaper Bank states diaper need can be met "through legislation and other polices considered by the Congress and or the Administration," it does not support modifying SNAP or WIC programming.
"SNAP and WIC should NOT be used for diapers," the group's website states. "They are nutrition programs administered by the Department of Agriculture. Diapers would be a big cost addition to these programs that already face budget challenges."
Jenny Kohl, advocacy and outreach coordinator for the Diaper Bank of Connecticut, said her group's policy is to push for allowing Medicaid coverage of children's diapers.
"Medicaid already has an existing mechanism for covering the cost of adult incontinence clothing and it would be an easier jump to move toward adding children's diapers to that program," she said.
Legislation fails to gain traction
Several pieces of federal legislation have been floated to address the diaper need, including the "Improving Diaper Affordability Act of 2023" co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District.
That bill, which has not yet been forwarded to a congressional committee for scrutiny, calls for redefining the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and treat diapers as a qualified medical expense under health savings accounts, while also prohibiting the imposition of state sales taxes on retail diaper sales.
A previous bill co-sponsored by DeLauro, the "End Diaper Need Act of 2021," which did not move out of committee, called for appropriating $100 million in each fiscal year from 2021 to 2024 to expand and scale existing diaper programs and allow their purchase through health savings accounts and certain employer-funded group health plans.
Several New Jersey lawmakers last year introduced a bill to allow parents to buy diapers using public assistance dollars. The bill would allow any parent with a child younger than 3 to use funding received from county, federal or state assistance programs to buy diapers, if such a funding use is permitted by federal law.
The bill directs the state's commissioner of human services to apply for federal waivers to implement the new language.
The bill was referred to the New Jersey Legislature's Human Service Committee in March 2022, according to the state's bill-tracking website.
State Rep. Anthony Nolan, D-New London, said the issue of diapers, including the SNAP proposal, occasionally surfaces in lawmakers' conversations.
"I support the idea, maybe by making diaper purchases a separate SNAP category from food," he said. "Buying diapers or food shouldn't be an 'and/or' decision for residents."
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said he will continue working with lawmakers, stakeholders and families on the diaper access issue, though he did not say if specifically modifying the SNAP program was a practical political possibility.
"One in three families across the United States do not have enough diapers to meet their children's needs — and families in eastern Connecticut are not immune to this challenge," he said in an emailed statement. "Any policy proposal that works to improve access to diapers deserves attention in Congress."
At a FRESH New London food distribution event on Wednesday, India Charles weaved between other volunteers toting in pallets of fresh greens and boxes of canned goods set to be passed along to needy residents.
Charles, who oversees the group's monthly free diaper distribution, said she fully supports adding the disposable diapers to the SNAP plate, even if there's no extra money added to the public program.
"There should be more money for that, but even without it, people should be able to make their own choices on what they're using that money for," she said. "My hope is there should be enough money for food, diapers and formula for anyone who needs it. That's the American dream."
