For 110 years, Community Solutions has welcomed hundreds of men and women as employees and volunteers. Notably, of the 16 executive directors, only two have been women: Leona Bevis in the 1970s and Nancy Travers, 1996-1997. Let’s meet Leona Bevis and appreciate the pivotal role she played in Community Solutions’ history. Going ‘beyond social work’...
The Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Andrea Elliot Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City follows one homeless family in New York City during the 2010s. The book describes experiences of Dasani and her family as they navigate school, shelters, and the social service systems which are meant to be the safety net...
By: Kyle Thompson, Policy Assistant and Alex Dorman, Research Fellow Poverty is a significant problem that impacts many different communities, families, and individuals across America. In Ohio, over thirteen percent of the population lives in poverty, and roughly 30 percent of the population lives near poverty (earning 200 percent of the federal poverty line). In...
The Cuyahoga County Health, Human Services, and Aging Committee met on January 18th, 2023 to consider seven different contracts to begin the new legislative term. The contracts involved numerous issues of importance to health and human services in Cuyahoga County. Child and Family Services David Merriman, Director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Health and...
The Center for Community Solutions recently released profiles for Ohio’s state legislative districts. We do this as a public service and make the profiles widely available. They include demographic, economic, education, and other data. While we caution against comparing one district against another (sample sizes can be small and lead to large margins of...
As the calendar has turned to 2023 and the policy focus shifts to state and county budgets, it is important to reflect on what was a very busy 2022 for The Council On Older Persons (COOP). COOP is the last remaining advisory group from the predecessors to The Center for Community Solutions, the Welfare Federation...
The Ohio Legislative District Fact Sheets are the most comprehensive and reliable collection of data points on conditions facing people in each Ohio Senate and Ohio House district in the state that we are able to produce. Still, every statistic carries some level of uncertainty and these Fact Sheets are no exception. It is important...
My colleague, Taneisha Fair, recently opened a conversation on racism in medical journals. As a follow-up, I spoke with an expert in publishing on psychiatric nursing and vulnerable populations. Dr. Faye Gary, an expert in psychiatric nursing, has built her career on advocating for vulnerable populations, including Black women. As a Black woman herself, she...
In the late hours of January 31st, the DeWine Administration released the state budget proposal, outlining recommendations for funding, programmatic initiatives, and overall structure of state government programs. One major initiative proposed for the budget is the new Department of Children and Youth. The Department is proposed to be created July 1, 2023. The department...
