A second birthday party took place in East Rock for an organization, not a toddler — an organization, one of just three of its kind in the country, that makes more of a difference than you might think not just for little people, but for their parents.
“My husband got me to found the New Haven Diaper Bank,” said Joanne Goldblum (pictured at right, next to State Sen. Toni Harp), with great modesty, at the party, which doubled as a fund-raiser, at her home on Bishop Street, “because he was tired of my talking over and over again about the young mothers in my caseload whose lives were profoundly affected because they couldn’t afford diapers.” In 2004, Goldblum was a social worker with the Family Support Services of the Yale Child Study Center. (She still is.) She learned, to her dismay, that neither Food Stamps nor WIC nor any of the programs that aid people in poverty included coverage for necessary paper products —” from toilet paper to tampons to diapers. So diapers, which are expensive, have to be paid for in cash by people with very little of it. The result was the establishing the Diaper Bank along with friends John Thomas, a professor of law at Quinnipiac University, the North Haven writer Sarah Baird, and others of the New Haven Diaper Bank (NHDB). “Especially at the end of the month,” said Baird, “young mothers often face a crisis.” The Yale School of Management did a study that showed young mothers in poverty often didn’t go to work or to school at the end of the month due to having run out of diapers, which cost about $100 a month. “So what we’re about is more than diapering babies; it’s about family economic stability.” The NHDB partners with 22 agencies providing 50,000 diapers a month to needy kids in the Greater New Haven area, and the need is far from met. 
One of those agencies is the Student Parenting and Family Services at Wilbur Cross High School. “We have 32 teen parents,” said Lorraine DeLuz (at left, with John Thomas), the agency’s director, “and the provision of diapers to these young mothers (and one father) is fulfilling a critical need.” DeLuz’s agency, headquartered at Wilbur Cross High School, is a magnet site for day care, along with counseling and education for young mothers. Remarkably, it is the only one in the entire state of Connecticut dedicated to providing day care for and working with teen mothers. “In the past,” she said, “we had many teens who didn’t come to school because they were embarrassed they couldn’t provide diapers for their kids. Now there are plenty of diapers. The (New Haven) Diaper Bank is a real blessing.” It is also only one of only three diaper banks in the entire country, according to Goldblum’s husband David, and unique in that it is modeled after a food bank, in which groups with clients unable to afford their own go to the bank and withdraw according to need. In the case of NHDB, however, the energized, hands-on founders and board members do a lot of the delivering themselves in their always diaper-laden minivans. Both Thomas and Baird described how the involvement of their children in the diaper delivery has changed lives —” as much for the givers as those who receive. “My kids,” said Thomas, “have really been transformed. They have a spirit of caring for other people and of philanthropy they never had before.” Baird’s children are learning, she said, “the important lesson that society provides a safety net, but that safety net is far from perfect; does have holes in it, and it’s up to us, individual people and families, to make a difference by fixing them.” Finding this niche need and addressing it with efficiency, dedication, and humor: Joanne Goldblum said they could have launched the New Haven Tampon Bank (NHTB?), but somehow concluded it would not have worked as well. It all has made for one of New Haven’s most successful new organizations. Ben Karmen, director of research for Casey Family Services, announced a $10,000 grant, and the fundraiser was also the occasion to announce the organizations first 12-hour-a-week employee and a contributed warehouse, so that diapers can be bought now by the truckload. 
Goldblum (pictured) said the goal is to double distribution to a million diapers in the coming year. The need is huge, she said. “There are five agencies asking to participate, and we don’t have resources for them yet.” Why in the world, this reporter asked Goldblum, does Food Stamps not cover paper goods? “I think the program originated not in Health and Human Services but in the Department of Agriculture,” she said, “so that only food stuffs were covered. It’s a no brainer. We would like nothing better than for the government to put us out of business.” Indeed calling awareness to niche issues such as diapers is the NHDB’s way of addressing policy issues pertaining to families living in poverty The featured speaker at Thursday’s event, State Sen. Toni Harp, herself a social worker by training, pursued some of these themes. The seven-term senator, co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, reviewed recently passed legislation. She was particularly proud of the ban on soda and junk food and the $10 million voted for jobs and summer programs for kids. “The rise in crime is directly related to how, in recent years, we have been cutting programs for youth.” Among the highest teen pregnancy cities in the country is Hartford, she said, and yet there is no program there like Lorraine Deluz’s or the diaper bank. “Without child care —” and diapers are a significant detail of that —” teen moms simply do not have a chance. “If you believe that this subtle detail, diapers, as it relates to early childhood care and the education and success of teen mothers, is something that should concern us at the state level, I challenge, and invite you, to come to us in the general assembly. The richest state in the richest nation ought to be able to take care of this ‘detail’ that means so much in the life of a child and a family.” Challenge taken, for at the event’s end, Joanne Goldblum and Toni Harp exchanged numbers. Stay tuned. In the meantime, to contribute —” and 100 percent of every dollar goes to diaper purchases —” click here.