As champions for children, program providers are doing everything they can during this time to keep youth safe and continue to serve them. NC CAP wants to continue to support providers during this time. In every way, providers throughout North Carolina and the nation have risen to the challenge in every way. 

In support of your efforts, NC CAP has a new resources to share, Mizzen by Mott.  Mizzen by Mott is a new app built with and for afterschool professionals to provide high-quality, engaging learning content to the afterschool field. 

To meet the needs of this moment, the Mizzen team has added new activity playlists and multi-week modules that can be done at home or in a small-group setting. The app's content focuses on youth learning and well-being and is provided by organizations like Jazz at Lincoln Center, the California Academy of Sciences, After-School All Starts, OregonAsk, and VentureLab. Through support from the Mott Foundation, the app and all of its content is available for free to afterschool providers. 

 To learn more about the Mizzen app, click here. 

A new report released by Save the Children provides the first-ever ranking of counties in the United States where children are most and least prioritized. The report, aptly entitled, " The Land of Inopportunity: Closing the Childhood Equity Gap for America's Kids " shows that where a child grows up can have a profound impact on their long-term health and success; especially clear are the racial, geographical, and economic divides that define these disparities . Of the bottom ranking counties, more than 90 percent are rural communities and three-quarters contain non-white majority populations. Based on data surrounding the availability of afterschool in different areas of the country, it can be corroborated that the need for programs is high in areas of concentrated poverty and even greater in rural-areas for every child in an afterschool program in a rural area, three are waiting to get in, compared with the national average of two that are waiting to get in for every one child enrolled. 

The rankings in "The Land of Inopportunity" are based on four factors that cut childhood short: 

(1) hunger; (2) dropping out of school; (3) teenage pregnancy; and (4) early death due to poor health, accident, murder, or suicide. 

The report points out the importance of looking at data from multiple levels. By breaking out each of these factors using specific indicators and analyzing the data at both a state and local level, Save the Children illustrates the ways that looking only at state-level data, for example, may hide disparities and leave areas of concentrated need undetected. To support further analysis, they have created an interactive map that ranks each state and each county, based on their performance in each of the four factors cited above, and allows for a deeper look into the specific breakdown of the measures in each county. 

 To learn more about the The Land of Inopportunity: Closing the Childhood Equity Gap for America's Kids, visit  here. 

Excerpt from: 

Hegarty, E. "Closing the Childhood Equity Gap: New Report Provides a Data-Driven Look into the Prioritization of Children at the State and Local Levels". Afterschool Alliance. 06/26/2020  

With the increasing toll that the COVID-19 pandemic is taking on communities and families across the country, attention has turned to the impact the crisis has been having on the mental health of youth. Primary concerns among school health professionals, mental health practitioners, and public health experts is the current impact and potential for significant future impact, resulting from children and youth experiencing prolonged stress. 

What is toxic stress?

Stress, in itself, is not entirely negative. In tolerable amounts, it can actually be growth-promoting. Stress becomes harmful when the dosage is more intense or is prolonged to the extent that it overwhelms the body's stress response system. This type of stress is called toxic stress, because it can impair the brain's growth and development, and can weaken other critical systems in the body, leading to problems within learning, behavior, and health in both the short term and throughout one's lifespan. While toxic stress may not always be avoidable, such as in cases of natural disasters or long-term public health crises, there are ways that stress can be buffered and the harmful and long-term effects can be mitigated. Research has shown that positive relationships with peers and stable, caring adults; predictable routines that emphasize healthy behaviors; and, social and emotional skill development can not only buffer and mitigate the impacts of toxic stress, they can increase the natural resilience of children and youth , leading to positive growth following traumatic experiences, as well as increased capacity to withstand future adversity. 

Afterschool Promotes Mental Wellness

Afterschool, rooted in a tradition of positive youth development, has evolved in ways that support social-emotional learning and whole-child development. And, as such programs in and of themselves are buffers for toxic stress. For example, in addition to providing nutritious snacks and meals, and opportunities for physical activity, programs are now incorporating health education that supports the development of a wide range of healthy behaviors and routines, including avoiding drug and alcohol use, getting adequate sleep, and staying safe on the internet.

Increasingly, programs are implementing evidence-based models that promote the development of social-emotional skills, as well as incorporating concepts of trauma-informed care, and whole-child development. And the most core component of any afterschool program is, and has always been, an explicit focus on creating a safe environment by fostering the development of positive peer relationships and providing the support of stable, caring adult program staff and activity leaders. 

The Five Ways Afterschool Buffers Toxic Stress

1. Supportive adult and peer relationships;
2. Social-emotional learning;
3. Safety and belonging;
4. Youth voice and choice; and
5. Promoting physical health.