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Giveaway prepares children for school
YOUNGSTOWN
Scores of children and their parents lined up at Oakhill Renaissance Place for a book bag and school supply giveaway that helped the children prepare for their return to school.
The giveaway Wednesday was part of the Mahoning County Child Support Enforcement Agency’s third annual Child Support Awareness Day observance, which is designed to emphasize the importance of support collections.
The items being distributed were donated by county Department of Job and Family Services and CSEA staff and a host of corporate sponsors.
Backpacks, shoulder bags and school supplies were disappearing fast at Oakhill, 345 Oak Hill Ave., where parents and their children arrived as early as 7 a.m., three hours ahead of the announced starting time.
Because of the demand, the giveaway to the first 150 children to arrive actually started almost an hour ahead of schedule.
Katherine Dressel, who lives on the city’s West Side, and her children, Kenneth Leach, 9, and Dona Leach, 5, were the earliest arrivals.
“That way we could beat the crowd,” she said.
Dressel said she decided to arrive early because she was aware of a similar recent giveaway in Warren, for which children and their parents arrived three hours in advance.
Kenneth and Dona will be at the Stambaugh Academy this fall in the second grade and kindergarten, respectively.
The giveaway is important because the family’s only income is the Social Security disability payments to Dressel’s fiance, Dressel said.
Jessica Gonzalez, who lives on the East Side, arrived at 8 a.m. with her children, Juan Agosto, 13, Karisha Agosto, 12, Oscar Agosto, 7, and Karilanis Agosto, 6.
Juan will be a freshman at East High School; Karisha will be a seventh-grader at Volney Rogers Middle School; and Oscar and Karilanis will be at Taft Elementary School in third and first grades, respectively.
“I’m a single mother of four. I work in a nursing home as a housekeeper, so I just needed a little bit of help,” Gonzalez said, explaining why she and her children attended the event.
“That’s my goal: For them to have something for school, and I want them to be something when they grow up,” she added.
Juan said his goals are “to finish school and have a good job in the future and be an NFL player.”
Karisha said, “I want to be a nurse. When I get to college, I want to study nursing. ... I like helping sick people.”
The purpose of the event “is to bring awareness out to our clients regarding the child support enforcement agency and what we can do for you, how we can help you,” said Toni Tablack, a county child support enforcement program administrator.
“We’re trying to change our image. We don’t want to be just the hammer that’s coming down” to collect child support, she added.
“We’re still going to do our job. We’re still going to collect child support,” but the agency also wants to help the debtors meet their obligations by reinstating suspended driver’s licenses and obtaining modifications in support orders, where possible, she added.
CSEA is offering this month a program titled: “Deals for Your Wheels.” Under this program, child-support debtors can get their driver’s licenses reinstated for payment of one month’s support, plus $1, and a pledge to seek employment if they’re not working. The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles adds a $25 reinstatement fee. Those seeking reinstatement should go to CSEA offices at Oakhill between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
One in three Ohio children is affected by the child-support collection program, which serves more than 1 million children, the agency said. Ohio establishes paternity for more than 56,000 children born to unmarried parents each year.
With nearly 954,000 cases, Ohio collects an annual average of $1.89 billion in child support. The state’s employers collect nearly $1.4 billion in child support payments each year. Locally, the Mahoning County CSEA has a caseload of almost 23,500 and collects nearly $30 million in support per year.