AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Child poverty hit record lows during the worst of COVID. That's because families got monthly automatic payments from the government, thanks to the 2021 expanded child tax credit. But that program has expired, and now some communities are trying to fill that gap. Michigan Public's Kate Wells takes us to a city where nearly every pregnant mom and baby is getting cash aid.
KATE WELLS, BYLINE: If you bring a baby into this pediatric clinic in downtown Flint, Dr. Mona Hanna will find you.
MONA HANNA: Let's go see that little baby over there.
WELLS: She just clocked this baby way on the other side of the waiting room, where the parents are just quietly minding their own business.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, hi.
HANNA: How are you guys?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Good. How are you?
HANNA: I'm Dr. Mona.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hi.
WELLS: Dr. Mona, as everybody calls her, is the pediatrician who revealed elevated blood lead levels in Flint kids in 2015, helping uncover the city's water crisis. Now, every time Dr. Mona finds a baby, she asked the family the same two questions - do you live here in Flint? And if so...
HANNA: Are you part of the Rx Kids program? Yeah? Come on, OK.
WELLS: Here's how Rx Kids works. All pregnant moms in Flint get $1,500 when they enroll. Then they get $500 a month every month for the baby's first year. The families can spend it however they want. And Dr. Mona loves to ask families who come into this clinic, so...
HANNA: Tell us, what did you do with that?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Crib, and...
HANNA: Yay.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Stuff for her clothes and stuff. I bought her a bunch of clothes, and...
HANNA: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, yeah. I stocked up on diapers...
HANNA: Diapers?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Like, clothes and...
HANNA: Yay.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Pajamas.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Ah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh. He just talked.
HANNA: But he just said he loves the program. Do you think we should do it for babies everywhere? What do you think?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Ah.
HANNA: Did you get that?
WELLS: That is the real goal of Rx Kids, to do this for babies everywhere. It is not a new idea. A lot of other countries have a child cash benefit. The U.S. even tried it during COVID. The government gave low- and middle-income families hundreds of dollars in direct monthly payments. It brought more than 2 million kids out of poverty until Congress let the program expire in 2021. So think of Rx Kids as an adorable baby-filled Trojan horse, trying to get donors and voters and lawmakers feeling comfortable, even excited, about child cash benefits. But first, they have to expand beyond places like Flint.
LEANN ESPINOZA: The UP would be the first rural area to take it on if we did.
WELLS: This is Leann Espinoza. She's with the health department here in the Eastern Upper Peninsula. And if she sounds hesitant, she is. The state of Michigan will only cover part of the cost of bringing Rx Kids to the Eastern Upper Peninsula, so Leann is going to need a lot of private donations. She's meeting with her team at a community center east of the Mackinac Bridge. They're sitting on metal folding chairs in this wood-paneled rec room, just going over the numbers.
ESPINOZA: ...Was three million that we would have to raise.
WELLS: Leann's public health nurse, Tonya Winberg, looks stunned.
ESPINOZA: I see your face.
TONYA WINBERG: Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to. It's just, where does that three million come from?
WELLS: Where does that three million come from, she asks.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Must be Mackinac Island.
ESPINOZA: And how do we sustain it?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Exactly.
WINBERG: And sustain it. Exactly.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
ESPINOZA: We hate to start programs and then the funding's gone, and we have to tell people, it's not here anymore. We can't do it anymore.
WELLS: What Leann doesn't want is another Band-Aid, another temporary fix.
ESPINOZA: Because we have so many families that the partner has a job that provides insurance, but they don't make enough to make it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Fall through the cracks.
ESPINOZA: They - fall-through-the-crack families, and those are the ones that I really, really, really think this program would benefit.
WINBERG: I agree.
WELLS: Leann's next meeting is more than 2 hours away in Munising, a tourist town on Lake Superior known for its breathtaking rocky shoreline.
ESPINOZA: Aurora. Hi.
WELLS: Jessica Kline lives there with her 17-month-old daughter, Aurora.
JESSICA KLINE: She's got a big personality, and her hair is red, and so she came with a warning label.
WELLS: Aurora is a tiny force, speeding around the family's apartment, totally unfazed by the nasal tube connected to her oxygen machine. Aurora was born at just 24 weeks gestation.
KLINE: One pound, 7.5 ounces, 11 inches long - just the beautifulest (ph) tiny little baby you've ever seen.
WELLS: None of the hospitals in the UP could handle a preemie that young, so Aurora and her parents spent seven months in a hospital in Ann Arbor 5 hours away. Jessica got $19 a day from the hospital social services because she couldn't work while Aurora was in the NICU.
KLINE: And we'd put groceries and her food and get preemie clothes. We used that $19 a day to survive.
WELLS: When they finally got Aurora home to the UP, their house had been broken into. The copper pipe was stripped out. Leann's team helped them find housing, some transportation.
KLINE: She's got two eye appointments. She's got pulmonology, cardiology...
WELLS: Jessica says that having a program like Rx Kids could have made a huge difference in her daughter's first year.
KLINE: Five-hundred dollars a month would have been enough to actually be able to get ourselves on our feet. But it was really hard, and it's been really hard.
WELLS: After we leave Jessica's apartment, Leann drives back to our office. It's late. Everybody else has gone home. And Leann says, she knows that Rx Kids would not magically solve the lack of child care and housing and all of the things that you need to actually break the cycle of poverty, but it would help. And sure, she says. She knows that there will be critics, people who are like, well, what if these parents just use this money to buy drugs?
ESPINOZA: What did they do to earn it? You're just giving them free money, and they didn't do anything to get it? -because they don't understand.
WELLS: What don't they understand?
ESPINOZA: They don't understand the barriers. They don't understand that sometimes the choice isn't always yours. Like, I've talked to moms who desperately want to go to work, but there's no child care, and so they have no other choice.
WELLS: What Rx Kids is trying to show is that having a baby, surviving that first crucial year - it doesn't have to be quite this hard. For NPR News, I'm Kate Wells in Ann Arbor, Mich. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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