Protecting low-income children from exposures to environmental hazards in SF Recreation and Parks
HCOP’s collaborative work with the Recreation and Parks Department [Department] and child care providers provides an excellent example of HCOP’s success in getting city agencies to make their facilities lead-safe for small children. The Department has over 200 facilities, almost all of which were painted with lead. HCOP began working with the Department in 1991. We soon learned that most of the facilities were in disre-pair and that there was no program or staff dedicated to making them environmentally safe for anyone. Over several years HCOP educated Department staff about environmental hazards in the facilities and the need to make them environmentally healthy, especially for young children. But progress was slow, and in 1998 HCOP brought the issue to the Board of Supervisors. Board members cooperated, and the Department agreed to hire qualified staff and make its facilities lead-safe. HCOP supported that commitment and continues to work with the Department to help make sure that it is implemented.
After the Department began to remediate its facilities, HCOP learned that many child care providers use those facilities, but the Department had no idea who they were and which facilities they used. HCOP wanted to make sure that the Department made these facilities a high priority for cleanup. Fortunately, HCOP works closely with the two large child care resource and referral agencies in the city and a number of child care provider networks and associations. With the cooperation of the family child care providers, the state Department of Social Services [child care centers] and the Childhood Lead Prevention Program in the Department of Public Health, providers were surveyed and Department sites used by thousands of children in their care were identified. This information was provided to the Department, which revised its priorities for making the facilities lead-safe based on that information. In addition, HCOP requested that the Department provide a list of the facilities used by the providers and the status of cleanup efforts for each of those facilities. The Department complied with the request. Long-term, collaborative efforts can make a difference. HCOP believes that this effort is unusual and is not being duplicated else-where in the country.
Learn about the clean-up status on the parks you use! Click onto the Parks and Rec Report to get the Status of Clean up Efforts as of December 15, 2003. Note that this is not a comprehensive list of all of the recreational park sites in San Francisco, but it is a list of the ones used by the child care providers who replied to the survey.
