Longmont will give $40,000 to a Boulder County program badly battered by the COVID-19 pandemic but still trying to help pregnant and parenting teens.
The city council, Tuesday night, agreed to contract with GENESIS and authorized giving $40,079 to the program from the city’s 2021 Children, Youth and Families Division budget. The money will help pay the salaries of GENESIS staff who serve Longmont teen families, according to a city staff report to the city council.
GENESIS aids teen parents from pregnancy through the child’s third birthday. The goal of the program is to promote healthy parenting practices, according to the programs’ web site.
Since the inception of GENESIS — which began as a pilot in 1989 — Longmont has been helping fund the program along with the city of Boulder, Boulder County government, and Boulder County Public Health. GENESIS also received funding help from a Boulder County Public Health Maternal Child Health grant and some other smaller foundation grants, according to the city report given to the city council.
Longmont’s support for the agency is part of meeting a key city council work plan goal to “Provide high quality Pre-K learning opportunities for all our children so they all have a good start in life,” the report states.
Besides the $40,000 from Longmont, GENESIS also gets $388,000 from Boulder County with a probable $130,000 increase from an end of the year allocation, the report states. The city of Boulder gives $30,000, the state of Colorado adds per capita funding of $95,000 while Medicaid billing adds another $30,000, the report states.
The city staff report outlines how COVID-19 has impacted the program during the pandemic and that the agency is “very concerned” about cuts in funding from both private and government sources, the report said.
The pandemic forced GENESIS to shift all visits to on-line or televisits while all group activities were cancelled or postponed.
Two of the GENESIS staff were reassigned fulltime to the communicable disease division for COVID response, creating the need for the remaining staff to cover their responsibilities, the report states. The GENESIS coordinator was assigned half-time to COVID response for several months.
“Overall, the agency has redirected significant resources toward COVID response, requiring that all programs minimize expenses and function with typical administrative, managerial and communication support,” the report states.
The agency is still able to deliver basic need items such as diapers, masks and car seats and staff members meet regularly with other home visiting agencies to learn best practices during social distancing, the report states.
