47 million diapers and counting: OC Diaper Bank seeks funding to continue mission
It’s well documented that food costs continue to rise.
For thousands of Orange County families with young children, though, baby diapers are just as necessary.
Families Forward chief executive Madelynn Hirneise has done the math, and it doesn’t always add up for those struggling to make ends meet.
“A child will go through about eight to 12 diapers a day, depending on how little they are and where they are in their potty-training journey,” Hirneise said. “A pack of diapers, even with a Costco membership, is $50. So that’s $50 for 75 diapers that are not going to last you very long.”
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, Community Action Partnership of Orange County’s OC Diaper Bank has provided a critical solution. It has distributed more than 47 million diapers through about 80 partners, according to Gregory Scott, CAP OC president and chief executive.
Families Forward runs a food bank through its Irvine location, and Hirneise said the CAP OC diapers go quickly, particularly in the larger sizes. Through the program, families are allowed 50 diapers monthly for each of their children.
Karina Rodarte visits monthly for diapers for her 2-year-old son. Rodarte, who lives in Aliso Viejo, is the mother of four. She said if the OC Diaper Bank wasn’t available, she would probably need to clock extra hours at work to provide diapers for her youngest bundle of joy.
She also gets diapers monthly through another CAP OC partner, Friendly Center, located in Orange close to where she works.
“Little kids go through a lot of diapers, and every little [bit] helps,” Rodarte said. “I really love coming here for the help ... right now life is really hard.”
Scott said the OC Diaper Bank doles out about 600,000 diapers per month to approximately 10,000 children countywide. The initial state grant was for $3.75 million, secured by state Sen. Tom Umberg and Assemblyman Tom Daly.
“We call them the two Toms,” Scott said. “They were our champions to go to bat for us, through the state, and help us obtain additional funding.”
Families Forward distributed the program’s one millionth diaper in July 2020, just a few months after it was launched, showing the huge need. Hirneise said that having diapers covered has allowed the nonprofit to focus on other concerns, like food, backpacks and other services.
“We take a breath of fresh air and say, OK, we’ve got diapers covered, now we need more peanut butter, for example,” she said. “It really allowed us to redirect our efforts.”
But the state funding is going away at the end of June when the fiscal year ends, Scott said. The California Assn. of Diaper Banks is proposing $23 million for additional funding, he said, but that’s for the entire state.
“We’re doing our best to do a lot of advocacy to see if we can get it in the 2024-25 state budget,” Scott said, adding that diapers are his nonprofit’s second largest request behind food. “We also try to raise private dollars for it. We’re talking to a lot of our donors, we’re asking people to write letters to their representatives. We’re shaking every tree to really push this forward because we know how important it is for the families that we serve.”
Families Forward this week participated in the Orange County Community Foundation’s collaborative giving day, “Help Them Home.” The nonprofit raised $143,526 in a 24-hour period, surpassing its $125,000 goal, and overall Help Them Home raised more than $1.8 million with the goal of ending homelessness in the county.
Hirneise certainly hopes the OC Diaper Bank funding is obtained because she sees firsthand every day the growing need. Overall, the food pantry is serving more than 200 families a week, whereas before the pandemic she said that number was about 60 families per month.
Just last year alone, Families Forward provided nearly 3,500 children with diapers.
“It’s important that families can provide basic needs for their children so they can grow,” Hirneise said. “We know that the first five years of a child’s life are the building blocks.”
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