
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, September 27, 1994                   TAG: 9409270077
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

$6,600 CITY CAN DO BETTER FOR CHIP

THE CHILD Health Investment Partnership - CHIP - has applied to join the United Way as a partner agency in the Roanoke Valley. That would seem a plus for both partners.

But United Way funding would reduce neither the need for, nor the responsibility of, local governments to provide their fair share of CHIP's funding support.

To be sure, CHIP's efforts - a model for child-health projects in 11 other Virginia communities and elsewhere in the nation - have received generous funding from outside of Virginia. CHIP has been sustained by nearly $9 million in grants - including $4 million from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, most of which went toward expanding the program beyond the Roanoke Valley.

The grants, however, were one-time deals. Money from them has run out, and there's no guarantee the organization can find more where that came from. CHIP's stability, and its ability to serve children who are known to need its services, requires a reliable stream of funding.

A partnership of medical providers, public health officials, case managers and others who coordinate efforts to assure that children in poor families get the medical care they need, CHIP should not have to go begging from pillar to post. Nor should it be faced, as it currently is, with the distraction of a $90,000 deficit at the start of a new budget year. United Way funding could help with that.

But, even if CHIP becomes a partner agency, there's no getting away from local governments' need in general, or from the city of Roanoke's failure in particular, to chip in respectably.

Roanoke supports its share - more than its share - of social services in the region, of course. But assuring kids a healthy start in life saves lots of money later on.

And, of the children CHIP serves, an overwhelming majority (70 percent) live in the city. Most of those identified as eligible and in need of CHIP services (78 percent) also live in Roanoke.

So what does the city government contribute to CHIP? The munificent sum of $6,600. That's absurdly less than Salem's annual effort ($37,000), pitifully less than Roanoke County's ($16,380), and only a dollop more than the contribution of Botetourt County ($5,000), which has far fewer children in need.

CHIP is one way the valley's governments can help make a pre-emptive strike against future poverty, school dropouts, unemployment, crime, drugs and all the rest. That's pre-emptive strike, Roanoke, not cheap shot.

by CNB