The Educational Service Center of Eastern Ohio (ESCEO) in Canfield will be collecting diapers, pull-up training pants and wipes during diaper need awareness week.

ESCEO provides support services for children and families from pregnancy to age three with their Help Me Grow and Nurse Family Partnership teams.

Services range from educating expecting mothers to speech, physical and occupational therapy for children up to age three. The team is also able to connect families with resources for support, which includes providing diapers. According to event organizers, one in three families struggle to provide their babies with clean diapers, which cannot be purchased through government assistance programs such as WIC or SNAP. 

Project MKC (formerly Making Kids Count) supplies a number of the diapers distributed through the Help Me Grow team. Project MKC's diaper bank exists to fill an unmet critical need for diapers among the most vulnerable in the community.

Project MKC distributes over 55,000 diapers each month through partnering agencies in Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Summit and Portage Counties. 

"Our Help Me Grow Home Visitors help address barriers families struggle with on a day-to-day basis," said Megan Kline, Help Me Grow Visiting Coordinator at ESCEO. According to Kline, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the struggle for access to diapers even worse.

Kline went on to say that inadequate diaper supply can impact children's health and limit childcare options, in turn inhibiting parent education and career opportunities. 

"Our home visitors alone distribute around 4,500 diapers each month to families in Mahoning and Portage Counties," Kline said. "This number has increased since the start of the pandemic."

The diapers distributed by ESCEO come from a number of sources including Project MKC and funding from the Ohio Department of Health.