Children face a number of barriers when it comes to home and education that can prohibit them from getting the most out of life.

Carbon County officials are trying to find ways to best use services, create programs and build stronger families to help children and their parents overcome some of these social and economic barriers.On Friday, a number of agencies and school districts gathered at the Penn Forest Township Volunteer Fire Company No. 1 to listen to a few ideas that are being implemented in the area, as well as help two schools build an Aevidum program to have students help their peers during the eighth annual Human Services Priorities Brunch.BarriersCarbon County Commissioner Wayne Nothstein and Jill Geissinger of Children and Youth Services outlined a number of barriers that today's youth face.These include poverty, low-paying jobs that force parents to work out of the area or more than one job, physical or learning disabilities, bullying by their peers, peer pressure to try things like drugs and alcohol, academic pressures, mental health issues, broken homes or the sudden loss of loved ones."They don't shed these barriers when they arrive at school," Nothstein said.Geissinger said that the Children and Youth Services agency in the county sees a lot of these barriers when family problems arise and try to work to keep the families together while doing what's best for the children.She said that the county has made some strides in being able to better service families through after-school programs, outreach initiatives, coordinating efforts with the schools and educational programs for parents.EffortsJudge Joseph Matika, who is chairman of the Carbon County Children's Roundtable, said that these efforts all meet the goals of the roundtable's mission statement to protect children, promote strong families, promote child well-being and provide permanency where permanency is necessary.He said that through the roundtable, which is a statewide initiative, agencies are starting to work on these barriers to help keep a child with family when taking them away from their parents is necessary; provide insight during the family group decision making process and through the use of technology to maintain a relationship between parents and children when parents are incarcerated.Another barrier Matika sees and is currently working to address is truancy in schools.Schools are required to have a truancy policy in place, but these can vary from school to school, making it harder to enforce.The roundtable is currently working to try to build a countywide truancy policy and will be meeting with school districts to see how they can create a uniformed policy that will assist the district, as well as help enforcement and keep children in school.Rebecca Shaeffer, school nurse at Carbon Career & Technical Institute; and Rebekah McFadden, school nurse at Weatherly Area School District, also spoke about the Student Assistance Program in place in all schools.The initiative began in 1984 and aims to identify and assist students who are experiencing some kind of barrier."We want every student we have to succeed," Shaeffer said. "Having that conversation with the parent is the hardest thing when you sit on the SAP team. No one wants to get the call that your child might be having an issue with drugs or alcohol or a mental health issue."The program does not diagnose, treat or refer the student, but provides a starting point to open a conversation with the parents and provide information on resources available to get the student the help they need.McFadden pointed out that there is also the United Way's 211 system in Carbon County, which helps families and individuals by providing resource information either via the website

www.pa211east.org/Carbon or by calling 211.The group also addressed a new program starting up in many of the schools that aims to bring students together. That program is called Aevidum, which means I've got your back.To help schools start up or continue this program, The Carbon County Interagency and Family Collaborative Board, who organized the brunch, awarded both CCTI and Palmerton schools with a $350 scholarship.The stateIn addition to what is being done on the county level, the collaborative board welcomed Jen Swails, special adviser to the secretary of budget, who spoke about the state budget currently being worked on by Gov. Tom Wolf and the Legislature."The budget has not been a fun time the last couple of years," she said. "Revenues are down, costs are up."To address this, Swails said the state hopes to reduce spending, while still funding critical programs.To accomplish some of this, they are looking at consolidating some departments including corrections and probation and parole; as well as human services, which includes the Office of Aging, Department of Health and Office of Drug and Alcohol."It does have a savings of about $95 million," she said, adding that the goal with the consolidations would be to eliminate duplicate services within the departments.The state is also focusing on investments, Swails said, such as increasing basic education funding and early learning programs and special education funding; expanding schools that offer school breakfasts, home visiting programs and early intervention programs.There is still much work left to be done, but Swails said the fact that there was movement on the budget negotiations already in April is a good sign for the state.