Church to Focus on Children’s Needs : Youth: All Saints Episcopal will expand its outreach programs and act as an advocate for young people.

Underscoring the importance and plight of children, All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena has launched Sanctuary for Children, a program focusing church resources on the needs of youths.

Known for its activism, the parish--the largest Episcopal congregation west of the Mississippi River----will expand its outreach ministries involving children as well as increase political advocacy on their behalf, church officials said.

Although the church does not contemplate offering lodging to children in need, it will refer them to appropriate agencies.

The declaration follows a year of preparation and study by All Saints as well as the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. A diocesan convention last month focused on the needs of children.

“The most pressing obligation of civil society is the care of the children, to prevent suffering of the vulnerable and the blameless,” the Rev. George Regas told parishioners last Sunday.

“We’ve allowed to come into being in America a society that does not love and treasure children.”

For example, 60% of U.S. children have not been fully immunized, he said, a rate so poor that a 2-year-old child in Mexico City has a greater chance of being fully immunized than a 2-year-old in the United States. There are more poor children among Los Angeles’ 3.4 million residents than in the Third World country of Botswana, which has about a third of the population but also a much lower standard of living, Regas said. And one out of four preschool children in Los Angeles is poor--a majority of them from working families, he said. An estimated 3,000 children in Pasadena are on a waiting list for Head Start preschool programs.

At a public school the parish has adopted, 21.4% of the students drop out of school between their sophomore and junior years. Many students are in gangs, said Lorna Touryan Miller, parish director of Creative Connections, an outreach program that seeks out community needs and forges coalitions to work for collaborative solutions.

Regas said that in finding solutions All Saints will work with other churches, groups and agencies in Pasadena and Los Angeles County and has budgeted $10,000 this year to support the effort. He said the basic goal is to protect children from forces that threaten to destroy them: poverty, abuse, poor health care, an impoverished educational system, drugs and alcohol, gang violence and racial violence.

Regas also stressed the importance of parenting in the care and nurturing of children.

At the annual diocesan convention last month, Bishop Frederick H. Borsch exhorted parishes and missions in the seven-county diocese to take up the cause of children.

Borsch reported that although the United States is still second in the world in per-capita income, the country failed to rank in the top 10 of any significant indicators of child welfare. He said Great Britain, Sweden, France and Canada spend two to three times more per capita on children and families than the United States.

Poverty, homelessness, suicide, poor or no health care, and inadequate education all have an impact on children and youth, Borsch said.

“If churches don’t seem to care about these things that affect their lives, how are our young people and teen-agers to believe the churches are seriously involved in their world?” Borsch asked.