Free diapers avert a crying shame

NEEDHAM -- Jean Ann Lynch has one word to describe her approach to child-abuse prevention -- diapers.

Free diapers, actually, says the founder of Baby Basics Inc., a Needham-based nonprofit organization that distributes cartons of diapers every two weeks to low-income families in South Boston and Hyde Park.

''People say, 'Why diapers? Why not food or clothing?' We hear this all the time," Lynch said.

But those people have never seen diaper rash so severe it climbs up a screaming child's back in bloody, red blisters, she said. Social workers believe babies who cry inconsolably are at higher risk for abuse in low-income families, where parents are already under severe financial and personal stresses.

Women eligible for the state's Women, Infants, and Childrenor WIC, program can get formula, baby food, and medical care, but neither WIC nor the state's food stamp program will help pay for diapers, Lynch said. Baby Basics deliberately seeks out working poor parents -- employed mothers and fathers who earn just enough to disqualify themselves from most state aid.

Babies soil as many as seven diapers per day, and even when purchased in bulk, a carton of 150 diapers can cost more than $30. Poor urban parents without cars are often stuck buying baby supplies at drugstores and supermarkets with much higher markups, and can spend upward of $75 per month on diapers.

''This is a lot for parents making little more than minimum wage and raising one or two children," Lynch said.

Lynch tells of women trying to reuse disposable diapers by simply shaking out the waste or by trying to wash and air-dry them. She's heard of women simply unable to handle the stress of a sobbing baby with a terrible rash. In Wilmington, Vt., where Baby Basics recently started a program, a local assistant district attorney told her of a case in which a mother abandoned an inconsolable child in a snowbank, said Lynch.

Diaper rash, combined with chronic neglect, can even occasionally be deadly. In a recent case unrelated to the Baby Basics program, a 15-month-old Johnstown, Pa., boy died in December of sepsis, a blood infection brought on by his severe diaper rash. Authorities charged the child's 27-year-old mother with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.

Lynch said society remains surprisingly unsympathetic to the pressures on young, low-income families.

''I've had people say to me, 'Why don't these mothers just use cloth diapers?' and I say, 'Oh, come on, these women don't even have their own washing machines!' They're supposed to haul all those dirty diapers to a laundromat?"

There are currently 50 families in the South Boston program, founded in 1998, and six in the Hyde Park program, founded in 2000, all referred by local social workers. Each program is run by a local board of volunteers, and is self-supporting through fund-raising.

Every two weeks, Baby Basics volunteers transport dozens of cartons of diapers and distribute them to program participants, using donated space in church basements. Last year, the organization distributed more than 70,000 diapers in South Boston alone, at a cost of $1,800 per month, Lynch said.''Diapers are such a simple thing," Lynch said. ''But they make such a big difference."

For more information on the Baby Basics program, or to volunteer, go to www.babybasicsinc.org or call 617-733-5617.

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.