Did you know?
o 14 percent of Clark County babies are born into poverty
o 32 percent of Washington children, birth through age 5, don’t get consistent medical attention
o Domestic violence increased 100 percent in Clark County between 2007 and 2010
Source: Support for Early Learning and Families
Is Clark County child-friendly?
About 50 local educators and academics, parents and politicians, nonprofit agency leaders and other community organizers came together at the offices of Educational Service District 112 on Wednesday and Thursday to plan a better future for preschool-age children.
It means building a coordinated countywide effort to get young Clark County children — all of them — ready for school. And that means having a local infrastructure, from new community resource centers for whole families to convenient public transportation that gets them there.
“Who we are as a community has got to include children,” said Debbie Ham, who masterminded the “Children Can’t Wait” conference as executive director of local nonprofit Support for Early Learning and Families. The invitation-only strategy session — it was held to around 50 to keep it workable — was intended as a first step of many in the months and years to come.
Small-group discussions and whole-group reviews came up with the following overall objectives for bolstering the lives and futures of young children in Clark County:
Did you know?
o 14 percent of Clark County babies are born into poverty
o 32 percent of Washington children, birth through age 5, don't get consistent medical attention
o Domestic violence increased 100 percent in Clark County between 2007 and 2010
Source: Support for Early Learning and Families
• A pilot-tested resource “hub” that’s similar to the family resource centers now sprouting in numerous local schools — but not based at a school.
• Spreading the word about the importance of early childhood education and available resources through existing community connections, from neighborhood organizations to health clinics.
• A sustainable funding source.
• Universal access to whole-family preschool services, including mentorship for parents.
• Effective public “messaging” about early childhood needs.
• Central coordination, data collection and evaluation of the effort.
Plenty of organizational work remains to be done, participants agreed. For example, while all supported the idea of getting young children ready for school — and numerous preschool efforts and outreach programs are active around Clark County — there’s no consensus on precisely what school readiness means.
“What does it mean to get ready for kindergarten?” participant Joan Caley, a Vancouver Housing Authority commissioner, wondered. “Different school districts have different expectations.”
The nature of neighborhoods and social connections has changed, Ham acknowledged, which is why outreach must take many forms, from knocking on doors to iPhone apps. Outreach needs to be in Spanish, Russian and other languages as well as English, she pointed out.
What is the overall point? To spread the word that early childhood is the most crucial time to prepare children for a whole life of ability and success. Recent science has found that the young brain is busy building, testing and pruning cells and connections and therefore is highly impressionable; brains that are stimulated, nurtured and enriched during those formative early years show positive outcomes while brains that are stressed, traumatized or simply “undernourished” are far more likely to develop problems of all kinds.
According to SELF, research has found that children who are already “at-risk” and who don’t get quality early care and education are more likely to drop out of school, become teen parents, require special education, never attend college and be arrested for violent crime.
The cost of one year of high-quality preschool for one child is $6,630, SELF reports, while the annual cost of incarcerating one youth in juvenile detention in Clark County is $60,225.
Money for this project is a question. Experts in the group said grantors prefer bolstering proven efforts, not launching new ones, and usually provide one-time capital needs, not ongoing operating costs. But capital expenses for a “resource hub” site would likely be a small fraction of operating expenses, they said.
“Physical costs are not a lot,” said Laurie Cornelius, director of child and family studies at Clark College, while providing human services to children and families is more like providing food — it’s expensive, it disappears and there’s always a need for more.
That’s why high-visibility “champions” of early childhood education who have expertise and/or deep pockets need to be found, the group agreed. They could provide the leadership and seed money to get the effort going and prove its worth to larger, outside funding sources.
To learn more about the “Children Can’t Wait” effort and what happens next, visit selfwa.org or call Ham at 360-213-3486.
