Ninety percent of brain development is completed by the time a child turns 5 years old.
The interactions and learning opportunities children experience in those early years set the foundation for future growth and success.
“I think it’s important for people to understand when learning begins,” said Debbie Ham, executive director for the nonprofit Support for Early Learning and Families. “When children are born, learning begins. It’s not at age 5 when they start kindergarten.”
Research has shown investing in those early years has a far greater return than addressing problems later in life, yet that’s not where the U.S. puts its resources, said Jodi Wall, director of child care and early learning at Educational Service District 112.
Documentary series
“The Raising of America” is a four-part documentary series that seeks to reframe the way Americans look at early childhood health and development.
Film screenings and community conversations will take place over the next four months. All events will be at Cascade Park Community Library, 600 N.E. 136th Ave., Vancouver.
• 4 to 6 p.m. Jan. 26, “Once Upon a Time.” Examines how things might be different if all U.S. children had access to high-quality early care and education.
• 4 to 6 p.m. Feb. 23, “Are We Crazy About Our Kids?” The U.S. can either invest early for success or pay more for failure later.
• 4 to 6 p.m. March 23, “Wounded Places.” Confronting childhood post-traumatic stress disorder in America’s cities.
• 4 to 6 p.m. April 27, “DNA is Not Destiny.” New scientific discoveries reveal how fetal and early childhood environments become a part of us.
• Cascade Park Community Library will also have five copies of the film available for rent.
Wall, Ham and other local health and early education leaders hope to get people thinking about the importance of early childhood education and health through a series of documentary screenings and community conversations.
Each of the monthly events will feature one piece of the four-part documentary series, “The Raising of America,” and will include community discussions after the screenings. The events are a collaboration between Clark County Public Health, ESD 112, Support for Early Learning and Families and Fort Vancouver Regional Library, with funding for the events provided by the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington.
The group kicked off the community conversation with an event this week, which featured a one-hour film overview of the series and a question-and-answer session with state Secretary of Health John Wiesman and Ross Hunter, the director of the Washington State Department of Early Learning.
About 100 people attended the event Tuesday afternoon at Clark College. The overview film touched on child brain development and early education, as well as family support, such as paid maternity leave, and affordable child care.
“This kind of community forum and discussion is incredibly important,” Wiesman said.
That’s because change can happen at the community level, while leaders and representatives work on policy change at the state level, he said.
“My challenge to you all is to look at your own environment and see what control you have,” Wiesman said.
For example, while the U.S. is the only wealthy country to not offer paid maternity or paternity leave, that doesn’t mean individual employers can’t take steps to support families, he said.
While serving as the director of Clark County Public Health, and then as secretary of health, Wiesman instituted infant-at-work programs. At both the local and state health departments, employees in good standing can bring infants 6 weeks to 6 months old to work with them.
Hunter has followed Wiesman’s lead and implemented a similar program at the Department of Early Learning.
Employers could also consider offering on-site child care. These programs, Wiesman said, not only support employees but also help employers stay competitive when recruiting young professionals.
That support, Hunter said, is particularly important given the difficulty in finding affordable child care.
“We need to figure out a way for families to have access to safe, affordable child care,” Hunter said. “Otherwise, they show up at kindergarten unprepared.”
According to data in the film, 40 percent of U.S. 5-year-olds are not ready to learn. In Clark County, 56 percent of kindergartners did not demonstrate readiness for school, according to Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction data for the 2015-16 school year.
“If a child enters kindergarten behind, the odds of catching up are slim,” Ham said.
And the data supports that. By the third grade, 46 percent of Clark County students did not meet reading standards and 41 percent did not meet math standards, according to OSPI.
That’s why Ham and other local leaders hope to move the community to action now.
“This is prevention, really,” said Cyndie Meyer, a program manager with Clark County Public Health. “It’s taking a proactive, upstream step.”
But addressing these issues, Ham said, will take communitywide collaboration.
“It’s time now to move to action,” she said.
