Parent, Family and Community Engagement

Listening to the Head Start parent stories reminded me of my own Head Start parent story.  I first started working in Head Start then I was able to take my child to the local Head Start when she was three years old.  I was able to attend the Parent Policy Conference and it was a great experience to see the impact Head Start has on parents across the nation.  These stories provided that same opportunity.  When Head Start first began part of the mission was to hire and train great parent volunteers.  When they began the increased education levels for teachers some of that focus shifted, but the mission still remains to build strong families. 

I was a bit of skeptic when I first started working for Head Start and the value of home visit, until I went on a home visit where the family really was in need of many essential items to operate a home.  They did not have plates or silverware at the home so they were eating off of paper towel and if we had never gone on the home visit this is a need we were able to assist with, but might have never know about without the home visit. 

It is critical for policymakers and government officials to hear the parents stories because they can share with such passion that it makes a difference.  One of the first things any good advocate learns is to develop your own story that provides perspective, meaning and passion.  Yes, statistics and data are important, but to share a real life story with passion means so much more and can provide greater impact.

I think parent involvement is important for all strand of Head Start because the families of low income children are worried about standards and if their child will be ready for school.  They especially worry about funding because that will impact their ability to send their child to this great comprehensive program.  Parents can benefit by the professional development provided to the Head Start teachers because in some cases they can attend the training with the teachers as a volunteer or they will benefit through the strategies the teachers learn and will share with parents at meetings.  One of the ladies talked about the family advocate encouraging her to join the policy council so that is how parent involvement is impacted through the technical assistance.  Parent involvement is critical for the programs to successfully meet their goals on the monitoring visits by the federal government.  They interview parents so without high quality parent involvement the Head Start program will not be able to continue with funding.  There have been many parent involvement research studies and the impact is has on the child's learning as well as the home life of the family unit.  Lastly, without high quality parent and family involvement Head Start is not set apart from a typical child care program.

These stories were inspiring, eye-opening and provided critical insight to the value of Head Start for these families and the families like them that did not share their own story.

Quality Programs for ALL Children

The current opinion in the United States about quality services for young children and families is that they think it is a great idea to have high quality early childhood programs, but they cannot afford the cost of high quality care.  Everyone wants the highest quality of care, but the reality is that they cannot always choose the best quality because of the weekly cost.  Additionally, finding high quality child care is not an easy task because of limited space especially for infant care.  One of the concerns with the sociocultural context is that high quality care and education services can be accessible and affordable to all families, regardless of their economic status (Laureate, Inc., 2011).  I also think the political will in the current time is that government should stay out of the way and due to the high cost of quality care society needs to realize that this is an investment in the future of our country not just another government program.

I hope that the public opinion about the need for high quality early childhood continues to improve because I do think that early childhood is getting the spotlight currently.  The more exposure that early childhood get the more we need to have good advocacy efforts in place because we want to be the experts that the policy makers contact as the write the new polices.  I think currently with the proposed reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) they are including early childhood systems work and how that is connected to high quality child care programs.  I also think that the next 5 years could be powerful for early childhood because we are a priority for the Obama Administration, which will get us through the next four years.  Additionally, in the last few weeks former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a her vision for early childhood and there is much speculation that she may be making a run for the White House and she would continue the path to increased funds for early childhood.

In the future I imagine an early childhood system that provides high quality child care programs accessible for all children regards of socio-economic status, with a highly trained workforce, receiving compensation commiserate with their education and experience.  This is the dream of every early childhood advocate and it is our responsibility to provide the data to the policymakers so that they create the policies that will assist our dream for American to become the reality for America.  If this dream were a reality every child would attend high quality programs, be ready to learn when they get to public school, families would be supported through these high quality programs and the field would be able to retain the employees.

 

Reference

Laureate, 2011, Historical Overview of Early Childhood Systems, http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/Walden/EDUC/6765/02/mm/historical_overview/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Resonates with you about Early Childhood Public Policy and Advocacy?

Part 1:

I chose the Early Childhood Public Policy and Advocacy specialization because I believe that early childhood is an extremely political field.  When I first selected early childhood as my career I was unaware of that it was such a political field.  All the way back to high school I had aspirations of working in Washington, DC as a Senator or Representative.  I have always gravitated towards politics so it just made sense when I realize that early childhood was so political that I became very engaged in that side of early childhood.  I have served as the Early Childhood Association of Oklahoma, Oklahoma affiliate for National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) as the public policy chairperson for many years.  During the time I served in that role I began attending the NAEYC Policy Institute typically in March of every year.  It was during that time I began to mold my statement of how quality early childhood programs are needed for all children and families.  Additionally, when we have high quality programs children, families and society all benefit and it makes good economic sense to invest in the early years.

Part 2:

The reason it is essential that early childhood professional become advocates is simply because this is a polictial field if we do not inform policymakers someone else will and they might not share the message that we know is best for children and families.  We have the knowledge of the importance of high quality early childhood education and we need to use that knowledge to assist policymakers so that children come first.  The reason we need to be skilled and confident is because we have to be able to stay on track often when speaking with policymakers they work to move you toward their agenda and away from you own so you have be confident enough to keep bringing the topic back to the agenda best for children and families.

Part 3:

The three goals that I hope to gain is as follows:  First, I want to become more skilled at how to analyze data and write briefs that will impact policy.  Second, I want to become more skilled at synthesizing information that shows the impact of early childhood systems.  Lastly, I want to become more skilled at evaluating components of an early childhood system.