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