with Carol Hampton Rasco, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
First, congratulations! to the Harry Smith center for being selected as one of 74 Early Head Start grantees this year! You are part of nearly 6,000 additional children and families that will be served by this program across the country.
I want you to know that the design of the Early Head Start Program was very deliberate. Its goal is to provide a truly comprehensive program at the most critical time of a child's development before that child reaches the age of three.
Using the successful model of Head Start, Early Head Start offers basic early education, nutrition, health services, and new programs aimed at strengthening the families of our nation's youngest children.
Each of the grantees are taking on the challenge of meeting these goals in different ways. Yet, they all recognize one thing they can not do it alone partners from all sectors of the community are needed.
You know this is true. You have used the power of public/private partnerships to fund both the Rolling Heights Center and the new Harry Smith Center. Working together with Head Start, the Owensboro Housing Authority, United Way, and local churches, you created a model child care delivery system for young children and their families. You are educating minds and changing lives! As you open the doors of the Harry Smith Center, you are combining the best of all worlds! This grassroots community leadership can play a critical role not only in Owensboro but as a voice shaping the NATIONAL agenda.
And that is what I want to share with you today that you have a vital role in shaping policy not just in Owensboro not just in Kentucky but all over the United States. The new welfare reform law has given states more flexibility than ever to address the issues that impact their state specifically. However, it is your responsibility to share what you have learned and inform the policy making process.
Show your state and local officials how combining public and private dollars is essential to providing quality child care. Show them why coordinated strategies are needed to keep families self-sufficient. Always remember that You Can Make A Difference.
In my review of the many articles that have been written about this impressive program the one that sticks out in my mind was in the Messenger-Inquirer the story of Debra Free. Her husband had been laid off from work and she was trying to go to school full-time. And in order for her to attain her goal she needed the help that the Rolling Heights Center provided particularly the special care needed for her daughter who has Down's Syndrome.
My son Hamp was born with cerebral palsy and moderate retardation, and I know the challenges of caring for a child with special needs. I know the support that is needed. And I know the difficulty in getting that support from unresponsive government agencies.
That was why I worked with the Coalition for the Handicapped as an activist, lobbying the Arkansas legislature to provide education for disabled children and conducting workshops on how to assimilate them into the classroom. And that is why over the last 14 years I have worked with President Clinton to move the agenda forward to provide quality services for ALL children and families.
The Rolling Heights Center provided the type of quality services for Debra Free that I am talking about. Not just a place for Debra to leave her child but a safe place that was committed to providing on-going developmental and needs assessments of both the family and the child. Debra finished her degree in special education and is now a substitute teacher. In order for parents, like Debra Free, to attain self-sufficiency a number of things are needed and among them is quality child care. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that during the past 50 years, the proportion of younger children age 0-5 who have no specific parent at home on a full-time basis has quadrupled as more and more mothers have worked away from home.
Quality Child Care is critical to the millions of working families in our nation. That's why this Administration has been committed to expanding child care through Head Start and other successful child care programs. The new welfare law creates a new integrated child care program that we are calling the Child Care Development Fund. We are encouraging states to develop comprehensive plans for child care during the upcoming year with input from local communities, parent, child care providers, and other related services much like what you have done with both the Rolling Heights and Harry Smith Centers.
We are encouraging states and communities to consider the following five principles in their planning process:
You know these principles are critical. You are doing them now! Now I challenge you to document what you have learned and share it with your state and local government officials to help inform their efforts.
Just last week the Federal Child Care Bureau met with State Child Care Administrators from across the country to explore the critical role of child care in transforming welfare into a more work-oriented system. The success of the Rolling Heights Center as well as the forthcoming success of the Harry Smith Center has so much to add to this discussion. That every parent must be either gainfully employed or enrolled in an educational program in order to participate in your center is exactly what we are trying to accomplish with welfare reform.
I have had the opportunity to visit programs all over the country and the one thing that stands out as the central component of keeping families self-sufficient is a collaborative effort from beginning to end. And, that is what you have here a comprehensive service center that responds to the needs of its community. We know that successful collaborations at any level require at least these three things:
Over time I have learned that effective strategies must include commitments from parents, diverse community leadership, business and state, local and federal governments. Programs like yours are successful because the broad range of stakeholders in Owensboro, like you, know what the problems are and what kind of approach will work best for your community. Federal efforts ought to support your work and build on existing activities in local communities.
In many ways, the national agenda ought to be about grassroots efforts. Solutions to some of our most serious problems are at the local level with some support form government. But sometimes you need to remind both yourselves and national leaders of that. You can do it by working together. The progress you make working together will make national leaders pay attention we, like you, are looking for answers.
Through an initiative called the "Partnerships for Stronger Families," the federal government is currently working to support your efforts.
As we all know, families often have multiple needs that cannot be met by any single program or agency. Yet according to the traditional way services are delivered, parents are often forced to run form place to place to take care of their children's needs.
The goal of "Partnerships for Stronger Families" if to support community initiatives that strengthen children and families, not isolated problems. So we are working to deliver services better.
We are working to bridge piecemeal efforts and separate funding streams so that we can provide you with the tools you need to better coordinate services for children and families. My passion for this issue is driven by two major life experiences:
2. The second is as the mother of a child with a disability. I have often taken Hamp from place to place to piece together a package of services for him. This in itself was and sometimes still is a full time job.
So what can we do about this?
Our Administration has been working with local communities to find out. We start by asking, "How do you want this to work?" Of course the answers vary but the bottom line is that the community must plan it. Some of the things we are working on include:
The Federal government still has a way to go, but from organizations such as yours we are learning. We are learning that in order to better serve children and families we have to listen to what is going on at the community level as you navigate the many systems to achieve success.
Children are our most precious natural resource. If we are truly serious about developing a stronger economy, increased competitiveness, and a life better than our parents and grandparents knew, then we in the United States do not have a single child to waste. We have to continue to get early childhood and K-12 front line educators, government workers, and the private sector to work together.
That is why I am so pleased to see so many business leaders here today among the teachers, administrators, children and parents. It is the coming together of family service providers and businesses that must happen on a community level all across the United States. Why? You know all the reasons. Our children must be healthy they must be safe they must have at least one hug a day they must feel loved they must get the education they need they must be part of a community that knows their name, that supports them and their family.
When we work together to make these things happen we will see a decrease in drug-use, crime, abused children and spouses a decrease in HIV-babies, homelessness and poverty. We know what our communities need. We have to work together in new ways to get there.
In closing I am reminded of my freshman philosophy course at Hendrix College in Arkansas, Dr. Ellis repeatedly pounded the table in his quest to motivate us to go out into the world and face the adversity necessary to make positive change, admonishing us to remember that saying from The Prince:
We have not a choice, we must take this moment in time to introduce a new order for our families. We must do it now. We have the opportunity. Now is the time.
Thank you.
RonLogsdon@aol.com