I would like to thank the Kentucky Head Start Association for inviting me here today. I also acknowledge your Association President, Ms. Toby Miller, and her hard work to put this very important conference together.
I am looking forward to cintuing the Administration for Children and Family's close association with the Kentucky Head Start Association. We are all partners in a common mission: promoting the well-being of America's most vulnerable children and families. ACF will always join with you in taking that mission very seriously.
It is easy for me to understand why Head Start in Kentucky enjoys a reputation for cutting-edge leadership. In this information age Kentucky is blazing the trail in promoting Region IV's Technology Initiative, ensuring that the data utilized at every level from the social services personnel in the field to the ACF Regional Office is current, accurate, pertinent and easily accessible to those with a need-to-know. I appreciate the efforts of Audubon Area Head Start, and especially Mr. Aubrey Nehring, the Director, and Mr. Ron Logsdon, the Executive Director, for their leadership in developing and promoting Kentucky's technology initiative.
Your Association logo the word "Quality" encircled by the four C's of Cooperation, Communication, Collaboration and Coordination captures perfectly the essence of Head Start in Kentucky. I commend this Association for your commitment to "Quality" not because you talk the talk, but because you walk the walk you take the steps that lead to quality services for children and families. When this Association hosted a fiscal management workshop sponsored by MasterGuide, and when Head Start staff attended the workshop in such great numbers, you proved Kentucky's serious dedication to quality Head Start.
Kentucky is ahead of most states in fostering an effective relationship between the public schools and Head Start. The Kentucky Education Reform Act which we all know as KERA, enjoys a national reputation as a model for state participation in the pre-school arena. I applaud the positive collaboration that exists between KERA and Head Start, for you have translated the four C's of your logo into a living reality benefiting the poor children and families of this state. Even more importantly for this critical point in America's human service history, you have proven that states, the public schools and Head Start can work together in the preschool arena, providing the coordinated child care foundation so necessary to support welfare reform.
Certainly welfare reform, representing as it does the greatest and most significant change in our nation's social policy in 61 years, compels not only Head Start, but the whole of the human services community, to adopt your Association's four C's if we are to succeed.
Head Start, to be sure, will be profoundly affected by welfare reform, and, as always, you will take a leadership position in setting new directions for human services in America. In this era of fiscal restraint Head Start will actually be receiving a substantial funding increase in Fiscal Year '97, including $100 million dollars to offset cost-of-living increases, $77 million dollars for quality improvements and additional salary increases, $8 million dollars for training and technical assistance, and more than $226 million dollars to expand enrollment nationally by approximately 50,000 children. When we consider that Head Start has already added 135,000 children since 1992, it is obvious that America has given Head Start a major vote of confidence.
With welfare reform's new focus on supporting America's children and families, Head Start is more important than ever as a key player in our national strategy to assist the poor and disadvantaged of our society. For Head Start in these past thirty years has been in the forefront of supporting America's children and families, and that role will only increase with the new directions required by welfare reform.
As you well know, Head Start is usually one step ahead of the broader human services community in initiating new trends. Showing Head Start's uncanny wisdom for anticipating the future, the task force which recently revised the Head Start performance standards included a section on collaboration. That strengthens Head Start's already strong position in the human services community, facilitiating ever closer cooperation and networking between your local programs and other human services providers to make welfare reform work. "Collaboration among Partners" will be the hallmark of the human service community of the future, and Head Start as always will take its place in the forefront as a leader.
The revised Performance Standards and welfare reform, both hitting at the same time, give Head Start an unprecedented opportunity to forge boldly into the future. Ladies and gentlemen, as we stand poised at the threshold of a new human service era let us not take lightly the necessity for Head Start to set new directions for the future.
The challenge I accept for myself, and the challenge I extend to you as Head Start Directors, is that we make the most of this crucial juncture in America's human service history, that we accept this time of change and transition for what it is ... a golden opportunity. This is a time to discard the old methodologies that don't work, a time to reinvent our agencies into effective, goal-oriented, customer-focused organizations.
This is also a time to unleash the creativity and potential of our employees, a time to re-think and, where appropriate, to restructure the work environment to motivate and build the capacity of staff to be able to achieve great things on behalf of children, youth and families.
As I take on this new challenge at ACF during this critical juncture in our nation's history, I am especially thankful that my career experiences have encompassed both the human service and the business management arenas. I believe there is a crucial message which we must convey to our own workforces, to our customers and to society at large. That message is this: That the compassion and dignity typically associated with human services, and the management effectiveness and efficiency typically associated with business and industry are not incompatible! In fact, compassion and dignity must be combined with management effectiveness and efficiency if we as human service organizations are to succeed in our mission. This is especially true in this new welfare-reform environment. I see the time-limited assistance under welfare reform as the greatest human services challenge of this century. Failure on the management-efficiency side of our equation will translate to failure on the side of compassion and dignity, because our customers would be cut off from services they might still require. But I prefer to frame that statement in the positive: Success in operating efficient, effective human service agencies will translate into the highest expression of compassion and dignity that is, a new life characterized by independence and self-sufficiency. It is the fusion of management effectiveness and human services compassion that will give our message the moral persuasiveness necessary to change our society for the better.
In the spirit of your four C's, Head Start programs in Kentucky must work closely with K-TAP, Kentucky's welfare reform plan which has already been deemed complete and is in effect. With so many Head Start parents receiving public assistance we must develop and implement the strategies that will move our clients away from dependency and toward self-sufficiency and employment. We must do this with the clock of time-limited assistance ticking in our ears, and we must do this within a politically charged atmosphere while scrutinized under the microscope of a skeptical society.
Because of valued partners such as the people in this room today, I am confident that together we will make welfare reform work on behalf of the disadvantaged children and families of this nation. But successful welfare reform will not "just happen." We must actively take the steps to make it happen.
For example, today in Macon, Georgia, two of our ACF managers, Ken Jackson and Marsha Lawrence, are meeting with representatives of Georgia's Division of Family and Children Services (DFACS) and the Georgia Head Start Association. The purpose of that meeting is simply this: To promote the collaboration between Head Start and DFACS (Georgia Department of Family and Children's Services) so critical to the success of welfare reform in the State of Georgia. I am committing ACF to support the Kentucky Head Start Association in your efforts to promote closer collaboration with the Department for Social Insurance. Let's mobilize your four C's to make welfare reform work, joining the Head Start Association and the Department of Social Insurance on the same team to move Kentucky's poor children and families in this state toward self-sufficiency.
The task before us is no everyday challenge. In fact, this new welfare reform legislation represents the greatest and most significant change in social policy since the New Deal, mandating an historic shift of power from the federal level to the states, and ending sixty one years of federally guaranteed entitlement to welfare assistance under AFDC. Welfare reform is nothing less than a watershed event in our national strategy for providing public assistance to the children and families of our society. As such, every human service agency, whether federal, state or local, will be profoundly affected by welfare reform, either directly or indirectly. This is especially true of the Administration for Children and Families, because ACF has the primary federal oversight responsibility for implementing the new welfare reform legislation.
Recognizing this, I have assumed my new position as the Regional Administrator and Southeastern Hub Director for ACF with humility, and tremendous excitement and enthusiasm. Nothing motivates me more than a challenge, and I can't conceive of a challenge more worthy than furthering ACF's mission. Promoting the well-being of disadvantaged children, youth and families is a mission in which I passionately believe, a mission which deserves and will receive my total commitment. Let me say that I consider it the highest honor to serve on the same team with each of you as together we set new directions for a future that will turn our vision into a reality for the vulnerable children and families of Kentucky.
"Customer Service" is one of my greatest passions. This has been true throughout my career, beginning over twenty years ago at the local level in county government and continuing through my most recent post with the National Alliance of Business. I have seen first-hand that human service agencies and private-sector businesses share a common purpose for which they both exist. That purpose is to serve customers.
As human service professionals, we must allow nothing to divert our focus from customer service, to divert us from meeting the needs of America's most vulnerable children and families. And let's face it, there is plenty to distract us. A short list would include the historic changes brought about by the federal welfare reform legislation, the fast-changing relationship between the federal and state partners, downsizing and restructuring within many human service agencies, and the epic culture change that shifts our focus away from simply "process" and places a renewed emphasis on "results."
Having worked in the workforce development arena for over 20 years, believe me, I am acutely aware of the powerful forces at play within all of our various workplaces at this time. I am also aware that major transitions such as this, disconcerting as they may be, can also bring out the best in both agencies and staff.
In support of welfare reform, the Department of Health and Human Services has launched an initiative to reduce teen pregnancy. I encourage Head Start programs to intensify social service and parent involvement initiatives in this area. Prevention of teenage pregnancy is essential to breaking the cycle of dependency. The numbers speak for themselves: When young women do three things 1) finish high school, 2) reach age 20, and 3) get married before having their first child, they have only an 8% chance of raising their children in poverty. For young women who do not do these three things before having their first child, the odds of raising their children in poverty rise to 79%. Prevention is our most effective long-term strategy for reducing welfare dependency in America.
Let us not underestimate the task before us. Welfare reform has changed everything. Every human service program and each administering agency, whether federal, state or local, must take a step back and re-evaluate goals and strategies for achieving these challenging new goals. Since this is a Head Start audience let me take Head Start as an example. Consider this: Sixty percent of the children enrolled in Head Start in 1996 were from families receiving pubic assistance! To measure the impact of welfare reform on Head Start we would have to use the Richter scale.
Our Head Start families under K-TAP will now be required to become involved in work activities within two years and attain self-sufficiency within five years. Head Start Social Services personnel must work under an increased urgency to promote parental literacy, G.E.D. and other continuing education programs, job training and job placement.
Head Start will also assume an increased role in providing child care for parents in training or working, entering into partnerships with other child care providers to offer full day services. The Early Head Start initiative is moving Head Start in the direction of providing quality child development services as well as day care serving pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers. Last year 143 grants were awarded nationally, serving 11 thousand families.
Yes, Head Start will be on the front lines of welfare reform because of this one over-ridding reality: If welfare reform affects our customers, it also affects the human service programs and providers who serve those customers. And let's face it, welfare recipients will always form a large percentage of the customer-base for Head Start and any human service program targeting the poor and disadvantaged.
We have the privilege of being the pioneers of a new era. I am excited by the challenge and look forward to joining with all of you as we blaze this new trail into the future.
In closing, I would like to say to my Head Start partners here today that I feel very privileged to be here this afternoon and to have this opportunity to work with all of you to improve the quality of life for the vulnerable children and families of Kentucky. I look forward to working with all of you as together we pledge to move our customers away from dependency and in the direction of independence and self-sufficiency.
Thank you.