I would like to thank the Region IV Head Start Association President Billy McCain and the many others whose hard work has made this very important conference possible. I appreciate the participation today of every Head Start Program in Region IV as well as our important partners Community Action Agencies, T&TA Contractors, State Collaboration grantees, and other child care providers in the region. I know that you have already heard from Helen Taylor and Frank Fuentes of ACF's National Office. I would also like to acknowledge the attendance of a large contingent of ACF Regional Office Personnel representing all ACF components.
Let me underscore the word "ALL", because we in the ACF Atlanta Regional Office are committed to working as a team on behalf of children and families. We are committed to breaking free of the organizational silos which historically have isolated Head Start from such important ACF partners as Child Support Enforcement, Child Welfare, Child Care and AFDC's replacement the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF program. We are in the ACF Regional Office are committed to the vision of an integrated service delivery system that will maximize the coordination of our efforts, our energies and our resources on behalf of poor children and families. In short, we have already adopted your conference theme: "We are the Village", an ACF community united around a passionate commitment to making a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children and families throughout the Southeast.
The Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Pat Ford-Roegner, wanted to be here today with us, but because of a schedule conflict could not attend. On her behalf I'd like to emphasize that HHS, the federal department of which ACF is an integral part, is fully committed to assist ACF and Head Start efforts in implementing cross-cutting initiatives that impact on welfare reform and other programs serving children and families. She is particularly interested in promoting the HHS initiatives to prevent and reduce tobacco and marijuana use among children and teenagers. Another of Pat's priorities is the Department's initiative to prevent and reduce teen pregnancy. Certainly the ACF encourages our Head Start Programs to develop and implement strategies in support of these initiatives. Under the new welfare reform legislation, we are now moving to ensure that at least 25 percent of communities in this country have teen pregnancy prevention programs in place. There should be no shortage of agencies with which to collaborate on this important issue.
Prevention of dysfunctional behavior in our children continues to be the most effective long-term strategy for breaking the cycle of dependency. The numbers on this one issue of teen pregnancy 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%.
Pat has been in contact with Billy McCain to arrange to meet with the Region IV Head Start Association's Board of Directors during the March meeting for the purpose of developing closer collaboration between HHS and the Association.
HHS and ACF are also committed to nurturing a close and effective relationship between the federal and local levels. Communication is the key to any meaningful relationship and this is certainly the case in a "Village" such as Region IV, which stretches all the way from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the Mississippi River. We encourage our local Head Start programs and grantees to keep us informed about your programs as well as other HHS and ACF activities which are occurring in your local areas. We invite you to keep our FAX machines humming with state and local newspaper articles covering HHS, ACF and other significant human service activities. At this time, we are considering establishing a formal retrieval network among grantees in key metropolitan areas in our eight Region IV states, ensuring that HHS and ACF receive current state and local newspaper articles on issues impacting human service issues. We in Atlanta would then forward the article to our Washington offices, thereby opening communication channels between the local, state, Regional and National levels of our human service "Village." Please give serious consideration to this initiative should your agency be contacted for assistance.
The term "Village", serving as it does as a metaphor for close collaboration among team members bonded to each other around a common vision, is a courageous theme for a conference as diverse as this one. Look around you. Here we are national and regional federal officials, state and local officials, Head Start Programs, Community Action Agencies, local school boards, child care providers, T&TA providers, State Collaboration Grants personnel and other human service providers all under the same roof proclaiming: "We Are The Village!"
Head Start certainly has a keen sense of timing, for 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 service community to adopt a village mentality. The movement of dependent people from welfare to work on the massive scale required by welfare reform can only succeed in a dynamic village a village mobilized behind a common vision, a village in which families receive the variety, quantity and quality of services they need to achieve self-sufficiency.
Ladies and gentlemen, welfare reform can only succeed in the context of a village and We Are The Village! As I mentioned before, I want ACF to exemplify the integrated service delivery system or "Village" at the federal level. Not only will this make ACF a more effective human service agency, but, even more importantly, it will model and promote the seamless service delivery system so critical to the success of welfare reform at the local level, the level where poor families live.
Local Head Start Programs have a key role in bringing together all the pieces to make welfare reform work at the local level. Families striving to move from welfare to work need a wide variety of services which could include affordable full-day quality child care, counseling, literacy training, job training, transportation, child support, and other social and health services spanning the whole human service spectrum.
This is the strength that Head Start brings to the welfare reform table leadership and experience in providing disadvantaged children and families with comprehensive services delivered in a family setting, utilizing multiple components including social services, parent involvement, medical and dental health, mental health, nutrition, and special services for children with special needs.
The revised performance standards, with a strong emphasis on integration of services and collaboration, reaffirm Head Start's commitment to comprehensive services, and in fact launch Head Start into a new era of networking and partnerships with other agencies. This will intensify and strengthen our capabilities for making available a wide array of support services to families. In other words, we are now operating under a mandate to amplify the Head Start village, bringing in partners with additional expertise, additional resources and additional energy to compliment our existing efforts to assist families moving toward independence.
In the great national discussion on welfare reform, the question now is not "If" but "How", and the debate must now turn to the details, to "How" we mobilize the wide array of support services necessary to move families toward independence. This is where Head Start excels sitting down in the living room of a Head Start family, working through an assessment of needs, identifying the barriers to self-sufficiency, and developing a family service plan to overcome those barriers. In the last analysis, victory in welfare reform will not be won in the halls of government in Washington or Atlanta. We must learn to count our welfare reform victories one family at a time, as loyal Head Start staff and partners begin the real work of welfare reform in places like the hollows of Kentucky's Appalachian mountains, along the country roads of the Mississippi's Delta, in the barrios of Miami's immigrant communities, and in the projects of great cities like Memphis.
I see three broad areas in which Head Start leadership and expertise can contribute to the success of our national initiative on welfare reform:
First of all, child care is a critical component of the welfare reform picture. People cannot enter job training, continuing education or employment unless affordable child care is available. With approximately 60 percent of Head Start parents receiving public assistance we must be sensitive to the day care issue as they move toward self-sufficiency. We must look beyond the traditional six-hour Head Start day, either finding ways to provide full-day services within our Head Start budgets or collaborating with other child care providers to extend classroom hours.
ACF is the lead federal agency for Child Care. The newly established Child Care and Development Fund consolidates four former federal child care programs: AFDC/JOBS Child Care, Transitional Child Care, At-Risk of Welfare Dependency Child Care and the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The Child Care and Development Fund has made available $ 2.9 billion to States, allowing States to design a comprehensive, integrated child care system to meet the needs of low-income families entering or preparing to enter the work force. Local Head Start programs should tie into this and other child care resources to extend the operational day for children of families needing extended child development and child care services.
A second area in which Head Start can make a major contribution to the welfare reform effort is through the social services and parent involvement work which has always been an integral part of Head Start. Through the family needs assessment process Head Start programs are able to identify barriers to independence and arrange for appropriate interventions. Serving such a large percentage of welfare-dependent parents, and with the specter of time-limited assistance looming on the horizon, assisting parents to attain self-sufficiency now takes on an increased sense of urgency for local Head Start Programs. Either through local program initiatives or in collaboration with other service providers, Head Start programs must intensify efforts to assist dependent families, providing literacy training, job counseling and training, continuing education, rehabilitation services, referral to child support and other assistance agencies, and in short, whatever interventions are required to move families in the direction of independence. After all, Head Start is the birthplace of comprehensive services provided in a family setting. This is what Head Start does best and this is what our families need, now more than ever.
Prevention is a third area in which Head Start can serve as a leader and key player in America's commitment to welfare reform. I have already mentioned teen pregnancy, but this issue is of such paramount importance that it merits repeating. The trend of teenage unwed childbearing is up: from 16.7 per 1000 teens (aged 15 to 19) in 1965, to 46.4 per 1000 in 1994 some 350,000 new unmarried teen mothers per year. If we are to have any hope of breaking the cycle of welfare dependency for the future, we must stop and then reverse this alarming trend of children giving birth to children.
Last month the National Center for Children in Poverty at the Columbia University School of Public Health released a study revealing that one-quarter of American children under 6 are poor. The study went on to report: "As children in poverty grow into adolescence and adulthood they are more likely to drop out of school, have children out of wedlock and be unemployed." Ladies and gentlemen, poverty is an intergenerational malady which requires an intergenerational remedy. For this reason, Head Start is one of America's most effective preventive strategies for reducing welfare dependency in the future. With its two-generation, comprehensive strategy, Head Start is in the vanguard of America's commitment to break the cycle of poverty, to lift children out of the poverty, despair and dysfunction that so often is passed down from one generation to the next.
Though the task before us is gargantuan in its magnitude, I have every confidence in Head Start's prospects for success. The primary reason for my optimism is my faith in the abilities, professionalism, and dedication of the people in this room today and those remaining at your home agencies who were not able to attend. If we as a society are able to put the proper tools in your hands nothing will be impossible for the Head Start community. Let me mention a few new tools that will empower Head Start to achieve new heights of success.
As we move in the direction of earlier intervention, beginning with birth in Early Head Start, and as Head Start's influence continues well into the public schools through our Transition initiative, Head Start will find itself in the position of having a much wider window of opportunity within which we are able to impact the lives of poor children and families. We must use this wider window to intensify what Head Start does best working with two generations to break the cycle of poverty, moving families away from dependency and promoting a culture of success that encourages literacy, educational achievement, computer literacy, reproductive responsibility, family cohesiveness, work, independence and self sufficiency.
The revised performance standards are another important tool, empowering local programs to equip children and families for independence and success, while at the same time expanding our local Head Start Village with a renewed emphasis on collaboration and partnering. 1997 is a year of training and orientation, a year to perfect our mastery of this new tool. Let us approach this year of preparation with great resolve and commitment, because the revised performance standards, which go into effect January 1, 1998, are our blueprint for a 21st century Head Start.
Head Start is also entering its third decade of service armed with another very potent weapon, perhaps the most powerful weapon Head Start has ever had in its arsenal. That weapon is welfare reform. Let me explain. Head Start has been in the welfare reform business for thirty years. We called it by the name of the Parent Involvement, the strategy for equipping Head Start parents for success in life.
Now, with the national welfare reform initiative, our entire society has mobilized to equip Head Start parents for success in life. Whereas for so many years Head Start was virtually alone in this quest to upgrade the quality of life for our families, now we will be able to draw on a variety and supply of resources we could not have envisioned in our wildest dreams just three years ago. Head Start will also have the buy-in of public and private agencies which, because of welfare reform, support our parent involvement and family services initiatives with zeal and energy. Because of welfare reform Head Start will also find that collaborations and partnerships will become more numerous and effective because everyone in the human service field is motivated to work with us to support parental self-sufficiency initiatives.
Isn't it nice to have our Head Start family service and parent involvement philosophy validated on such as massive scale? Isn't it rewarding for those of you in this room today to know that you were the Head Start parent-involvement pioneers who perfected the comprehensive, two-generation, family-based intervention strategy, which today, under welfare reform, is enjoying such national prominence?
Yes, Head Start has earned its place as a leader in America's human service community, and it is only fitting that Head Start, with your experience and history, should take your rightful place at the forefront of our national initiative on welfare reform.
With three critical events all hitting at the same time welfare reform, the implementation of the revised performance standards and continued expansion Head Start has an unprecedented opportunity to forge boldly into the future. Expansion alone will increase Head Start's national enrollment by 50 thousand children in 1997. Supported by a national funding increase of approximately $412 million, local Head Start programs will be increasing enrollment, upgrading salaries and fringe benefits, and strengthening training and technical assistance. As local Head Start programs grapple with these epic changes, I feel compelled to offer to you the same advice I would offer a private sector business faced with similar circumstances Don't let quality slip as you expand both the size of your program and the scope of your mission!
We must not loose our focus on customer service and our commitment to quality program and fiscal management. Mediocrity is not an option for Head Start. We must excel, and we must do so within a politically charged atmosphere and with the clock of time-limited assistance ticking in our ears. I can tell you that Head Start is under the microscope of a skeptical society. My Office averages two telephone calls a day from the media investigating alleged problems in Head Start programs. For the sake of children and families first, and for the sake of our image second, we must adopt excellence as our guiding management principle.
As I have already shared with many of you, I am thankful that my career experiences have encompassed both the human service and business management areas. I believe there is a crucial message which we in the human services community must convey to our own workforces, to our partners, 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 welfare reform environment. I see the time-limited assistance under welfare reform as the greatest human service 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 service compassion that will give our message the moral persuasiveness necessary to change our society for the better.
Upon accepting my position as ACF's Regional Hub Director in Atlanta, I was excited to see several Head Start quality initiatives already in place, including participation in the NAEYC Credentialing Program, the National Head Start Association's Quality Initiative, the minority male involvement initiative, the special initiatives on information technology, the fiscal management training initiatives, and the plans for extensive training on the revised performance standards which will become effective on January 1, 1998. I support the continuation and intensification of these efforts to increase both management and program quality in local Head Start Programs. The hallmark of our Head Start Village must be quality quality management resulting in quality services.
I appreciate each one of you, the people who work every day in the Head Start classrooms and homes around the Southeast in the service of disadvantaged children and families. Head Start is one of America's greatest success stories because of you. Will Rogers once said: "We can't all be heroes, because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." I find myself clapping for each of you, my Head Start colleagues and partners who every day position yourselves on the front lines of America's campaign to make a difference in the lives of poor children and families. I count it an honor to be a citizen of your village. Together we will face today's challenges. Together we will shape tomorrow's future.
Thank you again for inviting me to be here today.