A.C.C.E.S.S. "Blog" Page
Our intent with this page is to encourage information sharing and dialog around issues of concern for our members and the overall community. This is how we intend for this to work.
We will be asking different concerned individuals to periodically write up their thoughts, feelings, impressions of issues concerning the young child, families and/or the public systems that impact on these children. We will then post these on this page.
If you would like to either submit a written piece to this page, or would like to suggest a topic you would like to read about, please e-mail us at info@mainechildcare.org.
Once a piece is written, we welcome any and all to respond to what they read. Your response can be positive, critical, or simply raise additional questions. We ask that you respond (again) to our e-mail, info@mainechildcare.org.
Your comments will NOT be immediately posted. We reserve the right to monitor all submission (both original pieces and responses.) Our monitoring is NOT to edit your ideas, but rather to ensure appropriate language and content.
Unless you specifically ask us to keep your input confidential, your submission to this page will be interpreted as permission to post your statements.
As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.
|
I am writing to voice my concerns about eliminating the Subsidized Slots Program for Family Child Care Providers and to begin administering the Voucher Program within the state government. As an in home child care provider for 23 years, I think this will be a very big mistake for providers and families of Washington County. to start with, the form isn't user friendly. Parents have a hard enough time completing the form on their own. At present they can call WHCA in Milbridge to get help with the forms or any other questions they may have. With the new program, they would be directed to call Augusta. chances are, when calling into Augusta, they will be sent to an automated service and help will never be there! Augusta will be to busy to help and it;s the children who really need to be in child care that will suffer! This is too big of a program to have a centralized location. There needs to be offices in all counties for the day to day assistance that families and child care providers need.
As an independent in-home child care, I've dealt with the Aspire program. This program is not Feasible for a small business because Aspire is billed weekly and can take months to receive payment putting a financial hardship on the homebased business. If the voucher program goes to the government, I'll have to reconsider taking these children just for that reason. As it is right now, we get paid bi-weekly and I can depend on that to pay my bills and keep children in my care fed and warm!
I'm sure there will also be more paper work. With the amount we do right now, I personally don't feel I can spend more time filling out paperwork without having t o raise my rates. I try to stay reasonable but I can't spend hours of my free time doing paper work. As a small in-home child care, I only have myself to do it all and to help my families. I feel the government taking over the voucher program will very much hurt the children of Washington County.
|
I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for on this page, but I thought that I might offer this.
I was (along with a hundred or so other folks from around the county) asked by the National Women's Law Center to respond to the following question:
Core question: What course should the nation chart for children from birth through age 13 over the next decade in order to ensure affordable, high-quality child care experiences that meet the needs of children and their families? What specific steps are involved in achieving these goals?
This was my response: For what it’s worth, it seems to me, from my freely admittedly limited corner of the universe, this question is actually address two concerns and requires we add a third. The first question asks “What course should child care look like in this country?”, the second is “How do we get there?”, and the third (which actually precedes this “How do we get there” question) is “What are/have been our barriers to achieving these goals?” It seems to my increasingly limited eyesight that the first question is actually the easiest to answer. In fact, one of the more intriguing development of this field over the past 25 years has be the blossoming of work around the science of early care and education. We have more hard data around both the needs of the child and family (developmental, demographic and cross disciplinary) then I ever though possible. Good Golly Miss Molly, the amount of literature that crosses my desk in a given week/month/year on best practice models is overwhelming (in a good way.) Within this literature, there is remarkable consistency around defining needs and responses that will result in the most positive results. Given all of that, however, the next questions remain paramount; “Since we KNOW what the needs are and we KNOW those responses (both in terms of community systems and program level best practices) that will be most effective, WHY are we seeming to be taking steps BACKWARD in terms of implementing those systems on either a state or federal level? I would opinionate that the reasons for this may lay in a few other key developments having to do with our advocacy and systems development. The first is that we, as a field, may have become too enamored with the science of best practices. Many of our best and brightest (advocates, providers, educators, and others) are utilizing a preponderance of their resources in discussions on how to train staff, how to develop classroom curriculums, what are the most appropriate classroom materials, etc, without a corresponding commitment to the discussion of accessing resources. I realize that this may be considered heresy in some corners (understanding that I try to practice some form of heresy at least once a day, just to stay in practice) but I would still say that it is irresponsible for anyone to advocate for higher standards without putting it into the context of the availability of resources. An extension of this trend is that, as new people enter the field, their education and orientation is in Early Childhood Programs, without a grounding in those public systems that control development of and access to those programs.
The second development has been that we, as a field, have allowed ourselves to be divided into different “camps”, often with goals and objectives that are anywhere from inconsistent to oppositional. In my mind, this is also irresponsible. It is unacceptable to promote the concept of “Pre-Kindergarten” in any model that does not accommodate the needs of the working family. It is equally unacceptable to promote a child care system that is widely available, but does not require and fund the capacity for integration of true school readiness for the children enrolled. Finally, we will ultimately fail if we concern ourselves with only those children and families within our limited catchments, regardless of whether we define this by “My Program,” “My Neighborhood”, “My Age Range”, or “My Discipline.” The irony here is that proceeding with blinders such as these, we will fail both in meeting the overall needs of the child and family and we profoundly limit our effectiveness in taking our message to a wider audience.
The third barrier I would note has been that, while we’ve been working on developing internal strategies for providing better quality of care, we have allowed a pervasive and very nasty social mindset to be developed and disseminated which might best be described by it’s proponents as; “Preserving the sanctity of the family”, but which has translated in public policy as “Any Parent who needs outside help and assistance is a BAD PARENT” (best articulated by one state senator I’ve worked with who stated with some heat “I can’t for the life of me understand why people would have children without the means to support those children!!”) Now, you have to admit that this statement would, at first blush, appear to have some level of validity. That is until you do just a little bit of background which finds that in my state, if we only allowed families who were making over $2,000 per week (so they could afford to pay the $200 per week it costs for good infant care), we would restrict childbearing to those 10% of young families in that income range. We seem to have forgotten that our issue actually reflects a larger concern which is the effort to re-write our core cultural beliefs concerning children and families. As to what we can/should do now; after reflecting on what I have written above, I would say that we have to re-think our community and systems work. We have to learn from past efforts and plan accordingly. Essential to this effort, we have to look to those tools and resources that we have. Social change and the systems that follow are moved by a wide variety of factors, but it is essential to re-assert the fact that we will not succeed in moving policy if we rely sole on the fact that we are on the side of the angels. Given the fact that there are any number of factors beyond our control, we have to maximize those things we do have the greatest control over, which would be numbers, science and the concept of fundamental fairness. To this end, our national and local strategy must include:
1) Working constantly and consistently with ANYONE who is even periphery connected with this field. We must make our messages clear and consistent or at least complimentary. This means reaching out to anyone and everyone, finding time to go to everyone’s meeting, and finding ways of integrating everyone’s perspectives. Keeping this in mind, we also must constantly encourage those who want to focus only on one aspect of the field to broaden their perspectives to be inclusive of the whole. 2) Developing the emotional content of our messaging, even if that means forgoing a beloved details and/or references. If this is something that the leader of your organization cannot do well, find someone who can. 3) Finding a way to mobilize both parents and providers. The working parent needing child care is now the norm in virtually every community in the country. Child Care is now one of the largest employer fields in the country. We need to find new ways of accessing and focusing these voices. 4) Exploring finding funding on the state and/or region for a Public Relations specialist. You can be certain that those organized groups in opposition to this kind of community investment have done just that, and have worked with experts to craft a message and delivery system. Once again, just being “right” will not be enough.
In conclusion, I would say that perhaps more important than any other factor in moving an agenda for working families and their children forward would be the need to stay active. We cannot be intimidated by our lack of or limited successes over the past few years. Active is always better than passive, and if it helps at all, what alternative do we have? If the world does not give you what you need, you only have two choices, lower your expectations or change the world. Onward, into the future.
|
|