The Missing Support Infrastructure in Early Childhood
J. Gallagher & R. Clifford
Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Editors’ Note:
The Gallagher and Clifford paper presented below addresses one of the central issues in the field of early childhood education and care: the creation of an infrastructure to support early childhood personnel so as to optimize the care and education of young children in this country. Because the authors have raised such critical issues, we are using this opportunity to take advantage of the electronic medium of the journal by providing a forum for readers to contribute to a continuing discussion of them.
We invite you to be part of this ongoing electronic discussion. We have provided a "dialog box" that makes it easy to comment on the article to suggest additional considerations, to contest or agree with the authors’ assertions, or to focus on how we might move this discussion forward in the policy arena. We will post selected substantive contributions by topic on this Web site for further discussion. Please join us in this important discussion.
Lilian G. Katz & Dianne Rothenberg
Comments
Date: January 2, 2001
Name: Claudia Moore
Position: Social worker, Child & Family Services, Manchester, NH
Affiliation: MSW candidate, UNH
Comments:
I working as a student intern (community organizing and administration) in the social work department of the University of New Hampshire. The agency in which I am serving, Child and Family Services, is one of America's oldest (est. 1850) nonprofits serving the needs of children and their families. It is also one of the few such agencies that has a full-time advocacy division. It is in the area of advocacy on behalf of children, particularly in regard to their safe and secure early development, that I feel called to work. In May, I was assigned to work on an initiative to bring attention to the crisis of quality, affordable, available child care in New Hampshire to public awareness.
The initiative was being developed through a coalition of organizations that have to do with child care in New Hampshire and of individual child care professionals themselves: Invest in Kids. Concerned about the actual walkout that is happening in the profession in the state, the workers called for a "virtual strike." For more on this, please see the CFS Web site at www.cfsnh.org. This event will happen the third week of January, between Jan. 21-26, 2001. Where we all are aware that the problems with child care will not have been solved by this social action, we do hope that the awareness generated will begin to create furrows in the public consciousness of the Granite State so that conditions can change.
Because of my work coordinating this initiative, I am in a unique position to assess various organizations and agencies within the state that are working with the issue of child care. I would very much welcome being part of continuing discussions about national initiatives to strengthen the infrastructure of early childhood care and education. It is my belief that the quality of life as we know it and our hopes for the maximum development of our most precious national asset, our children, depends upon our collective abilities to create and implement such an infrastructure.
Please keep me in the loop. I will connect you to a whole state full of concerned child care workers, who I know would love to be part of this discussion.
Date: March 30, 2001
Name: Janet Singerman
Position: President
Affiliation: Child Care Resources Inc.
Comments:
I enjoyed reading this article and commend its authors for their thoughtful and compelling work. I would encourage greater study of the services provided by child care resource and referral agencies across states and the role that these agencies perform in providing infrastructural supports (including data collection, analysis, referrals, training, technical assistance, practitioner and parent support, advocacy, and community planning)across the nation.
As an additional point of information, new software released by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies will greatly enhance the already existing data collection performed by local resource and referral agencies. These data collection efforts document more extensive features of supply and demand than that which is captured by state regulatory systems.
I would also encourage the specific inclusion of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies in the article's listing of national resource organizations.
Thank you for your vision and leadership.
