
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 14, 1994                   TAG: 9404140323
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EARLY CHILDHOOD

CHILDREN under 3 are America's "most neglected age group," according to a report released this week by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, and as a result the seeds for many of society's problems take deep and lasting root in the years of early childhood.

This, says the report, is the "quiet crisis" of toddlerhood. "To be sure," it says, "the children themselves are not quiet, they are crying out for help. But these sounds rarely become sound bites. Babies seldom make the news. They do not commit crimes, do drugs or drop out of school," so their troubled plight gets little attention from policy-makers, the media and the public.

As if in echo, a new congressional study shows that the number of the nation's infants and toddlers in poverty increased dramatically during the 1980s: The number of poor children under age 3 rose by 26 percent, from 1.8 million to 2.3 million.

The Carnegie task force, of course, did not intentionally time the report of its three-year study as an endorsement of the Roanoke Valley's Child Health Investment Partnership. Neither did the General Accounting Office.

But both documents, by focusing on the many gaps in the developmental requirements of children 3 and under, point effectively to the need for programs such as CHIP.

Nationwide, the Carnegie task force found, institutions that provide urgently needed services for very young children are in scant supply. Nationwide, the GAO said, disadvantaged infants and toddlers are locked out of governmental health, education and nutrition programs.

Parents, not governments, raise children, to paraphrase a line by the White House's current occupant. True. But also, as the Carnegie report observes, "[p]arents don't function in a vacuum."

Businesses, communities and governments also have a stake in, and a responsibility for, the well-being of the young. A fully funded CHIP would be a good start toward fulfilling it.

by CNB