Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9406010048
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY STEINHARDT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What is lacking in these plans is a community-supported, comprehensive plan of action focusing on the component of the future that is already here, grows every day, and will determine whether any of the long-range economic objectives are met. Whether the quality of life and living here is enhanced or diminished, whether taxes are used to build jails or build parks, will be based on that component.
A child born this year, in 1994, will be entering first grade in the year 2000. The child born today will be entering the work force at age 18 in the year 2011.
Do we want an employee who can express an idea, put two and two together, spell "their" and "there" appropriately, make the connection between cause and effect, and even appreciate logical consequences?
Do we want all employers to have to screen 30 applicants to find one to fit that description? Heaven help the business whose training costs exceed the amount of taxes that go to schools.
Do we want an employee whose early health care was so poor or nonexistent that the company's health-care costs exceed the costs for the raw material of its product?
We tend to look at the dropout rate, at the numbers of high-school graduates, at the opportunities for vocational and post-secondary training as the indicators of a desirable and attractive work force. However, the condition and status of the young adult of 18 years is determined by the experience of the first six, and the most critical time of that six-year span is the first three.
The child's potential is determined by the history, the experience of that child before entering first grade.
What kind of early health care did the infant get? Were there health screens, immunizations by age 2, diagnoses of handicapping conditions, responses to identified needs and individualized treatment where appropriate?
What kind of preschool experience, at home or school or a center, was there?
Was there any support for the family of this child to be good parents or a good parent, able to meet the physical, emotional and cognitive demands of that little bundle of joy and potential?
Does the community see that little bundle of joy and potential as a major player in the region's future economic well-being?
Is there a mechanism locally for establishing priorities across budget categories? How would the decision to fund family-support services instead of fixing potholes be made?
There is a special, critical characteristic of a growing child. Once the process of development has begun, it goes extremely fast; it does not wait for committees or task forces or city managers or doctors or lawyers or parents to give permission for that process to continue. Families and cities, health providers and supervisors, counties and agencies must have in place and accessible the essential services to assure healthy development; freedom from intellectual neglect; freedom from danger of injury, harm and disease; freedom from emotional abuse.
Our economic health, our tax base, our enormous costs for rehabilitative care and treatment are all directly related to the structures of prevention established and ready for that statistic, that bundle of joy, that new child who will in 17 very fast years become the young adult in the work force, or the young adult offender, or the young disabled adult.
Right now, here in the Roanoke Valley, there are long waiting lists for services to the young child and that child's family. What does a waiting list for services to children mean? Does it mean that we tell that toddler to stay a toddler a year or two longer until we identify language delay, or vision problems, or lead poisoning, or until physical, emotional or sexual abuse has worked its magic into the pattern of that human being's life?
The Roanoke Valley perspective is a good one from which to view this phenomenon of preventive structures vs. unserved children. During a time in which meetings too numerous to count are held with highly paid facilitators in generous meeting places, children are added to waiting lists for family-support services, health exams, quality preschool experiences, Head Start, dental care, eye exams, physical therapy, and speech and language help.
Children on waiting lists are identified children with parents, with names, with addresses, with needs. They are unserved. The opportunity to help, to prevent most effectively is gone for each of these children. The longer the delay in delivering needed services, the more expensive those services become and the less efficient the support.
As a society, we know a great deal about child growth and development, the origins of skill attainment, the roots of aggression, and the foundations of reading, the ability to empathize and the presence of sympathy.
And we know an enormous amount about the costs of ignoring prevention strategies.
A child with a particular vision defect must be diagnosed before age 6 if blindness is to be avoided.
The infant who is bottle-fed lying down often develops otitis media, a leading cause of hearing loss.
The child who does not get high-quality nutrition suffers from limited brain-cell growth.
Cognitive development is dependent upon the experiences, the stimulation of people, events, things, language and play that occur during the first three years of life.
Those children described above are part of the population of at-risk children. There are 3,707 children in special-education classes in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem. Education dollars and tax dollars to meet those children's needs are more than twice the per-pupil cost for non-special-needs children. From now until the year 2000, special-needs children in elementary school will cost taxpayers $35.2 million.
That is only one of the costs of nonpreventive policy decisions. To tolerate waiting lists at Resource Mothers, Child Health Investment Partnership, TAP Head Start and other prevention-focused services is shortsighted in the extreme. It falls dangerously close to willful ignorance.
The next economic agenda should have on each glossy page at the top and bottom:
"Eliminate waiting lists for children's services."
"Eliminate waiting lists for children's services today."
"Eliminate waiting lists for children's services right now."
The extent to which we recognize the keystone of our economic structure and the extent to which we supply the bricks and mortar for human development, to that extent will be the success or failure of our economic plans.
Think of the appeal to business and industry of having the healthiest, most capable, most creative work force in Virginia.
Mary Steinhardt of Roanoke, former head of the Early Childhood Development Program at Virginia Western Community College, is a consultant to CHIP of Virginia and Head Start.
by CNB