The Importance of Social Service Support in Early Childhood Education

By Joseph W. White, A.C.S.W., L.I.S.W.

Good afternoon, I would like to thank the California State Conference of the NAACP and Alice Huffman, President for inviting me to participate in this very important discussion about early childhood education. This has been a most exciting day and we have heard a strong commitment to children in general and to quality universal preschool education. It is obvious with the energy in this room and the cross section of professionals represented here today indicates it will not be long before California will have universal preschool education.

As you have read and heard, my area of expertise is that of social work. Usually we are called in after other systems have failed the family. So you can see, I am accustom to coming into the picture last to pull things back together and I hope that I can do a little bid of that with the allotted time.

Just to tell you a little about me, I have spent 38 years as a child welfare social worker and the last 20 years as executive director of the fifth largest child welfare agency in Ohio. One of the things I have learned is that most children do not want to be away from their parents, period. Even though the system is attempting to help these children, they either run away from their placement and go back home or go back home when they become adults.

This afternoon I want to talk briefly about the value of social services in the process of educating young children and keeping families together. In reality, we cannot achieve good outcomes for children unless their parents or primary caretaker is involved in the educational process. As we heard from many of the presenter is morning. Further, you cannot separate the child from the family events that are happening in their social environment since this, I will briefly take a look at some of the demographics changes that have taken place to change the this country.

We know that family units are the environments that mold a child’s beliefs, values, attitudes and their general outlook on life. Parents are the child’s first teachers and thus early in life the child learns what pleases and displeases the parent. The parental role is difficult and most parents strive hard to be successful. However, circumstance and the stressors in their life can become overwhelming if they have no relief mechanism or built in support system, i.e., family or reliable friends, then bad outcomes can happen! Under these circumstances, parents may strike out and abuse their children both physically and emotionally.

Today, society still spends an inordinate amount of time with the discussion of individual adult rights. Overlooked in this discussion are the rights and needs of children. There have been numerous attempts to clarify the rights of children and these efforts have fallen short because to often children’s needs and rights are only defined by what parents fail to do for them. Our public policy makers have been unwilling to engage in meaningful discussions about the rights of children, from birth through adolescence, because there is a false assumption that the child’s needs can and will be taken care of without any major outside help from this society. The truth of the matter is, a parent may have every intention of meeting his or her children’s needs. But problems arise if that parent is poor and is of a racial or ethnic minority who is not valued by the mainstream society and cannot provide adequately for their family.

Although this has been talked about earlier, I think it is worth talking about again. When hurricane Katrina came, who was left behind in New Orleans but poor and financially disadvantaged people? Help from the government was initially nonexistent or woefully inadequate. We know we can do better and we must do better for children in this country.

Despite the various debates about children’s rights, we have only developed short-term social programs that serve people when they fail or fall into defined categories. Thus, we only give lip services to the real needs of children even though the needs are very basic. There should be guaranteed rights and opportunities available to every child in this county until they become self-sufficient. Some of these rights include, and this is only a partial list:

• Ready access to good nutrition and health care
• Schools, at all grade levels, that permit the child to reach their full potential
• Safe neighborhoods where a child can play and develop
• Decent and well constructed homes for them to live in
• And most of all, much love from their parents and primary caregivers

These should be universal rights for all children in this country regardless of the parent’s income or social status.

In this country, two very strong statements were made about the rights of children with the enactment of the child labor laws to protect children from being hurt or exploited in the work place in the 1900s, and the establishment of compulsory public education for 12 years. The more this country advanced, socially and economically, compulsory pubic education had to become the corner stone of a democratic form of government. The truth of the matter is, you cannot have a democracy of self-governance without an educated citizenry that can read, write and do critical reasoning.

Here in America, even though we have many social service programs, these programs are not preventive in nature. Generally, help is offered after the family system fails. In my work, I have often said, abuse and neglected child frequently come to the attention of the system to late. We could do a better job of supporting the family relationship if services were to occur shortly after birth. The family system would have a higher probability of being successful and the parent child relationship strengthened before serious problems develop.

I commend your work to develop universal public pre-school for every child with components that not only benefit the child educationally but also will enrich the family as whole.

Based upon the 2000 Census Report, in the U.S. large families are a thing of the past, since the birth rate on average is now two children per family. Consequently, it is clear this country cannot afford to lose any child due to limited educational opportunities or poor social adjustments because each child, healthy or not, determines this country’s continued future as a leader in the “free world”. Additionally, in record numbers, grandparents are now raising their grandchildren because their children, (i.e., the child’s parents) have major issues due to drugs, divorce, teen pregnancies and disproportionately high prison incarnation rates for minorities as well as premature deaths. In Ohio, it is reported that 83,000 children are being raised by grandparents and in the country nearly one and a half million grandparents are raising their grandchildren and 36% of this population is 65 years or older. In short, what you have are old people like myself, trying to meet the emotional, financial and physical needs of young children, often times with little help from the society at-large.

Caring for children is serious work. My fiancée and I cared for our grandchildren last weekend. We had three children who were under two years of age. Even though they were fun and delightful, they required constant care, supervision and regular displays of affections. Not to say how many diapers we changed. Although we love them very much, they are beautiful children, but given the choice, we would not want to do this everyday. Thus, you can easily visualize the impact of this responsibility on a single parent or an older adult who prepared for retirement, and are operating with limited resources and a limited budget to meet the needs of the family.

Why are these statistics important? In this country, unfortunately, the prevailing beliefs are that of rugged individualism and that people should take care of their own needs an only those most needy should get help from the agencies and the government. When you are dealing with life events, we all know that we need help at one time or another. As mentioned previously, in a truly compassionate and caring society, help should be available in what ever form necessary so a family or individual is helped before all of their financial and emotional resources are exhausted.

How do these statistics relate to this discussion regarding early childhood education? It goes without saying, that a child’s educational experience and his relationship with peers are the next most powerful forces that will shape that child’s life. I know for a fact, through my experience in child welfare, that teachers know children in their classroom and they can tell when something unusual is happening in the child’s life. Through observation, they know when the child is withdrawn, overly aggressive, and ill on in need of medical attention.

A social worker can be a vital link between the school and the home by assisting the teacher with information about the home environment that is adversely affecting the child’s performance in school and begin to work to resolve these matters. Help can be provided through counseling, group activity with parents or through referrals to appropriate social agency within the community. The key here is that problems can and should be identified early so that appropriate help can be provided in a timely fashion.

The best example of a successful marriage of education and a social service program is the Head Start Early Childhood Education Program. These programs have operated successfully throughout this country for more than 40 years. Their accomplishments are that children read, are computer literate and can count to 100 when they enter kindergarten. This program has a strong component for strengthening families and educating parents. It requires involving parents in program policy making and day-to-day operations, in curriculum development and the involvement of volunteers. In addition, the program must provide educational activities that are responsive to the needs of the parents. These elements built into the policies that govern Head Start programs across the country. One can then conclude, most parents will work with schools if given the respect, the opportunity and support needed so they can help their child be successful in school. Thus, the more parents understand and are involved in what takes place in the classroom, and are vigorously encouraged to participate in their child’s educational process the more the child will develop socially and academically. The personal involvement by the parents in their child’s education also has major secondary benefits that of motivating parents to further their own education. As parents gain more knowledge they become better acquainted with their community and the resources that are available to assist their family.

In Ohio, it has been noted that more than half of the Head Start classroom teachers who were formally Head Start parents but with appropriate encouragement and motivated to improve their education thereby improving the financial and social lives of their families. The social work component and parental involvement is one of the major missing elements in this country’s public educational system. Even though basic school funding continues to be at a premium for academics but a irrefutable fact that if parents are not helped to participate in their child’s education the process suffers and often falls short of the deserved outcome, i.e., socially well adjusted children with an appropriate education in a society in which they live and ultimately must run.

Continue to examine the elements of the Head Start model with its social work component as you move forward with this most exciting initiative to insure that all children in California have a quality preschool education.

I want to again thank you for allowing me to be apart of today’s program.