Federal Policy Baby Blog

Community Support for Veterans and their Families

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:25:00 -0400

Yesterday, we paid tribute to those Service men and women who have given their lives defending their country and also to the families, especially those with young children, to whom these Service members were husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. Today, we want to focus on those who have served their country and have come home, or will be coming home, to rejoin their families and communities. The withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the promise of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan will create a surge in men and women retiring from active duty and returning to civilian life as veterans. Infants and toddlers will certainly be part of this “coming home” picture.

One thing we know for sure about these returning veterans: overall, they are young, with many returning home to young families and others likely to start families. The active duty force is largely composed of young men and women: in 2009, 45 percent were age 25 or younger; 67 percent were age 30 or younger. Almost three-quarters of enlisted men and women were age 30 or younger. Many of our troops are already young parents. In 2009, 42 percent of the 1,224,556 children of active duty service members were under the age of 6. And, of those children, more than half were under the age of 3.

The lessons of the last decade tell us that we need to prepare for the stresses of reintegration on families and be especially attuned to the effects of these stresses on young children. Those lessons are twofold:

First, when warriors come home, often recovering from physical and psychological injuries, the challenge of reintegrating into family life, connecting with family supports, finding civilian employment, and redefining their roles in their families and in their communities can be overwhelming. Combat related injuries such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) increase the likelihood of other emotional problems. The percentage of women veterans is expected to rise significantly over the next two decades, creating unique health care needs and raising other issues, including sexual trauma, that need to be addressed.

Second, just as we know more about the impacts of prolonged deployments on the mental health of Service members themselves, the science of early brain development tells us that the impacts of deployment and reintegration extend beyond the veteran to young children. While short-term stress is part of everyday life for young children as they encounter new situations, long-lasting or chronic stress can be damaging to developing brains, particularly to the child’s developing executive function. Not just the stress of the veteran, but also the stress experienced by caregivers of injured veterans who must cope with multiple responsibilities, can adversely affect veterans’ young children.

The Veterans Administration (VA) has long provided for many of the needs of its members, but today’s veterans may require a different type of response. Issues of unemployment, homelessness, and access to healthcare are among the many concerns that we share as a nation on behalf of those veterans and their families who have served and sacrificed. Timing is of the essence if we wish to reach these families early in their re-integration process to achieve the best outcomes. The goal should be to enhance the resilience of veteran families with young children, and support them where they live.

The VA recognizes this need and is open to providing more support for families, yet VA health and mental health services traditionally have been designed for the veterans themselves. Only recently have mental health services begun to include veterans’ spouses, and current VA services do not have sufficient resources or the capacity to address the needs of all family members. As veterans begin reintegrating into family and community life, civilian services have not been prepared to work with military and veterans’ families. Civilian community organizations need additional knowledge and programmatic capacity to effectively serve these families. They need education on military culture and military family life, fiscal agencies and referrals, and training on the proven, evidenced-based strategies that can best support young children in military and Veterans’ families. (The National Center on Homelessness, 2011)

The VA is beginning to take on this task. The VA recently created a regional family and caregiver system with regional case manager coordinators as a resource for veterans’ families. These regional case managers make referrals to regional and local community organizations for caregivers and families from Vietnam era, Gulf, and Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. This is a promising new and developing program for the VA. Clearly the agency does not have the capacity to reach local communities alone, but needs strategic national and local partnerships to accomplish its goal. One way to give these efforts a leg up is to build on the strong partnerships fostered by the Department of Defense and the White House to better support children—especially the youngest—in active duty Service members’ families.

What are some of the necessary steps to meet the increased needs of young children in veteran families? There is a need for greater resources and concerted efforts to build community connections to create supports, including:

1. Increased capacity for VA family support programs built around the needs of young children—especially the youngest children—and developed with evidence-based approaches for practice.

2. Building local capacity by strengthening knowledge, skills, and resources on the unique needs of young children in military and veterans’ families, including the impact of trauma, grief, and loss on brain development, and by strengthening community collaborations among service providers.

3. Support for caregivers of injured veterans in supporting their young children.

4. Increased capacity to support the unique needs of women veterans, including ensuring that appropriate family, maternal, and infant healthcare facilities are available to meet the medical needs of Services members, their families, and their children.

Honoring the Fallen and Those They Leave Behind

Mon, 28 May 2012 12:05:47 -0400

On this Memorial Day, remembrances in the media frequently have featured an iconic photograph of a young widow curled up on an air mattress beside her fallen husband’s casket, a Marine solemnly standing guard nearby through the night. As our nation pauses to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of freedom, this photograph calls us to reflect as well on the sacrifices and losses faced by military families and the impact of the loss of a parent on young children. For adding to the poignancy of this image is the fact that the young widow is also pregnant with their first child. Her baby would become one of the nearly 5000 children who have lost a parent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) reports that nearly 6500 military personnel, many of whom were parents, have died in these wars since 2001. (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) 2012)

With almost half of all military children under age 5 years, we must strive to honor the experiences of the young children whose parents have been lost in wars by acknowledging and accepting that even babies and toddlers experience grief. They require respectful, attuned caregiving to support their grief process.

Infants and young children respond differently to death and grief than do older children. They do not comprehend the finality of death. They may be confused by the reactions of others in their family who are struggling with their own grief, and therefore may have difficulty understanding and making sense of the loss. Young children cannot sustain prolonged emotional responses and are prone to be very sad, angry or upset in one moment and playful and silly in the next. This mercurial behavior may lead surviving family members or caregivers to mistakenly think that the loss does not mean anything to them. Young children who have lost a parent to death will grieve this loss over the different developmental stages of their life cycle so that the experience of grief is extended when it occurs early in life.

For surviving parents and other family members, coping with their own grief and loss while also being available to those infants and toddlers who demand so much time and attention can be a great struggle. Finding support through family, friends, and the military can help these young families cope through tragedy.

Infants and young children need to feel supported and safe in their grief. They need to be given opportunities to express their feelings, questions, and concerns through words, play and behavior. They need to maintain routines as much as possible and have opportunities to remain connected to the legacy and memory of their lost parent.

Military children, especially those who live on military installations, are exposed to the formal and informal communications around the death of a service member, memorial services, and other military related rituals. These occurrences may be interesting and supportive or confusing and frightening to young children who have lost a parent. Caring adults need to be attentive to what a young child is exposed to through conversation, experiences, and media so they can help the child process and buffer the information in age appropriate ways. (Cozza & Lieberman, 2007)

On this Memorial Day—and every day—ZERO TO THREE acknowledges the strength of military families and the resilience of their young children and celebrates their dedication and spirit in contributing to the fabric of our country. To learn more about how to support a young child in a family of the fallen, download our guide “Honoring Our Babies and Toddlers: Supporting Young Children Affected by a Military Parent’s Death.”

References:

Cozza, S.J. & Lieberman, A.F. (July 2007) The young military child: Our modern Telemachus. Zero To Three, 27(6). 27-33.

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS). May 19, 2012. http://www.taps.org/uploadedFiles/TAPS/RESOURCES/Documents/Factsheet.pdf (accessed May 2012).

National Foster Care Month - What You Can Do To "Change a Lifetime"

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:41:00 -0400

Every seven minutes in America, a baby or toddler is removed from her parents’ care and placed in the home of someone else, often a stranger. Children under age 3 make up 31% of children entering foster care. At this time in life, their brains are developing rapidly, creating 700 new neural connections every second. Maltreatment can have a significant impact on this development, as can foster care practices that aren’t calibrated to a very young child’s developmental needs.

May is National Foster Care Month. It provides a prime opportunity for infant and toddler advocates to raise awareness and visibility of the very youngest children in care and how to help them reach their potential. This year, the theme is “Achieving Well-Being With Children and Youth in Care,” with a focus on supporting child welfare professionals as they seek to build well-being postpermanency.

For infants and toddlers, this means child welfare professionals, together with community stakeholders, must do all that they can to understand, promote, and protect these young children’s ability to develop and sustain secure attachments. When very young children are formally separated from their caregivers, they face challenges in maintaining and healing relationships. All babies need at least one adult in their lives who is just crazy about them. Without this attachment, their development can deteriorate rapidly, resulting in delays in cognition and learning, relationship dysfunction, and difficulty expressing emotions.

Just keeping babies safe is not enough. Negative foster care experiences, such as moving from placement to placement, also can have a profound effect on young children. Infants in out of home care are particularly vulnerable to delays in emotional, social, and cognitive development, placing them at high risk for negative outcomes later in life.

Yet, the rapid brain development that creates this vulnerability also opens a window of great potential. Intervening early and effectively can prevent or minimize negative effects that become more difficult to address later in life. Thus, it is crucial that child welfare systems infuse guiding principles for infant and toddler development into practices and policies.

Several developments suggest that Washington is attuned to these needs. Last September, Congress passed the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, creating a new requirement for states to describe in their child welfare state plans how they promote permanency for and address the developmental needs of young children in their care. Recently, the Administration for Children and Families issued detailed guidance to states on promoting child wellbeing.

Now it’s time to build momentum in the states. These developments offer an opportunity for states to be more intentional in their efforts to meet the unique needs of infants, toddlers, and their families. We all have a stake in helping vulnerable young children beat the odds.

So, what can you do?

· Read A Call to Action on Behalf of Maltreated Infants and Toddlers and pass it on to other stakeholders and child welfare officials.
A Call to Action represents the collective vision of leading child welfare and early childhood development organizations on the key elements for policies, programs, and practices to address the needs of vulnerable infants and toddlers in the child welfare system. It can provide a starting point for policymakers at all levels to create a response to young children’s special needs.

· Spread the word on our new state planning tool, A Developmental Approach to Child Welfare Services for Infants, Toddlers, and their Families: A Self-Assessment Tool for States and Counties (to be released at the end of May).
Urge your state or county-based child welfare agencies to use the tool to undertake a comprehensive look at young children in the child welfare system AND offer to help them do this.

· Register and watch our webinar on the planning tool on May 30th at 2pm Eastern.
The webinar will help child welfare agencies and stakeholders understand how they can use the state child welfare planning tool. It will discuss using data on infants, toddlers, and their families for a clearer picture of strengths and gaps in child welfare systems. Representatives from Iowa and Connecticut will describe initiatives to ensure a developmental approach to child welfare services for very young children, identify challenges, and share how they plan to use the tool.

· Watch the Safe Babies Court Teams DVD trailer: Safe Babies Court Teams: Building Strong Families and Health Communities.
Check out the newest video release from the Safe Babies Court Teams (and order a copy of the DVD!). The video features a fresh look at the Safe Babies Court Teams initiative, as well as videos focusing on parents of maltreated infants and toddlers, planning the transition to foster care at removal, and understanding the complexities of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in young children.

Once Again, What It Means When Babies Must Share the Burden

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:11:00 -0400

The House of Representatives voted today to slash several entitlement programs important to low-income families and individuals. The Sequester Replacement and Reconciliation Act of 2012 (H.R. 5652) also shredded last year’s agreement on discretionary spending levels for domestic and defense programs, cutting spending for FY 2013 by an additional $19 billion. The ostensible purpose of this bill is to replace the automatic sequester, or across-the-board cut, included in the deficit reduction/debt ceiling agreement last summer as an inducement to the “Super Committee” to find additional budget savings. In reality, it shifts deficit reduction more squarely onto the shoulders of those Americans—including young children—for whom shared sacrifice means going without food or medical care. It also sets the stage to cut domestic discretionary programs more deeply and increase defense spending when the FY 2013 appropriations process reaches its end game.

To review the cuts: The bill would cut $309 billion over 10 years from mandatory funding, with $128 billion (42%) of those savings coming from programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP), Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Child Tax Credit, and the elimination of the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). The bill also would reduce the discretionary spending level agreed upon in the bitter battle last summer over raising the debt ceiling. It breaks down the firewall between domestic and defense spending, designed to ensure that cuts would affect both sides of the federal budget, and paves the way for shifting more cuts to domestic spending while increasing defense programs. A Democratic alternative would have replaced the sequester with cuts to agricultural subsidies, closing oil and gas tax breaks, and raising taxes on millionaires, but was not allowed to come up for a vote.

Once again, we are left to ponder what it means when the most vulnerable babies (as well as their parents, low-income seniors, and other disadvantaged individuals) are asked to do their “fair share” to reduce the deficit. What do they have to give up because the consequences of sacrifices from other segments of society apparently are too distressing to contemplate?

Sadly, we’ve been here before, so we drew from a blog we posted last year to show what happens when babies share the burden…

More will be born too soon and too small.

Two of every five births in the U.S. are to women on Medicaid. Less access to prenatal care most likely means more preterm and low birthweight births.

In 2005, the Institute of Medicine estimated that preterm births cost society at least $26.2 billion annually, or $51,000 for every preterm infant. Considering special education costs associated with the disabilities more common among preterm infants another $2,200 per infant—or $53,200 total.
Low birthweight children are 30 percent less likely to be in excellent or very good health in childhood. They also score significantly lower on reading, passage comprehension, and math achievement tests.

More will go hungry.

Many SNAP recipients are families with children, meaning SNAP helps children get the food they need for healthy physical and mental development.

Research by Children’s HealthWatch found that the increase in SNAP benefits in the stimulus bill, which the bill approved today would roll back, had a positive impact on the health of young children, with children receiving benefits more likely to be classified as “well” than those who did not receive benefits, but were eligible for them.
A lack of nutritious food during pregnancy increases the risk of low birth weight babies; infant mortality; cleft palate; spina bifida; brain, neural, and physical defects; and adverse effects on long-term health, growth, and developmental trajectories.

Infants and toddlers in food insecure households are at greater risk of damaging effects in the areas of brain and cognitive development in the perinatal period, school readiness, and physical, mental, and social development.

Fewer will have stable, caring families.

One-quarter of SSBG funds go to services for children who have been subjected to abuse or neglect and support many who have been placed in foster care. Sometimes these funds help provide the supportive services families need so that children don’t have to be removed from their homes.

Infants and toddlers who have been maltreated are at risk for psychological difficulties, including cognitive delays, poor self-regulation, and difficulty in paying attention. Intervening early can help support healthy, positive development in maltreated babies.
Very young children need nurturing relationships to develop, relying on their closest caregivers for security and comfort. Preserving and supporting that relationship with parents is critical. At a Congressional Baby Caucus briefing last year, psychologist Brenda Jones Harden described the experience of maltreated babies being removed from their parents’ care and being placed in foster care as “major surgery without an anesthetic.” Child welfare agencies need the ability to work with families in their own homes, if at all possible, to preserve that bond.

Fewer will be ready for school.

Early Head Start, child care, and Part C Early Intervention Services are all funded through the discretionary side of the budget, which would see more cuts under this bill. These programs help give low-income infants and toddlers more positive early learning experiences and reduce the developmental gaps they face early in life.

Low-income infants and toddlers are at greater risk than middle- to high-income infants and toddlers for a variety of poorer outcomes and vulnerabilities, such as later school failure, learning disabilities, behavior problems, mental retardation, developmental delay, and health impairments.
Early Head Start has positive impacts on cognitive and language development and increases positive interactions between parents and children.
High quality child care can have positive effects that endure into the early adult years, particularly for children from the poorest home environments.

Happy Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day!

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:29:56 -0400

Happy Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day 2012! Each year, Congress and the Administration set aside a day to learn more about children’s mental health: to hear from clinicians, advocates, and survivors of childhood trauma about promising practices, advances in research, and the troubling stories of the most vulnerable children. You can learn more about what happens on CMHAD here.

To recognize the day and further the conversation on this critical issue, the ZERO TO THREE Policy Center is pleased to announce the release of a new resource, Making It Happen: Overcoming Barriers to Providing Infant-Early Childhood Mental Health. Making It Happen illuminates the scientific evidence for infant-early childhood mental health (I-ECMH) policies; examines issues faced by national, state, and local program directors and mental health practitioners in providing I-ECMH services; and proposes a set of recommendations for policy improvements at the federal level. Additionally, it provides a context for the issues and barriers states face when financing services for those most in need and during a time of life when those services would have the highest rate of return.

Here at ZERO TO THREE, we wanted to know: What prevents states and communities from delivering mental health services to infants, young children and families? And what can be done to overcome these obstacles? With the help of infant-early childhood mental health and policy experts from across the country, we gathered some answers.

The bottom line? States and communities don’t have the I-ECMH services that infants and young children need, don’t have the people to provide them, and don’t have a system that will pay for them. Federal and state decision-makers must take up these issues so that the early foundational development of all infants and young children will enable them to realize their full potential. Read the paper to learn more about what needs to be done to make early childhood mental health services happen for America’s babies!

Budget and Appropriations Update

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:13:00 -0400

Congress will not be producing a budget blueprint this year, as the two houses will not come to an agreement on funding levels. The Senate has announced that it will abide by the spending limits in last summer’s debt ceiling bill (Budget Control Act or BCA) and call it a day. Meanwhile, the House has taken a step further, not only adopting a budget that calls for more spending cuts than the BCA, but also going through its own reconciliation process to achieve those lower spending targets. While the prospects for a reconciliation bill in the Senate are unclear, the House proposals give an alarming picture of where priorities lie on that side of the Hill. The bottom line is that vulnerable children and families will lose out to tax cuts and shoulder the burden of deficit reduction.

A refresher on reconciliation: When both Houses of Congress agree on a budget that includes new spending targets for programs with mandatory funding, they include “reconciliation instructions” to Committees to pass legislation that will adjust mandated spending to those new targets. Because there will be no real joint budget resolution this year, there will be no real reconciliation process. The House process shows what they would do to alter priorities in the federal budget. The plan is presumably to package the handiwork of the various committees into one big bill and pass it through the House, after which it could stall in the Senate.

While several committees have been acting on these instructions, three are particularly important to programs serving young children and their families.

Agriculture Committee Cuts the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): This Committee was first to act and had to meet the House-approved budget requirement to produce $33 billion in savings over the next decade. On April 18^th, the Committee approved a proposal that would take the entire amount from cuts to SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. The cuts would reduce or eliminate benefits for all SNAP households, including the poorest. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), some 2 million individuals would lose SNAP entirely. The remaining 44 million individuals who receive SNAP would see their benefits cut. The proposal would increase poverty and hardship and could affect the economy adversely. CBPP shows that in 2010, SNAP lifted about 4 million people out of poverty, including about 2 million children. The proposed cut in SNAP benefits would push some households into poverty and deepen the extent of poverty for millions of others.

Committee on Ways and Means Cuts Social Services: The House budget instructed this Committee, which oversees major social services programs, to find $53 billion in savings. The committee eliminated the Social Services Block Grant, which helps over 11 million kids through funding to states for services such as child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care, child protective services and child care.Its bill, approved on April 18, also would deny access to the child tax credit to parents who pay federal income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number. This provision is aimed mainly at American-born children whose parents are low-income working immigrants. The Center for American Progress shows that this change would take $1,800 away from the families of 5.5 million children in working families with incomes below the poverty level.

Energy and Commerce seeks to roll back health care reform: The Energy and Commerce Committee was instructed to find $3.8 billion in savings this year, and $96.8 billion over 10 years. This action doesn’t include the budget’s proposal to actually block grant Medicaid. To achieve this goal, they have targeted the health care overhaul. Their measure, approved on April 25, would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, the nation’s first mandatory funding stream dedicated to enhancing community-based preventive health programs. For example, one 2010 initiative related to children included nutrition, physical activity, and screen time standards in child care settings, and broader obesity prevention in early childhood programs.

The measure would repeal the maintenance of effort (MOE) requirements on states for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, allowing states to apply more restrictive eligibility standards for programs (thus allowing states to drop hundreds of thousands of children from Medicaid and CHIP). It also would reduce the federal Medicaid match, shifting more program costs to the states.

Appropriations Levels Differ in House and Senate: The final piece of the budgetary puzzle is discretionary spending, which must be approved by the Appropriations Committees every year. The BCA agreement, reached after much debate and brinksmanship over sending the country into credit default, set limits for multiple years, reducing discretionary spending by $900 billion over 10 years. The Senate is using the 2013 overall limit for its Appropriations bills, but the House budget reduced that limit by an additional $19 billion, thereby pretty much assuring there will be no resolution of final funding levels until after the November election. Adding to concerns is the fact the House bill that funds the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education would receive one of the largest cuts, coming in at $7.7 billion less than in the Senate. Most of the programs that help support infants and toddlers are in this bill.

One rationale for all these cuts is to forestall the across-the-board cut, or sequester, built into the BCA if Congress failed to come up with additional savings. Those cuts were split between defense and domestic spending. The cuts laid out by the House Committees would help shift the burden of the cuts away from defense and more heavily on domestic programs. At this point, the Senate isn’t likely to go along with the cuts or the shift, setting up another big issue until after the election. Yet, just having these proposals moving through one House of Congress is an alarming development.

But the House budget doesn’t direct all of its savings toward deficit reduction. It also envisions major new tax cuts as well as the extension of all of the Bush-era tax rates which expire at the end of 2012. These tax issues complete the triad of unresolved budget questions that will be on the table for a lame duck session of Congress. To paraphrase Bette Davis, strap your babies tightly into their car seats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Senator Harkin Makes a Powerful Statement for Babies

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:11:10 -0400

A couple of weeks ago, the Baby Monitor reported the introduction of a bill, the Rebuild America Act (S. 2252) authored by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA). This sweeping legislation would support families who are striving to work and build a future for their children—families commonly referred to as the “middle class” as well as those who aspire to join them. Tucked into this large bill is a pretty significant statement, not only about child care’s role in allowing families to work, but also about infants’ and toddlers’ needs for high quality services.

The Rebuild America Act covers a broad range of issues that affect the prosperity of our nation and the economic engine that working families provide. Its strategies include investing to create jobs through rebuilding schools, supporting teachers, and increasing manufacturing power; creating financial stability and a better future for middle class families as well as seniors; and restoring fairness to the tax code and ensuring fiscal responsibility.

A prominent feature is a substantial investment in child care—and not just any child care, but care that meets high levels of quality. The proposed bill would pump $5 billion a year for 10 years into an enhanced “CCDBG Plus” program provided to states through a formula. Ten percent of those funds would be directed at improving the child care workforce; another 10 percent would support quality improvements. The remainder would be used to fund high-quality early care and learning services, with recognition of parents who work non-traditional hours and children with special needs. Services under the Rebuild America Act would have to meet the Head Start/Early Head Start program performance standards, the top tier of a state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System, or be accredited by a national accrediting body.

But here’s the big news for babies: two-thirds of the funds for services are directed at high quality programs for infants and toddlers. Senator Harkin’s efforts on behalf of quality services for very young children will not be unfamiliar to those who have followed the Early Head Start program as it has grown over the years. The child care proposal in this new bill carries that commitment further.

As ZERO TO THREE Executive Director Matthew Melmed said in a letter to Senator Harkin prior to the bill’s introduction, “By directing such a significant proportion of funds to services for very young children, this bill makes a powerful statement that the earliest years are an important time for public investment and that society has a strong interest in ensuring that families can provide positive developmental experiences for their infants and toddlers.”

To be clear, all ages of children need a continuum of high quality early childhood experiences. Yet the biggest gaps are for infants and toddlers, the most likely to be in lower quality care. Senator Harkin’s bill takes to heart three things we know: First, babies’ earliest experiences form the foundation for all learning that follows. Second, with 60% of U.S. mothers with infants working, a significant portion of these early experiences unfold in a child care setting. And third, parents of infants and toddlers—especially at the lower rungs of the economic ladder—often can’t find good quality care at any price, much less care they can afford.

The need for more, better, and financially feasible child care for young children is a major piece of the economic puzzle for families now and for their children in the future, when they will form the backbone of the American workforce. Senator Harkin’s overall bill comes with a high price tag, and its prospects in the current stringent budgetary environment are daunting. Still, as Melmed’s letter said, even “in these times of economic insecurity and budgetary distress, it is important that we not lose sight of the priorities necessary to meeting our current challenges while laying the foundations of a vigorous future for our nation.”

For babies, it is a vital step just to have a champion so clearly put down a marker for their essential needs as their parents go off to work. While it is a way from introducing a bill to realizing change—in this case having more high quality services in place—it is important to start. After all, no vision is ever realized if someone doesn’t first give it voice.

Babies and the Affordable Care Act

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:22:00 -0400

Last week, two years after the law’s passage, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of four elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA):

Monday, the first day of arguments, simply sought to decide whether the case could be heard at all before certain provisions of the ACA have been implemented. (The Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 states that a tax cannot be challenged in court until it has been charged. The charges in question under the ACA will not go into effect until 2014, leading some to question whether arguments on the constitutionality of the ACA could be heard until then.)
On Tuesday, the Justices heard arguments around the key question: is the individual mandate constitutional? In other words, they discussed whether Congress can require people to purchase insurance.
And on Wednesday, they considered two final questions: If the individual mandate is repealed, can the rest of the Act stand without it? Or would all benefits for children and families, such as those featured below, be lost as well? This question is referred to as “severability.” And, is the expansion of Medicaid to a broader population constitutional? This issue is frequently referred to as “expansion.”

Throughout the week, the Policy Baby Blog covered the story while exploring the law’s impacts on infants, toddlers, and families. Now Americans will have to wait three months for the Justices’ verdicts, expected by the end of June.

In the meantime, advocates for infants and toddlers can continue to educate the public about the ACA’s benefits for infants, toddlers, and families. Here is just a handful that we’ve been exploring at the Baby Blog over the past two weeks:

The ACA expands health care coverage to more children.

Today, Medicaid is the largest source of health care coverage for children in America, and starting in 2014, the ACA will expand Medicaid to include more families in need. (Due in large part to Medicaid, the national rate of uninsured low-income children of all ages fell from 28% in 1998 to 10.4% in 2010; and the ACA will lower that number further.) Medicaid is critical to ensuring that the youngest children have access to high quality, affordable, and consistent health care. And research demonstrates that Medicaid’s impact on the health outcomes of very young children is especially pronounced. Here are a few things you should know about babies, Medicaid, and the ACA:

Medicaid currently pays for 40% of births in America.
Medicaid is the largest source of health care coverage for children with special health care needs, and starting in 2014, the ACA will expand Medicaid to include more families in need.
Children make up more than half of all Medicaid beneficiaries but only 20% of Medicaid costs.
Because of the ACA, 17 million kids with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health coverage.

The ACA provides preventive care that is critical to healthy development.

In the past two years, an additional 14 million children have already benefitted from preventive services without their families having to pay a co-pay or premiums under their insurance plans. That means access to well-child visits, immunizations, regular screenings, and other services as laid out by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. These services are critical to young children’s healthy development, and all too often babies grow up without them. In 2010, 25% of two-year-olds in the U.S. have not received crucial immunizations, and in 2009 more than 10% of children age four and younger had not received a well-child visit in the past year. (That number jumps to almost 60% for uninsured children.) These unacceptable numbers are and will continue to be addressed by the preventive care provisions of the ACA.

Every dollar spent on vaccinations for children saves $16 down the line.
Childhood conditions like obesity, asthma, developmental delays, and mental health disorders can be successfully prevented or treated when identified early. Left untreated, however, they necessitate costly medical treatment in the future.

The ACA provides preventive care to women and mothers.

Section 1302 of the ACA includes maternity and newborn care in its list of Essential Health Benefits – services to be covered by Medicaid and other plans by 2014. In addition, Section 2713 requires that all non-grandfathered health plans cover preventive health care services – including preconception care, well woman visits, and perinatal care – with no cost-sharing. That means that, as the law is implemented, millions of women will gain access to these preventive health care services for themselves and their babies.

Mothers’ physical and mental health – as well as their lifestyle choices and environmental exposures – are central to babies’ pre- and postnatal development.

The ACA provides new federal funds for home visiting services.

The ACA’s home visiting services will give at-risk parents and children improved access to family preservation services that seek to decrease child maltreatment and families’ child welfare involvement.

By helping parents to understand and address their children’s physical, social-emotional, and cognitive development needs, home visiting cultivates families’ protective factors, nurtures parent-child attachment, and helps to ensure that parents have the resources necessary to caring for their children.
Home visiting is a particularly critical tool in serving infants and toddlers, who are difficult or impossible to reach through other programs.

For more detailed information about the ACA’s impacts on infants and toddlers, read our posts, Happy Birthday to the Affordable Care Act (3/19/12), The ACA Toddles Toward Mothers, (3/23/12), Updates on the Supreme Court Oral Arguments on the Affordable Care Act (3/28/12), and Dispatch from the Supreme Court (3/28/12).

Dispatch from the Supreme Court

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:05:34 -0400

Today, the Supreme Court hears two final arguments on the Affordable Care Act: severability (If the individual mandate is repealed, can the rest of the Act stand without it?) and Medicaid expansion (Is the expansion of Medicaid to a broader population constitutional?). And on this final day of oral arguments, crowds of ACA supporters gathered in front of the Supreme Court, holding signs, marching, chanting, and sharing stories about how the ACA has affected their families.

As promised, this Baby Blogger trekked down to the Supreme Court at 8 o’clock this morning to survey the scene and report back. The area was filled with demonstrators, media, and police, the Supreme Court building looming in the background. A swarm of blue signs reading “Protect Your Care! Protect the Law” filled the sidewalk and surrounded a podium where supporters were testifying to the law’s importance. A small group of opponents gathered to one side. Speakers included a representative from Ohio, a Native American tribal leader, and grandparents with legal custody of their granddaughter, who has multiple health conditions that demand ongoing care. Each of these individuals’ stories gave voice to different arguments for the law’s necessity.

When the speeches ended, a small band struck up with “When the Saints Go Marching In,” prompting the formation of a picket line that stretched the length of the sidewalk. Chants of “ObamaCare is here to stay,” “Health care is good for you, health care is good for me, health care is good for every American family,” and “We love Obama Care” rang out uninterrupted between the Supreme Court and the eastern face of the Capitol for the next hour. (The term ObamaCare, first coined by opponents of the ACA, has been reappropriated by supporters and has figured largely in recent advocacy efforts.)

Here are a few highlights from the morning:

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9) made a surprise appearance on the sidewalk, shouting into the mic that the passage of the ACA two years ago was one of the proudest moments of her life – and then breaking into the “ObamaCare is here to stay” chant.
In passing groups of middle and high school students, teachers could be heard thanking the demonstrators and telling their kids, “Take a look: this is democracy in action!”
One ACA supporter travelled to DC to celebrate her 66^th birthday in front of the Supreme Court and attest to all that the law has done not only for her but for her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren!

While supporters came representing a range of interests – children, women, Native Americans, civil rights, reproductive rights, families, the nation’s poor, and others – they coalesced around this landmark law, which they believe will become central to our country’s operation and character. As defenders of the wellbeing of babies, we have seen the law’s impacts on America’s youngest children and their parents as well as its potential. And we will continue to lend a voice for babies to this historic national debate.

Scroll down to read more about how the ACA serves babies and their families, and stay tuned to the Baby Blog next week for a wrap-up of our coverage of the ACA’s 2^nd birthday and the Supreme Court oral arguments.

Updates on the Supreme Court Oral Arguments on the Affordable Care Act

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:11:01 -0400

If you’ve seen the news, you’ve seen the photos and video of proponents and opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) crowding the Supreme Court building Monday as Justices heard the first hour and a half of oral arguments on this law which has sparked such controversy among some and fervent support among others. This first day of arguments simply sought to decide whether the case could be heard at all before certain provisions of the ACA have been implemented. (Specifically, the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 states that a tax cannot be challenged in court until it has been charged. The charges in question under the ACA will not go into effect until 2014, leading some to question whether arguments on the constitutionality of the ACA could be heard until then.) But here’s a spoiler alert: at the end of the day, few were surprised to hear that the justices seemed to think that the law’s fate could be decided in 2012.

On Tuesday, the Justices heard arguments around the key question: is the individual mandate constitutional? In other words, they will decide whether Congress can require people to purchase insurance. And on Wednesday, they will consider two final questions: If the individual mandate is repealed, can the rest of the Act stand without it? Or would all benefits for children and families, such as those described below, be lost as well? This question is referred to as “severability.” And, is the expansion of Medicaid to a broader population constitutional? This issue is frequently referred to as “expansion.” Because Medicaid expansion would gain health care coverage for approximately 7-8 million additional children, efforts on this final day – Wednesday the 28^th – will focus on children and families.

What’s at stake for babies? Over the past week, we have been discussing the effects of the ACA on young children here in the Baby Policy Blog. We’ve discussed the impacts of Medicaid on young children up to now and the potential for the ACA to expand coverage starting in 2014. We’ve explored the ways in which the ACA’s provisions for preventive care will improve children’s health and development. And we’ve talked about the provisions both for women’s preventive care and for maternal and newborn care that will affect children’s health beginning prenatally and extending through childhood. (Feel free to scroll down and read last week’s posts for a refresher!) Today, let’s consider a few more important impacts of the ACA thus far. Because of the ACA,

17 million kids with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health coverage.

Approximately 14 million children have received basic preventive care at no additional cost.

An additional 2.5 million young adults up to age 26 can stay on their parents’ health plans.

And what’s more, the ACA provides new federal funds for home visiting services so that at-risk parents and children have improved access to family preservation services. These services seek to decrease child maltreatment and families’ child welfare involvement. By helping parents to understand and address their children’s physical, social-emotional, and cognitive development needs, home visiting cultivates families’ protective factors, nurtures parent-child attachment, and helps to ensure that parents have the resources necessary to caring for their children. Home visiting is a particularly critical tool in serving infants and toddlers, who are difficult or impossible to reach through other programs.

Here at the Baby Blog, we’ll continue to reflect on the ACA’s impacts on America’s infants and toddlers. And Wednesday morning, this Baby Blogger will join the throngs in front of the Supreme Court. Stay tuned for reports from that historic scene. In the meantime, you can share stories about how the ACA has impacted infants and toddlers you know!

The ACA Toddles Toward Mothers

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:26:35 -0400

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) turns two today, and throughout the week organizations, media outlets, and individuals have been reflecting on the law’s life so far. In newspapers, blogs, and on websites, individuals have shared the ways in which the law has affected their lives: because of the ACA’s elimination of lifetime limits, children with chronic conditions who would have previously exhausted their coverage by age three or four now have access to lifelong care; because the law makes it illegal to deny coverage due to preexisting conditions, survivors of childhood cancer will continue to receive the care that they need; and because of the law’s coverage of preventive care, mothers and their babies will receive the services that they need to grow up healthy.

Today, let’s take a moment to reflect on this last piece: provisions for maternal and newborn care and for preventive health care services for women. Section 1302 of the ACA includes maternity and newborn care in its list of Essential Health Benefits – services to be covered by Medicaid and other plans by 2014. In addition, Section 2713 requires that all non-grandfathered health plans cover preventive health care services – including preconception care, well woman visits, and perinatal care – with no cost-sharing. That means that, as the law is implemented, millions of women will gain access to these preventive health care services for themselves and their babies.

We know that babies’ development begins before birth and depends in large part on the health of their mother. Mothers’ physical and mental health – as well as their lifestyle choices and environmental exposures – are central to babies’ pre- and postnatal development. Under the ACA, millions more mothers and mothers-to-be will have access to the care necessary to establishing and maintaining good physical health, identifying and correcting unhealthy lifestyle choices, bringing to term healthy babies, and caring for their newborns.

We know that babies experience the world through their primary caregivers, and their health is no different. In order to raise healthy children, we must cultivate health in women and mothers. In its toddlerhood, the ACA is taking its first big steps in that direction.

The Path to Austerity Redux

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:05:08 -0400

On Wednesday, the House Budget Committee approved a budget designed by Chairman Paul Ryan, once again adopting a budget plan that would create a path to austerity for many vulnerable children and families. As with the budget Ryan proposed and the House adopted last year, that path would cut the major health care programs, maintain Social Security, increase defense spending—and drastically shrink federal spending on everything else. That “everything else” includes programs that help provide the basic building blocks for healthy growth and development for babies whose families are struggling to make ends meet.

The most important part of the plan for the immediate future is its rejection of the bargain on discretionary spending struck in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA). Many in Washington thought that agreement on funding caps would avoid contentious fights over appropriations levels this year. Yet, the Ryan budget proposes to cut an additional $1.2 trillion below the agreed upon levels for domestic programs. On the other side of the ledger, the plan would restructure the tax code with a much lower rate for upper brackets and other changes that the Tax Policy Center estimates would cost $4.6 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years. The plan would pay for some of the tax cuts by closing unspecified tax loopholes.

Some major implications for young children include:

Spending on Health Care for Low-Income Persons Would be Reduced: The budget plan would reduce spending on Medicaid by $810 billion over the next 10 years, converting it to a block grant with a fixed amount of federal spending (compared with the current open-ended match for state programs). Because the budget assumes the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid expansion under health care reform would not occur, and the subsidies for low-income families to purchase insurance through the Health Care Exchanges would not materialize. By 2050, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, total spending for low-income health care would be 76% below what it would be under current law. Left holding responsibility for their residents, CBO says, states that do not cover lost federal dollars would have to make choices such as reducing eligibility, covering fewer services, or greater costs to families. The end result of such unpalatable choices would be to reduce access to care for children, families, and other adults. And without health care reform, CBO predicts, the proportion of Americans without health insurance would be much higher.

Food Assistance Would Become a Block Grant: The plan would send the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to the states as a limited block grant under the proposal. Moreover, the plan calls for time limits and work requirements as under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. A block grant accompanied by a $122.5 billion cut in program funds would limit SNAP’s ability to respond quickly in times of economic hardship and force states to make wrenching choices about levels of benefits and eligiblity for food assistance. Three-quarters of SNAP recipients are in households with children. Infants and toddlers in food insecure households are at greater risk of damaging effects in the areas of brain and cognitive development in the perinatal period, school readiness, and physical, mental, and social development.

A Disappearing Act for Many Domestic Programs: Under the budget plan, spending on all mandatory programs other than the health programs and Social Security, and all discretionary programs (including defense) would dramatically decline as a proportion of the total economy, from 12 ½ percent of GDP in 2011 to 5 ¾ percent in 2030 and 3 ¾ percent in 2050. What does that mean? CBO notes that spending for these programs has been greater than 8 percent of GDP in every year since World War II. And defense spending by itself has not been below 3 percent during that period. Doing the math, by the year 2050,when today’s babies are trying to build a life for their own families, federal funds for early care and learning programs, K-12 education, roads, food safety, clean water and air, nutrition for babies and “meals on wheels” for seniors, and many, many other services that make our society function better will have largely dried up.

It is important to remember, first, that this proposal is just that, a proposal, and is unlikely to be adopted by the Senate. What the proposal does do is reopen the acrimonious fight over discretionary spending levels that last year’s debt ceiling agreement was supposed to put to rest. This virtually guarantees deadlock on appropriations until after the election.

The second thing to remember is that you can make a difference in the path our policymakers lay out. Last June, through the Baby Policy Blog budget posts as well as videos guiding you through the budget process, we illustrated why understanding the big picture of the budget is important to early childhood advocates and what you should know to become involved. This is a good time to look back at those resources. Then take every opportunity to let your policymakers know that sound budgetary policy is one that helps young children develop a strong foundation, not one that erodes their supports.

Standing with Immigrant Women and Children

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:56:24 -0400

ZERO TO THREE has joined with a group of women from across the country this week to investigate human rights abuses against immigrant women and children in Alabama, in the wake of recent anti-immigrant legislation. Brought together by We Belong Together—an initiative to bring attention to the ways in which unjust immigration laws affect women, children, and families—ZERO TO THREE will stand with women and children in immigrant families in Alabama to bring awareness to the plight of women and their young children in similar circumstances across the country.

Children of immigrants are the fastest growing segment of the United States child population. More than 20 percent of U.S. children under age six have immigrant parents, and approximately 93 percent of these children are American citizens. A large body of research confirms that children’s earliest years present an unparalleled opportunity to set them on track for success. Therefore, public policies that affect young children of immigrants, either positively or negatively, have a disproportionately significant impact. Policies that foster a strong foundation for healthy development in the first three years of life for immigrant children and their families —including access to health care; adequate food; safe, decent and affordable housing; and positive early learning opportunities—can play a key role in preparing these young children to become caring, contributing adults in the future.

Click here to read a blog post by ZERO TO THREE’s representative at the event. Stay tuned to hear how the visit unfolds and learn more about the hardships of the women and children affected by Alabama’s anti-immigration policies.

Happy Birthday to the Affordable Care Act

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:19:29 -0400

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) turns two this week, and all over the country organizations and individuals are celebrating the law’s impacts on American families. Each day this week, celebrations in states across the nation will focus on a different constituency affected by the ACA: Monday the 19^th is seniors’ day; Tuesday will focus on women; Wednesday is for children; Thursday will look at small businesses; and Friday will focus on individuals with pre-existing conditions who, thanks to the ACA, can no longer be denied coverage. You may have noticed that only one of these days is specifically targeted toward children; that that won’t stop us from celebrating the law’s impacts on children every day! We know that the ACA benefits for each of these groups benefit children as well. Here’s how:

More than 6.5 million children in the U.S. live with their grandparents, many of whom are seniors. (Generations United)
Free preventive care and better benefits for women mean healthier mothers for America’s children – from pre-conception, on.
Small businesses employ half of all private sector employees, according to the U.S. Small Business Association. Better access to health care for small business employees means better care for millions of families.
Making it illegal to discriminate against individuals with pre-existing conditions will protect access to health care for millions of children who suffer from conditions like asthma, diabetes, autism, and a variety of birth defects.

That’s why we see this whole week as an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which the ACA supports good health and positive development for our nation’s children.

The establishment of good health in the earliest days, months, and years of life lays the foundation for all future physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. The need for health care during a child’s earliest years is therefore more crucial than at most other times in life, as preventive care can anticipate problems, heading them off before they take root, and screenings can catch conditions early. However, for many children, good health is obstructed by a lack of access to quality health care. In the United States today, 8.9% of children under age 6 are uninsured. And uninsured children are three times less likely to have seen a doctor than insured children. (For more information on the Good Health of infants and toddlers in your state, check out our State Baby Facts.) But the ACA has set out to change those numbers and the health outcomes of millions of children.

Throughout this week, we will be following the ACA’s nation-wide birthday party, and next Monday through Wednesday we will report on the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on the subject. Stay tuned to hear about these events and how the law impacts babies. To kick things off, here are a few things that you should know about the ACA:

The ACA expands health care coverage to more children.

Medicaid currently pays for 40% of births in America.
Medicaid is the largest source of health care coverage for children with special health care needs, and starting in 2014, the ACA will expand Medicaid to include more families in need.
Children make up more than half of all Medicaid beneficiaries but only 20% of Medicaid costs.

The ACA provides preventive care that is critical to healthy development.

In the past two years, an additional 14 million children have already benefitted from preventive services without their families having to pay a co-pay or premiums under their insurance plans. That means access to well-child visits, immunizations, regular screenings, and other services as laid out by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. (Georgetown Center on Children and Families) These services are critical to young children’s healthy development, and all too often babies grow up without them. In 2010, 25% of two-year-olds in the U.S. have not received crucial immunizations, and in 2009 more than 10% of children age four and younger had not received a well-child visit in the past year. (That number jumps to almost 60% for uninsured children.) (State Baby Facts) These unacceptable numbers are and will continue to be addressed by the preventive care provisions of the ACA.

Every dollar spent on vaccinations for children saves $16 down the line. (Children’s Defense Fund)
Childhood conditions like obesity, asthma, developmental delays, and mental health disorders can be successfully prevented or treated when identified early. Left untreated, however, they necessitate costly medical treatment in the future.

Remember to check out the blog this week and next for updates on the Affordable Care Act’s second birthday, and learn how you can get involved!

Starting Life Without a Home

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:53:00 -0500

Young homeless children, usually an “invisible” population because they are hard to identify, have become much more visible on Capitol Hill over the last few weeks. On February 16^th, ZERO TO THREE joined forces with four other organizations and the Congressional Caucus on Homelessness to highlight the important but underrepresented issue of early childhood homelessness in America. Every year in the United States, 1.6 million children experience homelessness. And it is estimated that 42% of those children are under the age of 6. Because young homeless children don’t appear in one place (such as schools) where they might be more easily identified, researchers estimate that these are severe undercounts.

While the numbers are striking, the experiences and impacts of homelessness on each individual child are our greatest concern. Although families become homeless for different reasons – job loss, domestic violence, physical or mental illness, natural disasters, and other causes – the inherent instability and stress of the experience always jeopardizes early development. We know that babies need positive, consistent relationships and environments to develop into happy, healthy, productive individuals. Homelessness disrupts parents’ ability to provide for each of these needs: the stress of homelessness interferes with parents’ capacity to remain attuned and responsive to their baby; housing instability forces families into unhygienic, unsafe, and transient living conditions; and the poverty that almost always underlies homelessness often comes with hunger, inadequate medical care, and depleted social networks – what some call a poverty of relationships. In short, homelessness is toxic to early development; and yet it is an American epidemic.

ZERO TO THREE’s Congressional briefing, Starting Life Without a Home: Supporting Homeless Families in Nurturing Their Infants and Toddlers, sought to call attention to the prevalence and developmental impacts of this issue. In this the briefing succeeded, drawing over 100 people who packed a Rayburn Building hearing room. The briefing was organized in conjunction with The National Center on Family Homelessness, National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, and Horizons for Homeless Children. Two of the Co-Chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Homelessness, Rep. Judy Biggert (IL-13) and Rep. Geoff Davis (KY-4), attended and shared their perspectives on the issue and legislative efforts to alleviate it. In the most moving portion of the briefing, one panelist shared her own experience as a homeless mother of four young children.

Other panelists included Mary Huber, Research Director at The National Center on Family Homelessness, who presented a portrait of early childhood homelessness (including statistics, causes of family homelessness, and common challenges faced by homeless families); Sarah Benjamin, a home visitor to homeless families and former ZERO TO THREE fellow, who discussed the developmental impacts of starting life without a home; and Kim Cosgrove, a clinical social worker and Program Director at an Early Head Start model therapeutic nursery in Baltimore, who laid out successful interventions and services for homeless infants, toddlers, and families. One of those interventions, the Strengthening At-Risk and Homeless Young Mothers and Children Program, was a collaboration between ZERO TO THREE, The National Center on Family Homelessness, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness and provided the impetus for the briefing. At four sites across the country, the project sought to provide comprehensive services for young homeless families, including housing assistance, parent education, parent-child activities and therapy, family assessments, child development services, mental health support, and early intervention. Mary Huber reported that evaluation results are showing that, following the intervention, children and parents are experiencing improved mental health, positive educational outcomes, increased earnings, and improved housing conditions.

[COMING SOON: To help educate policymakers and advocates about what it’s like to start life without a home, ZERO TO THREE will produce a short video with highlights from the briefing.]

The Homeless Children and Youth Act

Greater visibility for homeless children and youth will come this month, with the House Committee on Financial Services scheduled to vote on legislation that could help all homeless children, including infants and toddlers, and their families qualify for services more easily. Representative Biggert, a champion for homeless children and families, has introduced H.R. 32, The Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2011 along with 17 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. This bi-partisan legislation amends the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) definition of homelessness to include children, youth, and their families who are verified as homeless by staff from four federal programs: school district homeless liaisons designated under the education subtitle of the McKinney-Vento Act; Runaway and Homeless Youth Act programs; Early Intervention programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part C; and Head Start programs. By allowing Part C Early Intervention providers and Early Head Start designees to verify homelessness, very young children experiencing homelessness are more likely to be identified and made eligible for appropriate services.

The Act creates a streamlined, efficient referral process for homeless children to access HUD homeless services. It is a response to HUD’s recently released regulations on the definition of homelessness, which impose elaborate requirements and documentation for multiple moves and long periods of homelessness before families and youth can receive homeless assistance. These requirements make it more difficult for families with young children to receive services if they are in a living situation that may not meet traditional notions of homelessness, but nevertheless poses a threat to healthy development. The simplicity of the Homeless Children and Youth Act is modeled on successfully implemented provisions of the Child Nutrition Act and the College Cost Reduction and Access Act.

The Act provides communities with the flexibility to serve and house families and children who are extremely vulnerable and in need of assistance. Because they make these determinations on a daily basis, community-level providers are the best equipped to assess specific homeless situations and to know which homeless families are most in need of housing and services.

To learn what you can do to support The Homeless Children and Youth Act, go to: www.helphomelesskidsnow.org

Babies and the Budget: Promise and Challenges in President’s 2013 Budget

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:22:57 -0500

President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget, released yesterday, holds promise as well as some challenges for programs that benefit young children. The promise comes in the form of resources for improving the quality of early care and learning programs. But the challenges posed by the budget reflect the era of austerity in which we now find ourselves. On the other side of the ledger are proposed deep cuts in energy assistance and community services. Many other programs for children and families would receive no increases, continuing the flat funding of recent years.

The budget reflects the agreement last summer on caps for discretionary spending. Total cuts for both discretionary and mandatory spending through 2022 would be $597 billion. The projected deficit for 2013 is $1.33 trillion.

The fact that early care and learning continues to be a priority even in a time of scarce resources is a hopeful sign for America’s infants, toddlers, and families. The budget would add new resources in this area, particularly to improve the quality of care and build early childhood systems. Funding for child care would be increased by $825 million overall. An increase of $500 million is proposed for the mandatory portion of the child care spending (which does not go through the annual appropriations process) to increase families’ access to child care. $325 million would be discretionary funds. Of that amount, $300 million would be targeted at improving quality. These new quality funds would be on top of both the quality set-aside already required within the Child Care and Development Block Grant and additional quality funds traditionally included in the annual appropriations bill. This new money would emphasize investing in programs to improve their quality and in teachers to help them improve their qualifications. Some of the new funds would be channeled to states by formula, and some would be awarded competitively to states committed to significant progress in measuring program quality and helping parents make informed choices about child care.

Head Start/Early Head Start would receive an $85 million increase to be used for preventing disruptions for children during the transitions between programs that will occur through the redesignation process. It also would allow for a small cost-of-living increase for programs. However, no funds would be directed toward expanding the number of children served. Currently, less than 4% of eligible infants and toddlers are able to participate in Early Head Start.

Early learning was also highlighted at the Department of Education. Race to the Top, funding source that launched the Early Learning Challenge program last year, would receive $850 million. According to budget documents, a significant (but unspecified) portion of those funds would be slated to continue the work of the Early Learning Challenge initiative. Part C/Early Intervention would receive a $20 million increase.

Other proposals, however, yield cause for concern. Early learning experiences are only one ingredient for healthy development in young children. Families need a comprehensive web of support to nurture their children, and some of those resources are slated for cuts. The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) would be cut by $452 million, a 13% drop in funding from 2012. In 2009, the percentage of households receiving heating assistance through LIHEAP that have young children under age 6 ranged from 15% to 41% across states. The Community Services Block grant, which helps to provide services for poor families at the local level, would see a drastic 48% cut, down to $350 million.

We are still digging through the budget and will continue to provide information on the broad range of programs that benefit babies and their families. Learn more about the federal budget process here. To find out why keeping an eye on the budget matters, watch our Babies and the Budget videos.

Do You Know Your State's Baby Facts?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:40:00 -0500

While data can serve as an incredible resource, it is often difficult to find the facts we are looking for. This is particularly true when it comes to specific data on the youngest children across the country. For those of us working to advocate for infants, toddlers, and their families, having access to a data profile about babies in our state can be a powerful tool. We at ZERO TO THREE put together State Baby Facts to do just that. State Baby Facts are a series of online factsheets for every state and the District of Columbia that present infant and toddler data in the framework of good health, strong families, and positive early learning experiences. By providing a snapshot of how infants and toddlers are faring in each state, we can help inform policymakers about the programs that help improve the lives of infants, toddlers, and their families.

But that’s not all—there’s more to understand than just the data for your state. ZERO TO THREE’s Baby Facts: Observations for States tells a story about the facts, providing highlights on how infants and toddlers are faring across some states. For example, did you know that in 36 states, the cost of child care for an infant is more than one-third of the median income for a single mother? Or that the three states with the highest percentage of low-birthweight babies are neighboring states Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi?

When looking at the profile of each state’s youngest children, we see that where you are born can make a difference in your chances for a good start in life. To begin with, some states have more young children to look out for than others: Vermont and Wyoming have less than 23,000 children under the age of three, while California and Texas have well over one million. Infants and toddlers in Mississippi are more than three times as likely to be poor than those in North Dakota (34% in poverty in Mississippi compared with 9% in North Dakota). In almost every state, more than 30% of families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families have children under age three. Young children in Massachusetts, Vermont, and D.C. are the 99%—that is, the 99% who have health insurance.

Despite these differences, a common thread runs across state lines: too many babies are growing up in families under great economic stress without the resources to provide ingredients necessary for their child’s healthy development. These young families often lack critical resources—whether it’s adequate health care, ample food, housing security, or positive early learning opportunities—that play a crucial role in nurturing a young child’s development and helping them realize their potential. When essential programs that buffer young children against multiple hardships fail to reach all of those in need, not only are their individual opportunities to reach their full potential jeopardized, so is our nation’s ability to build the strong, competitive workforce it will need in the future.

Baby Champion on Morning Joe

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:58:00 -0500

Amidst the chatter last Thursday on the MSNBC program Morning Joe, Howard Dean once again emerged as a voice for babies in the debate on how to improve education in America. Dean pointed out that our focus on education needs to hone in, not just on early childhood in general, but specifically on children from birth to age three. However, much like the last time he brought up this point, babies got brushed aside in the back and forth over which political party wants education reform and which wants to protect the status quo.

Governor Dean first shouted out “zero to three!” last May during a Morning Joe conversation about education reform with former District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. This conversation was missing something really big, he said, and that something was what educators are doing about children ages 0 to 3. He pointed out that many deeply disadvantaged children start falling behind at birth and never catch up. The other panelists shrugged off this topic and said they had to focus on what they could do as educators when children come to school.

But Governor Dean had it right: we can’t hope to really improve learning in “big school” if we don’t make sure all children get a strong foundation for learning right from the start. We know that the first three years of life are a period of dramatic brain development, when children acquire the ability to think, speak, learn, and reason. Brains are built from the bottom up. Critical early experiences that shape brain architecture need to be positive ones that lay a sturdy foundation for all the learning, as well as health and social interactions, that follow. (Read more.)

Too many children miss out on these positive early learning experiences. Almost half of all infants and toddlers in America live in low-income families. More than one in four lives in outright poverty. Such deprivation at this sensitive period of development literally gets under their skins, embedding itself in their brain architecture and reverberating throughout their lives. An apt manifestation is the language gap that develops between very young children of differing socioeconomic status, which appears long before they enter kindergarten or even prekindergarten.

Early experiences take place in the context of relationships. That nurturing connection with a parent or other caregiver is what gives babies the confidence to explore the world around them and learn about all the amazing things within their reach. The social and emotional development fostered through relationships is interdependent with other domains of development, including cognitive, language, and physical. This means that the way we nurture a child’s heart is just as important as the way we nurture his mind and his body.

So where does all of this fit into education reform? Real education reform would have sound strategies to reach out to all at-risk babies regardless of setting—home, child care center, family child care, or Early Head Start (EHS)—to augment their parents’ efforts to support their early development. That means we also need caring professionals skilled in forging relationships with babies to facilitate their play and exploration, the laboratories of “baby learning”.

Key federal programs are the backbone of early childhood services. Early Head Start, which provides comprehensive early childhood services to poor infants and toddlers and their families, has been proven to have positive impacts on both babies and parents. But despite doubling the number of children EHS is funded to serve over the past few years, only a happy few—about 4 % of those eligible—find a spot there. The majority of babies have moms in the workforce, so child care is where much of their development unfolds. Disadvantaged children can reap the greatest benefit from high-quality child care, yet such care is often out of reach for low-income families, if it can be found at all. The Child Care and Development Fund helps families access care and supports some quality improvement, but funding is less in real terms today than a decade ago. The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program is one of the brightest spots for young children in the Affordable Care Act; but it needs to be nurtured, expanded, and protected from repeal.

Babies are always learning. The quality of their early care experiences means they are learning either that the world is their oyster or that they don’t matter. You can be sure that individual children carry this perception with them into elementary school and beyond. So we hope Governor Dean continues to champion the need for an education strategy to support early development starting at birth—and that someday baby learning will be the center of a discussion on Morning Joe.

The America Within Our Reach

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:55:12 -0500

In his State of the Union speech tonight before a joint session of Congress, President Obama challenged the country to “Think about the America within our reach,” one that leads in education, creates high-tech and high paying jobs, and has greater energy security. The optimistic speech laid out a “blueprint for an economy that’s built to last”, starting with bringing back manufacturing jobs.

Later in his address, the President focused on education, saying “to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, our commitment to skills and education has to start earlier.” He did not mention early childhood education, but talked about the ability of great teachers to change the trajectory of students’ lives. He urged giving schools—now faced with laying off teachers because of tight budgets—the “resources to keep good teachers on the job”. Other points in his education plan included prohibiting dropping out of high school and making higher education more affordable.

The wide-ranging speech touched on policy areas such as immigration and energy self-sufficiency before turning to deficits and taxes. The President asserted that extending tax breaks in place for wealthy Americans necessitates a choice between keeping these tax cuts and investing in everything else, including education, medical research, and a strong military. He indicated a willingness to take steps to reign in long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid as well as strengthening Social Security, as long as their guarantees of security remained in place. In return, he called for reforming taxes so that everyone pays their fair share.

The President also recognized the needs of military Service men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He spoke of the need to support veterans and their families (many of whom have young children) with jobs. He is proposing a Veterans Job Corps to hire veterans as cops and firefighters.

President Obama closed by noting that it is working together that makes our country great. “No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.”

While the President did not specifically mention young children in his address, they surely would benefit in the rebuilt America the speech envisioned. The choices he laid out between our current tax structure and the ability to support investments have clear implications for programs that support the healthy development of infants and toddlers. And policies that help families, from extending payroll tax cuts that give working families a few extra dollars to make ends meet to promoting jobs for veterans with young families, benefit many young children. We will have to look to the President’s budget (now scheduled for release on February 13) for more specifics on how programs for infants and toddlers, which help lay the foundation for the jobs of the future, fare.

Does Congress Have a New Year’s Resolution for Babies?

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:19:00 -0500

Happy New Year from the Baby Policy Blog! As you may remember, last year ended with Congress completing the Fiscal Year 2012 appropriations process, resulting in an increase for Head Start/Early Head Start, CCDBG, and other programs vital to the healthy development of infants and toddlers. As calendar year 2012 (and the second session of the 112th Congress) begins, we are looking ahead to… you guessed it – babies and the budget! Congress will soon be back in session, with the House returning on January 17th, and the Senate a week later. 2012 will see Members spending a great deal of time back in their districts, as the election year begins to affect the Congressional agenda.

Funding decisions will once again need to be made for the many programs important to infants and toddlers that are funded through the annual appropriations process (discretionary programs). The President’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2013 (October 1, 2012 – September 30, 2013), scheduled to be released the first Monday in February under the terms of the Congressional Budget Act, outlines the administration’s recommended funding levels for individual programs. This is the first step to kick off a long process to establish line item appropriation levels for every program, project, and activity of the federal government.

What is unique this year, unlike previous years, is the effect of the 2011 agreement on the Budget Control Act – reducing annual appropriations by nearly $1 trillion over ten years relative to the current level of spending. Aggregate appropriations levels have already been determined for domestic as well as defense and international affairs programs, but Congress must still determine the details within these areas of appropriations through the enactment of 12 annual appropriations measures.

In the months following the submission of the President’s budget, the House and Senate craft their own versions of a budget blueprint (“budget resolution”) to guide decisions on spending and revenues for the year ahead. This concurrent resolution does not require the President’s approval. Upon adoption of the budget resolution, or May 15 (whichever comes first), the House and Senate Appropriations Committees begin to draft spending bills for the fiscal year beginning on October 1 (Fiscal Year 2013 in this year’s case). The goal is for Congress to complete its work on all appropriations bills and other decisions affecting spending and revenues before the start of the fiscal year. Even with these processes and targets, the Congressional schedule is never certain. What is certain is that Congress will be in recess several times during the year and for a significant period in August through Labor Day so that the party nominating conventions can be held in anticipation of the fall elections. For a refresher on the details of the budget process, read Babies & The Budget: Opportunities for Action and revisit our budget videos.

An important piece of legislation that we will continue to follow in the new year is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has taken up and approved a bipartisan bill, the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act of 2011. One key provision for the first time includes infants and toddlers in a program that recognizes the importance of the early years in language and literacy development [these provisions are based on the Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act, S. 929]. The measure also authorizes Race to the Top (an initiative of the Obama Administration) with an early learning component, the “Early Learning Challenge.” The likelihood of the full Senate taking up the bill in this election year is unclear. The House is using a more piecemeal approach to ESEA, but the arrival of a bipartisan bill there is unlikely.

Another program that may be revisited is the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). Senator Barbara Mikulski, Chair of the Subcommittee On Children And Families, has held two hearings exploring child care issues, specifically issues surrounding child care quality and safety.

So, how do we get ready? Decisions about spending are never easy, and the tough budget battles of recent years are certain to continue. Spending decisions set our national priorities. We need to continue to advocate for decisions that serve our society’s interest. We can build for the future through funding and policy choices that support programs to ensure the positive early development of our most vulnerable infants and toddlers and their families.