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Child Care and At-Risk Children
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19714 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1991 |
5,239 Words |
| Author
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Raymond C. Collins
Raymond C. Collins is the president of Collins Management
Consulting, Inc., based in Vienna, Virginia. He is a
consultant on child and family issues and has written
extensively on Head Start, child care, and other human
services activities in both the public and private sector. |
"He can be anything he wants. He is eager to learn everything, is respectful, and cares about others." This is how Guadalupe's mother describes her son's achievements at school and his former participation in the Booker T. Washington Head Start program in Phoenix, Arizona. Immigrants from Mexico, Guadalupe and his family spoke no English when they arrived in the United States. Today, he has been named the Superintendent's Super Student, earns straight A's, plays basketball, and is an accomplished saxophonist.
Guadalupe's is a heartwarming success story, and though one not shared by all Head Start graduates, it nonetheless captures the spirit of Head Start: to help children and their families achieve to the limits of their innate potential. However, not all at-risk children attend Head Start, which provides comprehensive services for low-income preschoolers.
According to the National Head Start Association (NHSA), in 1989, Head Start served only one out of five eligible low-income children aged three to five years and only thirteen thousand of the 2.5 million poor children under age three. Even after recent expansion, NHSA claims that two out of three income eligible children lack access to Head Start services.
The Administration for Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), the federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that manages Head Start, provides a somewhat more optimistic view. According to its data, after the 1991 expansion is completed and local programs have absorbed the funding increase of $400 million the 101st Congress provided, 596,000 children will be served by Head Start. Fifty-four percent of low-income children who enter school for the first time will be Head Start graduates. Parent Child Center (PCC) enrollment will be increased with at least one PCC operating in every state to serve pregnant women, infants, and toddlers (thereby broadening services to children under age three).
In part these differing perspectives of child advocates and government officials are accounted for by contrasting ways of calculating how close the nation is to the shared goal of universal Head Start. Full funding of Head Start is an aim articulated by President George Bush and the governors at the education summit and endorsed by a broad coalition, including the business-oriented Committee for Economic Development and the Children's Defense Fund. More fundamentally, the statistics mirror alternate visions of the range of Head Start services, particularly with reference to services that should be provided to
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