Sunday, February 22, 1998

Abilene steps forward to address the 'quiet crisis'

By Nancy Paup

It has been called the "quiet crisis" of the United States. Our nation's children under the age of 4 and their families are in trouble, and their plight worsens every day.

Inadequate prenatal care, lack of parenting education, isolated parents, substandard child care and poverty are a few of the major risk factors children under 4 are confronting on a daily basis. However, babies seldom make the news: they do not commit crimes, do drugs, drop out of school or vote (but their parents do!). Parents are not interviewed by the media as they struggle to find affordable quality child care.

Consequently, the problems of our youngest children and their parents remain a quiet crisis.

Early childhood professionals and research scientists concur that the most important developmental time in a child's life is the first four years. Also, five key trends that are contributing to changing values of young families are working mothers, single-parent families, family isolation, violence and poverty.

In March 1997, Mayor Gary McCaleb initiated the formation of the First Four Years Committee. Ernesto Segura, assistant principal at Abilene High School, and I were asked to co-chair this committee, which included 14 community leaders.

The mission of the committee was to research seven key areas that related to children ages birth to 4 -- child care, parent education and training, nutrition and health, arts and play, safety and security, isolation and loneliness and technology.

Key questions that were addressed in each area were: How is Abilene doing in this area? Is information being communicated in a systematic and effective manner? What are other cities doing? What else can we do?

The committee met for 11 months researching these various topics. It is important to note that there are numerous groups in Abilene, including nonprofit organizations, state agencies, businesses and foundations, that are making significant contributions to the lives of families and young children. However, our findings revealed that although Abilene is attentive to some of the needs of our youngest children and their families, there are many gaps that exist in our community concerning the needs of all children ages birth to four.

Some of the key areas targeted by the committee that were identified as areas of weakness in meeting these needs were:

n Ineffective collaboration and communication among current national, state and local child care-related nonprofit agencies. The community lacks an effective information-referral system. Although there are numerous nonprofit agencies in Abilene, many operate independently of one another, which fosters economic waste and ineffective communication between agencies and clients. In the free enterprise sector, these poor mismanagement practices would lead to business failure.

n Quality child care is not available, affordable and/or accessible to many children. More than 500 children are in need of child care assistance in Abilene.

n Parent education and training is not available to every family in Abilene. Although there are sporadic attempts to provide training by various groups, there is not a communitywide parent education program offered to every family such as the Parents as Teachers, which began in Missouri, originally designed for the public school setting and supported by public funding.

n The community lacks an effective, proactive and cohesive support system for young children and their families. This results in ineffective networking, collaboration and communication among various institutions, such as corporations, small businesses, nonprofit agencies, churches, private foundations, educational institutions, etc.

On Thursday, the committee will submit a 50-page report with more than 60 recommendations to Mayor McCaleb and the City Council at its regularly scheduled meeting.

The Abilene community must accept the challenge to mobilize and work together to ensure that all children under the age of 4 -- our most vulnerable citizens -- are given the care and protection they need and deserve. This wise investment in our children's early years will pay huge dividends to our city and nation.

Nancy Paup, director of the Early Childhood Program at St. John's Episcopal School in Abilene, is co-chairperson of the city's First Four Years Committee.