Editorial: Florida lawmakers need to seriously consider proposals of the Children's Movement

Largely snubbed by the Florida Legislature during its last session, the Children's Movement of Florida, a grass-roots organization devoted to improving the health and education of the state's youngest population, recently released a scaled back list of recommendations for action during the upcoming session of the Legislature.

The political reality is that money is tight. The movement does not ask that the state come up with additional money to help children, but to redirect available funds from other parts of the budget where the long-term benefits for the state's children and development of a healthy and educated workforce may not be as significant.

Last year, the movement asked lawmakers to redirect about $300 million in support of the movement's goals and it came out nearly empty-handed. This year, the cost of programs proposed by the movement is far less, $28.5 million. While that may seem a lot, it's really a minuscule percent of an anticipated budget of about $70 billion.

The Children's Movement is proposing improvements in five areas: parent skill-building programs, screening and treatment for children with special needs, upgrading the state's pre-kindergarten program, providing health care for uninsured children, and assisting high-quality mentoring programs.

The movement has issued detailed proposals for action in each of those five areas.

Some skeptics have implied that its goals and proposed programs amount to the role of parents being diminished and those roles being taken over by government-sponsored social programs with some kind of agenda. That is simply not true. The Children's Movement recognizes the absolute importance of parents and the family in nurturing and developing children. The movement doesn't want to replace parents, but help the parents be the parents they want to be for their children in whatever areas they feel they need help. That's clear in the goal of expanding support and information for parents that is one of the movement's primary goals.

The movement recommends creation of a public awareness campaign on the importance of early development and parental involvement, use of social media to provide development information to parents, provide online tutorials on parenting, and establishing a bipartisan group of public and private sector leaders to investigate what parents need and want and how to provide it.

The goals of that group include:

- Maximize outreach and support to families from trusted entities such as faith communities and health care providers.

- Integrate research-based practices into existing investments such as Healthy Start, the Department of Children and Families, child protection work and early intervention services.

- Identify ways to leverage existing funding to more effectively meet family needs.

- Increase public and private investment in successful programs that improve parent knowledge, quality of relationships with children and ongoing engagement.

Through a year of meetings throughout the state, the Children's Movement of Florida has listened to parents, educators, health care providers and others to develop a five-point agenda for legislative action. Most of the research into how to improve life for the state's children has been done and documented.

What is needed now is action by the Legislature. Too often, the children of this state have been shortchanged by lawmakers and have been particularly impacted in recent years of state budget cutting.

Investments in children have major benefits both short-term and long-term. Lawmakers need to get on board and show with their actions that they support this state's children and their importance to the state's future.

CHILDREN'S MOVEMENT OF FLORIDA

Find out more about legislative agenda and how to join grassroots organization at chilrensmovementflorida.org.

Read the full article here.