Guest commentary: West Florida for the Children’s Movement of Florida... making children our priority

When faced with a budget crisis, a family typically does everything possible to minimize the impact on its children. To provide for our children’s needs — food, clothing, shelter, health care, education — most of us will sacrifice in other areas rather than see our children suffer.

Unfortunately, this is not Florida’s traditional approach to dealing with a budget crisis. In this admittedly extremely difficult budget year, children have not fared well. For example, the Legislature’s budget for this year reduces funding for the state’s already underfunded voluntary pre-kindergarten (VPK) program (approved by voters via constitutional amendment in 2002) by $30 million for fiscal year 2011-12. And state funding for high quality mentoring programs for 2011-12 has been set at just over $9 million — less than half the mentoring budget of over $20 million for fiscal year 2006-07, and far below the 2010-11 total of over $15 million.

As state coordinator for West Florida for the Children’s Movement of Florida, I work every day toward our goal of persuading Florida’s leaders to make children our top priority. Once that happens, we will begin to make steady progress toward most of our state’s goals, including improving our economy and creating jobs. Many studies have shown that when children’s needs are met in the first five years of life, those children are more likely to stay out of the juvenile justice system, do well in school and become productive adults who contribute to our economy.

No one benefits when children go without basic care and education. There’s a lot of truth in the cliché "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound a cure." Spending modest amounts of money per child between birth and age 5 (when 90 percent of brain development occurs) can eliminate the necessity of spending large amounts of money throughout that child’s lifetime to deal with the consequences.

The Children’s Movement of Florida currently focuses on five issues:

 Health insurance for children: 18 percent (over half a million children, and by some estimates over 800,000) of Florida’s children have no health insurance. In Collier County alone, 17,537 children had no health coverage in 2007. These children usually do not receive regular health-care services and do not have a "medical home." When they’re sick, their parents wait longer to take them to a doctor, and then they often use an emergency care facility.

Because they tend to be sicker when they seek care, they are more likely than children with insurance to be admitted to the hospital, and they are 1.5 times as likely to die in the hospital.

 Improvement of the VPK program: Statewide, our VPK program meets only three of the 10 national standards for such programs. While some pre-K providers meet most or all standards and provide a high quality learning environment, the overall quality of the program is lacking.

 Early diagnosis and treatment for children with special needs: When we identify children with special needs early, those needs can be addressed at a very young age through early intervention. The long-term benefits of early intervention are well documented.

 High quality mentoring programs: Mentoring is an extremely cost-effective way to influence outcomes for children. Mentors are typically volunteers; expenses involved in these programs mainly involve training mentors and the administrative task of matching up mentors and mentees. Funding mentoring programs is one of the most effective ways to save large amounts of money.

 Parent skill building initiatives: Most parents want to do a good job of raising their children. But many had no positive role model during their own childhood, and they tend to repeat their own parents’ mistakes. If we make information readily available for parents consistently throughout the state, we will make great improvements in parenting skills.

As one Tampa area business leader said to me recently: "Florida will never have enough money to fix all of its problems in the short run. We have to look at the problems — the criminal justice system for adults and juveniles, high unemployment rates, high dropout rates, out-of-control medical expenses, lack of a large educated workforce, etc. — and determine the best way to use the money we have to deal with those problems. The obvious answer is to take a long-term view and start investing in our youngest citizens now. In 10 to 15 years, we’ll see amazing results."

Newell is west coast coordinator for the Children’s Movement of Florida. She is a parent of two children, and has been an active volunteer for Collier County Public Schools. In 2008, she served as chair of Yes for Collier Students, the political committee that successfully promoted passage of a tax flexibility referendum to preserve student programs.

Read the full article here.