The government is sending clear signals that times are tough and that hard choices funding choices will have to be made. This is usually code for us who are involved with children on PEI to get worried.
Soon a new Early Years strategy will be rolled out. All the verbiage is aligned with what we know to be true today that the first 3 years of our lives are when we are shaped for the rest of our life. This is when we learn to be able to be social beings that have empathy or at the other extreme learn to lash out. This is when we learn how to learn or to close down. This is when our bodies are shaped to become obese and ill or well. This is when we learn to be addictive or not. This is when we learn to trust or to fear.
The government know all of this. But what is the focus of the work to-date? Is it how to work to improve our outcomes in this key time? No what I see is an intense focus on who owns and who works for daycares. Now this is no small issue and for all those involved, it is very important but it misses the key issues for the future of our society.
Here they are - again!
30% of the kids who enter school on PEI can't learn. They are so disruptive to the system that by graduation most of our kids have stopped learning. The risk for us is with most Islanders going to be over 65 in a decade, who will do the work? Who will get us through a reinvention of agriculture, the fishery and peak oil? Who will do even the simple things that any society needs?
We cannot afford to waste a child.
Most of the kids who make up the 30% do not attend daycare. Let's be clear again - while most of the energy of the government is focused on the worthy task of bringing on kindergarten for 5 year olds and on helping the daycares make the transition - the core problem is of the table.
Who and where are these kids?
This is where they come from on a map. But where do they really come from? What is is about their families that is so vulnerable and that sets up this kind of risk profile?
Families that enter into the Best Start program are screened and assessed by Public Health nursing, and the information obtained from the screening and assessment process provides unique insight into the strengths and challenges that these families have. The following is an overview of the challenges that Best Start families face on top of striving to be a good parent.
Best Start Parent Profiles
In 2008 - 2009, 563 parents/care givers participated in the Best Start program. The families involved in the program represent a wide range of individuals, but the majority of program participants are young, single, unemployed mothers with limited education. Further, these families struggle with addictions, domestic violence, depression and past history of sexual abuse.
Mothers participating in Best Start range in age from fifteen to forty, with the largest percentage (46%) being 18 - 22 years of age. In comparison with the general population of women on PEI, only 28% of births are born to mothers under the age of twenty-four.
Approximately half (49%) of mothers in Best Start are single.
The largest percentage of mothers participating in the Best Start program receive their income from Income Support or EI benefits (52%). Approximately 23% of mothers are financially supported by their families, and 20 % are working full/part time.
A significant number of Best Start mothers (32%) have not completed high school.
Approximately 42% of mothers and 45% of fathers involved with the Best Start program have had experience with alcohol and/or drug abuse. These parents would have received treatment for alcohol or drug abuse, or had periods in their lives when they used alcohol and/or drugs excessively.
Several parents are being flagged at through the Provincial Addictions program as candidates for the Best Start program. To date, 10 families (9 mothers and 1 father) involved in the Methadone Program are participating in Best Start.
Approximately 20% of Best Start families suffer from domestic violence in the current relationship with their partner.
Approximately 22 % of mothers in the Best Start program have been diagnosed with Postpartum Depression.
Approximately 33% of mothers and 1% of fathers have disclosed that they were sexually abused at some point in their lives.
Best Start Children
The majority of Best Start babies are born healthy. Over 90% of infants in the Best Start program have APGAR scores at 9 or over, and 87% of these infants have birth weights over 6lbs. However, the Public Health nursing assessment tool has shown that Best Start families have life challenges which are known to impact parenting and the health of the child.
Approximately 20% of children participating in the Best Start program have found to be in need of protection through Children Protection Services. Additionally, approximately 10% of families have been investigated by Child Protection Services as there were significant concerns to warrant an investigation.
Over 80% of children in the Best Start program are not involved in a licensed child care program.
This vulnerable population as we can see on the map, makes up most the the 30% of kids who enter our schools. A society that had recognized the challenge, as South Korea did after the Korean war, has this number down to 10%.
In BC they have exactly the same problem. Here is the introduction of the BC Plan to reduce their vulnerable group mto 15%.
The stock of human capital in British Columbia is key to its long-term economic success. This means early child development is a critical issue for business leaders, because the years before age six set in motion factors that will determine the quality of the future labour force. Today, only 71% of BC children arrive at kindergarten meeting all of the developmental benchmarks they need to thrive both now and into the future: 29% are developmentally vulnerable.
While the poor are more statistically likely to be vulnerable, the majority of vulnerable children in BC reside in the more populous middle-class. Early vulnerability is a middle- class problem.
A rate of child vulnerability above 10% is biologically unnecessary. At three times what it could be, the current vulnerability rate signals that BC now tolerates an unnecessary brain drain that will dramatically deplete our future stock of human capital. Economic analyses reveal this depletion will cause BC to forgo 20% in GDP growth over the next 60 years. The economic value of this loss is equivalent to investing $401.5 billion today at a rate of 3.5% interest, even after paying for the social investment required to reduce vulnerability.
Unnecessary early vulnerability in BC is thus costing the provincial economy a sum of money that is 10 times the total provincial debt load.
The implication is clear: governments, businesses, bankers and citizens have ten times as much reason to worry about the early child vulnerability debt as we have reason to worry about the fiscal debt.
So my questions to the cabinet are these:
- Do you see this issue? Have your officials scoped this out? If not why not?
- If you do see this issue - how do you rank it in importance? What ranks above it? If something does - what is it and why do you think that it is more important?
I find this all this so frustrating. None of this is new information. Why have I and others who have been working on this for so long been so ineffective?
