Apr. 8--Oregon offers promising programs to support the social and emotional health of infants and toddlers in the critical first years of life, but those efforts reach only a fraction of the kids who need them, a child advocacy group reported today.
By not investing more in "upstream" prevention programs for infants and toddlers, "Oregon will continue to flood its downstream mental health treatment programs, its alcohol and drug addiction services, and its criminal justice system," writes the Children's Institute of Portland in its report, "From Risk to Resilience: Building the Social and Emotional Health of Oregon's Most Vulnerable Young Children."
"Future generations of Oregonians will enter kindergarten lacking the skills needed to succeed in school and ultimately will be ill-equipped to contribute to society and to participate in a competitive global economy."
The institute released its report during a breakfast meeting today at the Governor Hotel in downtown Portland that drew education, business and political leaders, including Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone; Rep. Tina Kotek, D-Portland; Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish, and former Governors Vic Atiyeh and Barbara Roberts.
J. Ronald Lally, an expert on early childhood development and co-director of WestEd's Center for Child and Family Studies, described how a child's relationship with adults in the first years of life can shape social and emotional health critical to school success.
"Children are wired to learn from the day-to-day interactions that they have with principal caregivers," he said. "It is the social exchanges children have with people who care for them that creates the base for learning."
In healthy development, children learn to persist, pay attention, follow instructions, control impulses, regulate emotions, feel and express warmth with others and gain a sense of self-worth and competence, says the institute's report. Those qualities all support school success.
But when children do not get enough adult support and interaction, the report says, they become distracted or disengaged, impulsive, insecure and prone to emotional outbursts and fights with classmates. Factors that jeopardize healthy social and emotional development include parents with depression or drug and alcohol problems, poverty, exposure to violence, neglect, abuse and loss of a parent.
Many Oregon programs reduce risk factors and aid healthy social and emotional development in young children, the institute reports. One is Healthy Start, a family support and education program. Relief nurseries provide quality preschools, parent coaching and other services. Early Head Start, which the Legislature in February expanded by $1 million, helps parents develop healthy relationships with their infants and toddlers.
But those and other programs reach only a small share of children in need of support, the institute reports. Healthy Start screens 10,000 families with a first-born child each year and provides home visits from a professional for about 2,500 to 3,000 of them. Relief Nurseries serve 954 children in 11 Oregon communities. Early Head Start reaches about 1,700 children and their families -- -- less than 6 percent of those eligible.
"A chasm remains between what Oregon is doing and what we should be doing," the report says.
About 41 percent of young Oregon children are exposed to one or more factors that threaten their emotional and social development. One of the most common is being put into daycare too soon, Lally said.
About 10 percent of daycare services are high quality; another 40 percent "damage our kids," he said.
Parents should be with babies during their first six months, he said, but unlike parents in other industrialized countries, Americans often put their children in daycare 8-to-14 weeks after the kids are born.
"We send our children away from their parents earlier than anyone else."
-- Bill Graves
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