New Strategies for Change

07/15/2008

Being in your element is not only about aptitude...it is about loving what you do...tapping into your natural energy and your most authentic self.
Sir Ken Robinson, The Element

When the World Forum Foundation led business leaders, educators, and politicians from the State of Washington on a Gates Foundation-funded study tour to London and Helsinki, participants were most impressed with Finland's unswerving commitment to children and families. Finland has one strong system for meeting the early childhood education needs of all families. Different families received different levels of public support and use different forms of care (including parental leave) based on their income level and personal preferences, but all families are served through one integrated system.

In the U.S., early childhood services are delivered through a patchwork of uncoordinated, often conflicting, public programs and private initiatives. Even in the current presidential campaign, what few early childhood positions have been articulated, call for creating new programs, setting up new silos.

In recent years, some advocates, recognizing that it will be difficult to make sense of our current plethora of programs — with each program staunchly defended by its creators and constituents — have started to look at the promotion of quality early childhood services through an economic development framework. In this frame, quality child care is seen as a means of supporting the current work force and of upgrading the education and skills of the future workforce. This framework is well presented in Cornell University think piece, Economic Development Strategies to Promote Quality Child Care. This paper proposes actions such as the following to promote much needed change:

Upgrading business management practices through networks of providers sharing financial, marketing, and planning services.
Demonstrating to movers and shakers that child care is a valuable core of the economic infrastructure of communities, states, and regions through targeted economic impact analyses.
Increasing employer support for improving the quality and quantity of child care services in a community.
Creating links between training and compensation.
Creating links between quality rates and funding.
Providing innovative sources of finance for child care organizations.

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