By Shannon Rudisill, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development and Melissa Lim Brodowski, Senior Policy Analyst, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development
As ACF celebrates its 25th anniversary, we reflect on a collaboration that has been in place for more than a decade across the Office of Head Start (OHS), Office of Child Care (OCC), the Children’s Bureau (CB), and the Office of Early Childhood Development. Having worked together on early childhood issues and child welfare, it is especially timely during spring when we commemorate both National Child Abuse Prevention Month and National Foster Care Month. This is a time to take stock of what we know, what we are doing, and what else we need to do. We know that very young children have the highest rates of child maltreatment, and infants are the most likely to die from child abuse or neglect. Also, children under the age of five are the largest age group coming into foster care. Prolonged stress and adverse experiences can weaken the architecture of the developing brain and can lead to lifelong problems in learning, behavior, and physical and mental health.
Early care and learning programs play an important role in providing services and supports to prevent child abuse and neglect, promote healthy development and resilience, and counterbalance the effects of adversity. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates high quality early care and education programs can reduce parental stress, promote child development, link families to services, and enrich the learning environment for disadvantaged children. Several home visiting programs have been found to improve outcomes in early childhood and prevent child maltreatment. A study of children who participated in Early Head Start (EHS) suggests that EHS may be effective in reducing child maltreatment, to include physical and sexual abuse, among low-income children. Stability in child care placement was also found to buffer some of the negative effects of household chaos. A forthcoming research brief from ACF’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) examines evidence related to safety, permanency, and well-being as benefits of early care and education for children in child welfare.
Our work at the federal level has utilized this research to underscore the importance of Early Childhood-Child Welfare partnerships to address the needs of our most vulnerable young children. We envision increased collaboration amongst child welfare and early childhood systems to support and amplify positive outcomes for children prenatal to eight and their families. Highlights of our interagency work includes:
Joint Information Memoranda to encourage collaborations in early care and education for children involved with child welfare. CB, OHS, and OCC have previously issued guidance to encourage more intentional partnerships between child welfare agencies, EHS and Head Start agencies, and state child care agencies and support promising practices such as, cross-training, referral, and targeted enrollment of vulnerable families in EHS, Head Start, and child care programs.
Statutory and Regulatory Opportunities through the Child Care Development Fund and Head Start.
- State child care agencies can prioritize child care subsidies for children in protective services, and have initiated innovative partnerships to meet the needs of this population.
- Foster children are categorically eligible for EHS and Head Start, regardless of family income. OHS encourages grantees to prioritize categorically ineligible children with an open case with the child welfare system for enrollment due to risk level and family need.
Research and demonstration grants to test innovative early childhood and child welfare collaborations.
- The Early Head Start/Child Welfare System (EHS/CWS) Initiative (2002-2006) provided 24 EHS grantees with additional pilot funding to support EHS/CWS programs in identifying optimal strategies for engaging high-risk CWS families. Lessons learned from these projects were foundational for subsequent work.
- The Children’s Bureau funded 18 State and local collaborative projects through the “Child Welfare-Early Education Partnerships to Expand Protective Factors for Children with Early Child Welfare Involvement” (2011-2015) to build state and local infrastructure capacity.
- The Quality Improvement Center on Early Childhood was an effort funded by the Children’s Bureau (2008-2013) to support four collaborative projects that tested models of promoting protective factors across multiple levels: individual, family, and community.
- ACF’s OPRE is currently funding six Early Head Start- University Partnership Grants focused on evaluating strategies to buffer children from toxic stress within EHS programs. The findings will be disseminated over the upcoming year.
Ensuring the most vulnerable children and families benefit from high quality early care and education programs requires a cross-systems approach and a commitment to engaging families and communities in new and more meaningful ways. Now is the time to re-energize our efforts to work together across sectors to prevent child maltreatment and promote healthy early childhood development because our young children can’t wait.
For more information about ACF’s Early Childhood – Child Welfare Partnerships, visit: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ecd/interagency-projects/eccw-partnerships
Child Welfare Information Gateway: https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/preventing/preventionmonth/
CDC also recently released Preventing Child Abuse & Neglect: A Technical Package for Policy, Norm, and Programmatic Activities to help states and communities prioritize efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect, including providing high quality early care and education. Visit: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/technical-packages.html
Reprinted with permission.