Words of Insiration

Words of inspiration and motivation

One goal that I have is to advocate for some portions of the systems development work to change across agencies. It takes a parent several hours within a day to go to all of their appointments and by the end of the day they are exhausted and depleted and my have not been successful which means they may have to go back tomorrow. One of the goals I would like to see developed is a tool that cross references all agencies on one system where we can navigate our clients from the comfort of their home and they will not have to go to four places in one day to get the service they need. There is a big project coming to my community and I have the chance to have a seat at the table, so it will be one of the many things I would like to suggest. This is already being done among the Community Health Workers (CHW) in Chicago.

I appreciated the resources and feedback that you gave me throughout the course and I look forward to using it to advocate in my profession and engage in public policy. Thanks for everything.

The Political Will to Improve Early Childhood Systems - Part 2

The Political Will to Improve Early Childhood Systems

My family is a mom and dad that are not married but dad is active in the children’s life. Their names are Jamie and Ken. Jamie had a child before meeting Ken, Elle, she is three years old. Jamie had her first baby with Ken that has autism, Bella, she is two years old. They now have a third baby, Addison, that is one years old. Jamie is a single parent. Jamie is trying to find a school for Elle but their seems to be a shortage of three year old slots in the city so Elle is at home with her siblings. When Jamie met Ken and had Bella, who has autism, her whole world was turned upside down. Jamie always had a lot of support from grandma and her sisters, so they would pick up Elle and take her on adventures while Jamie had Dr. appointments for Bella .  Recently, her sisters decided to move to another state to pursue careers so that just left grandma as her support system, who is an older woman. She didn’t know what to do or where to turn.

 Even though dad was in the picture, Jamie was still single, and they were living in separate households which meant Jamie was responsible for bills. Jamie struggled because she had too many doctor appointments for Bella during her first year of her life and she took too many days off work, so they fired her. Jamie was overwhelmed and could not keep up with everything and successfully attend to Bella. She could not ask grandma to take on any of the burden because she still worked, and Ken couldn’t help as much because he worked as well. Jamie is going to be homeless soon because she doesn’t have a job to pay rent. Jamie will also not have any money for diapers or milk and is not sure if she should look for another job because of Bella’s doctor appointments.

Questions for Jamie:

Does she have a church home that could support her with alms for rent, food, electrical, gas?

Does she have resources for food pantries or diaper depots?

Is she getting child support?

Can she move with her mom or Ken?

Does she have resources for her child that has autism?

Is she enrolled in a nurse family partnership program or parenting class?

Does she know about early childhood education resources available to her?

Does she have resources for subsidized housing or section 8?
Did Jamie apply for Food Stamps and unemployment?

The Political Will to Improve Early Childhood Systems

The Political Will to Improve Early Childhood Systems

Strategies:

The Alliance for early success want to fortify their communications strategies, and to line up influential spokespersons who could help them make their case to decision-makers and the wider public.

 Alliance for early success partners have refined advocacy strategies over the decade: making innovative use of research and data, as well as new interactive data-tracking tools; working toward unified, coordinated messaging that can help influence and sway politicians

 The Alliance for early success developed an approach that focuses most intensively on vulnerable children, valuing and building on the strengths of their families and communities.

This work is important to me because in order to advance causes and policies in early childhood education, we need alliances and politicians pushing our agendas. We need collaboration around a community willing to network to get the job done. It takes a village to support our children literally and if we work together we can accomplish great things.


Reference

Birth to Five Policy Alliance. (2011). Retrieved from http://earlysuccess.org/