Carol Goar has an article in The Star titled, “Targeted child care misses mark”. In the article she details how many children are not being served because care is targeted to low income homes and children who are thought to be ‘at risk’ because they come from poverty.
Doherty, a child development psychologist, has spent 30 years as an educator, provincial policy-maker and researcher. She has just completed a study for the Institute for Research on Public Policy (www.irpp.org) that pulls together the lessons she has learned:
The first is that most developmentally delayed children come from middle-income and affluent families. The incidence may be higher among economically disadvantaged kids, but numerically, the vast majority of vulnerable children are neither poor nor distinguishable from their peers.
“Many people are unaware of this,” Doherty says. “The problem is much bigger than people realize and it cuts across income groups.”
The second is that programs designed to change the behaviour of low-income parents – to improve their child-rearing skills or get them into the workforce – have little impact on their offspring.
“These interventions may benefit parents,” Doherty says, “but they generally have negligible effects on children’s development.”
The third is that vulnerable kids do best in structured, full-day programs. Less formal types of care reduce their odds of succeeding at school and becoming healthy, self-supporting adults.
“Poor quality child care is not simply a missed developmental opportunity, it is known to be detrimental to all children’s development,” Doherty says. “Canada cannot continue to treat this service as simply a safe place for children to stay while their parents work.”
Her final overarching conclusion is that universal programs are a better investment of public funds than initiatives targeted at kids that “everybody knows will have difficulty.
Universal programs are indeed a better way to deal with any social program. Politicians don’t like them because it is much harder to claw back from everyone than it is to get everyone thinking ‘those nasty poor people are getting my money take it back!’
Targeted child care or any targeted program also presupposed that simply because of income the parent(s) are somehow lesser equipped. In an age of corprotocracy anyone may fall into poverty. Lack of life skills is not a prerequisite.
The article goes on to mention the costs involved in universal school and care programs
Such an undertaking would be expensive, the author concedes. By her estimate, it would cost about $5.6 billion to put in place a high-quality, universal early childhood education system in Ontario ($15 billion nationwide).
But within a generation, the payback – in reduced dropout rates, lower welfare expenditures, increased employment income and higher tax revenues – would outweigh the costs two to one, Doherty says.
She doubts that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who sees no role for Ottawa in early childhood development, will be receptive to this message. Nor is she expecting widespread support in the business community.
Little wonder that Harper and the teat suckling business community would not be on board. After all if even a percentage of the money spent on corporate welfare were spent on programs that would actually benefit the citizens of the country our standard of living and ability to sustain social and medicare programs would rise dramatically.
I for one am sick to bloody death of hearing about the need to lower business tax in order to create work and keep business in Canada. If it worked we would not have seen the steady erosion of jobs to countries where businesses pay small wages, no benefits and break international and moral laws.
Many businesses which do continue to operate in Canada are availing themselves of temp labour instead of hiring workers themselves. This allows them to bypass benefits and even to avoid paying statutory holidays. {More on this in an upcoming post}
The idea of universality works both ways however. Yes indeed many middle class children may be missing out and that does need to be addressed. Let us not forget though that early education is only one step. How about fighting for universal post secondary education too? How about fighting for a universal right to housing and food? Two things without which children will most assuredly not prosper. How about electing governments who take a commitment to reducing and/or eradicating poverty seriously and who don’t continue to delist important medical tests and procedures?
In an age of “targeting” we need to recognize that the corprotocracy has years of experience with successfully creating need where none exists. Advertising has convinced many that an extra 5 lbs is ‘unsightly fat’, that anything less than a radioactive glowing smile is social suicide, and that if we don’t have whiter than white laundry we have utterly failed our families.
That same approach is now being used with some success in creating a need to rob children of care, seniors of care, citizens of medicare and eye exams and hearing tests, etc, in order to provide yet bigger tax cuts to business which will then explain to the pawns government that you no longer need benefits or breaks or overtime or programs for your children or the ability to afford to put your kids in sports your aging relative doesn’t need more than two changes of adult protection a day or a bath more than once a week……..
Let’s start with universal early education–but let’s not end there.
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