Vehr reflects on how even a 3-month policy wouldn’t have felt sufficient. “With a 3-month policy, I would have spent about a third of my leave with at least one child in the hospital. The extended 6-month leave meant that I could spend meaningful time, especially in those precious early days, focused on establishing new routines and caring for my children.”

Decreasing an employee’s salary and retirement savings opportunities at a time when their expenses are increasing causes high levels of stress, conditions that have been shown to negatively affect children’s growth and development. Start Early’s parental leave program also aligns with research evidence about the impact caregiver stress and access to high-quality healthcare has on young children by providing employees with 100% of their salary and benefits during parental leave.

“I was really one of the fortunate parents in the NICU,” says Vehr. “I think about mothers who have to return to work before they’ve fully healed or parents who are forced to return to work when their little ones are so very young because not receiving a paycheck is simply not an option.”

A comprehensive paid parental leave program can aid in retaining women in the workforce. One study from Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that implementing paid parental leave policies in California and New Jersey resulted in a 20 percent reduction in the number of women exiting their jobs in the first year after welcoming a child and up to a 50 percent reduction after 5 years.

“When you invest in your people, they invest back in the organization which ultimately leads to increased retention,” notes Byville. “I feel a much stronger sense of loyalty to Start Early because of the space they made for my family.”

Vehr agrees, “I feel a deeper sense of commitment to our organization and more cared for as an employee.” She adds, “it really calls on employers to consider a far more empathetic, humane approach to parental and family leave, and it also calls on our lawmakers to support employers with that aim.”

The benefits of paid parental leave set families, employers, and our communities up for success, which is why Start Early will continue to advocate for family-friendly policies that support time for parents and caregivers to bond with and care for their children without jeopardizing their ability to afford basic needs.

Laura, a professor of nursing at Bradley University, signed up for Family Connects Illinois with her students in mind. The evidence-based, universal home visiting program is offered to families with newborn children in Peoria County.

“As I was signing the paperwork to be induced, hospital staff shared information about this free program that they thought I might be interested in,” she recalls. “I thought I would see what it was about not only for myself, but to help connect my students to new opportunities that further their knowledge.”

After giving birth, Laura returned home with her newborn son, Tommy. She had all but forgotten about the program until she received a call a few weeks later, connecting her to her nurse home visitor, Marianne.

At Start Early, we know that reading is fundamental to a child’s development. As we celebrate Read Across America Day, we recognize the importance of making reading with your little ones a priority every day! By reading with your young child, you are not only bonding and inspiring a love of reading, but also developing strong early language and literacy skills that are key to future learning and success.

Whether your child is a newborn or about to head to kindergarten, here are some great books to read during storytime:

• Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle
• Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae
• Smile, Baby Faces Board Book by Roberta Grobel Intrater
• Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry
• Peekaboo Morning by Rachel Isadora
• We’re Different, We’re the Same by Bobbi Kates
• Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
• Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang
• What If by Samantha Berger
• Swimmy by Leo Lionni
• The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Other Early Learning Resources:

• 7 Books for Teaching Young Children How to Be Great Leaders
• 12 Tips to Boost Early Literacy

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is home to several federal offices that set key policies for children and families. As President Biden’s nominee for HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, appears before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on February 23, we hope he will keep the needs of children and families at the forefront of the agency’s ongoing work and its efforts to rebuild and recover amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Families, providers, and community and state systems leaders have spent this last year learning and innovating as the pandemic forced swift action and adaptation related to key issues of access, inclusion, and equity in early care and learning. Here are the lessons we hope new HHS leadership will heed from early childhood stakeholders as they take the agency’s helm:

1. For the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: Enable and scale innovations related to home-visiting and early intervention services.

HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) should explore new ways to leverage federal funding streams — like Medicaid — to expand access to evidence-based home visiting programs and doula services. By making access to MIECHV supported doula services a priority, HHS has the opportunity to address disparities in maternal health outcomes, improve engagement in home visiting, and strengthen the continuum of health-supportive interventions starting prenatally. Here in Illinois, Start Early has supported legislation to expand the Medicaid program to cover evidence-based home visiting and doula services, helping to ensure families have access to these high-quality supports that keep them and their children healthy. Expanding Medicaid to cover these important interventions will allow for state-wide expansion of home visiting and doula capacity and coordination of services and supports for children and families from before birth through early childhood. Under its new leadership, we encourage CMS to continue working with Illinois and other states who are working to remove barriers that prevent low-income women from accessing home visiting and doula services, provide guidance and support to states like Illinois that are looking to expand Medicaid coverage of these services, and replicate those efforts at the federal level. This includes timely approvals of flexibilities such as the 1115 waiver which extends postpartum coverage for women on Medicaid for up to 12 months.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, CMS has issued waivers and flexibilities that support the use of telehealth among Medicare beneficiaries. This has benefitted many underserved and priority populations, including children and families in rural areas and those receiving Early Intervention services. HHS has the opportunity to ensure that telehealth remains an option for delivery of all Early Intervention services beyond the current public health emergency. We strongly encourage CMS to use this unprecedented moment as an opportunity to learn from states and local communities where continuation of Medicaid-funded telehealth might benefit kids and families.

2. For the Administration for Children and Families: Promote cross-program collaboration and funding stream innovations that strengthen the U.S.’s child care infrastructure.

HHS’s Administration for Children and Families is home to the federal Office of Child Care and Office of Head Start, two entities that are positioned to continue making great strides in strengthening our nation’s child care infrastructure.

A key lesson from the pandemic is that simply stabilizing child care is not sufficient. We must also focus on improving, strengthening and redesigning our child care system to make it more equitable and accessible and supportive of the unique needs of home-based child care providers and family choice. We urge the Office of Child Care to explore how staffed family child care networks and shared services alliances can fulfill these goals, by increasing providers’ access to technical assistance and families’ access to embedded health, mental health and family engagement services. An investment in research is also essential, to determine the effectiveness of different types of networks for increasing supply, improving quality, enhancing child outcomes and to identify effective programs that support family, friend, and neighbor caregivers to maintain safe, stimulating home environments and earn livable wages.

We also encourage the Administration for Children and Families to explore how existing federal funding streams — including the Preschool Development B-5 funds, Head Start funds, and Child Care Development Block Grant — can be leveraged to ensure providers and networks of providers can partner effectively to best serve the children and families in their communities. While the pandemic has revealed the fragility of our under-resourced child care sector, it has also illuminated the importance of providers being able to braid or layer different funding sources to provide comprehensive services to families. Strong programs braid funding from various sources in order to ensure that the families they serve have access to a comprehensive, high-quality early childhood education experience. The Administration for Children and Families should work closely with state administrators to ensure providers at the local level can partner effectively by encouraging layered funding. This would go a long way toward improving the quality of experience for families with young children by increasing the opportunities for pre-k, head start, early head start and child care partnerships. Family child care networks and shared services alliances can be one of the vehicles for building those partnerships, as can the Early Head Start Child Care Partnerships model, which helps raise the bar on what quality infant and toddler care can and should be.

3. For the Health Resources and Services Administration: Learn from families and home visitors about their COVID-related funding and flexibility needs.

HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration is home to the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home-Visiting (MIECHV) Program. Nearly one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, home-visitors and their clients have learned a lot about the limitations of home-visiting funding sources and the additional flexibilities needed to deliver high-quality services during this time. Pending the inclusion of additional MIECHV funding in future COVID relief packages, HHS should continue to support the home visiting field and MIECHV program by offering the utmost flexibility to state grantees. Without losing sight of the goal to return to in-person home visiting when the pandemic subsides, HHS should capitalize on the opportunity to evaluate what the field has learned from the shift to virtual service delivery, from ways to creatively engage families to new sets of workforce supports. As the field works to understand the blend of service delivery strategies that will best serve families in the long-term, research should ensure key equity issues are investigated including access to and comfort with technology, and disparities in health risks and comfort with in-home services moving forward.

Racial inequities embedded in our current health care system make prenatal and maternal health care less accessible and less responsive to Black mothers regardless of their socio-economic status.

In a recent Block Club Chicago article exploring how doulas can help even the playing field in maternal health for women of color, Denise Cain — a mother in Start Early’s (formerly known as the Ounce) Healthy Parents & Babies program — spoke about how she benefitted from having a doula guide her through her second pregnancy and postpartum care.

“Support from a doula — who is trained to advise and offer emotional and physical support to mothers before and after birth — can make a big difference in the unequal health outcomes women of color face,” Diana McClarien, vice president of Start Early’s Early Head Start & Head Start Network shared in the piece.

In the piece, Start Early doula Patricia Ceja-Muhsen explains how doulas help inform women about all the different choices they can make, empowering them to have more control over their pregnancy and birthing process. She also adds that doulas can make sure doctors listen, address all of an expecting mom’s concerns and fully inform women about their options and the care they are receiving.

Start Early’s direct-service programs provide critical supports to young parents for building strong relationships with their baby and creating a safe and stimulating home environment. It is programs like these that can ensure all new moms and babies, including Black moms and babies, receive the quality physical and emotional care they need and deserve.

Read the full article at Block Club Chicago.

Quality early learning and care can help our country address so many of the issues raised during this week’s confirmation hearing for President Biden’s nominee for education secretary, Miguel Cardona, including addressing the opportunity gap, providing social and emotional supports, and providing learning opportunities that are culturally and linguistically responsive and honor students’ unique needs and abilities.

Learning begins at birth and our education system should begin then as well. We can’t expect the K-12 system to remediate opportunity gaps that open before a child’s first birthday.

Cardona shared a desire to not only meet the immediate needs of students and their families amidst the pandemic, but to think beyond the present to design for building back better. This will require new ways of thinking and working. While today’s hearing focused on K-12 and higher education, we hope Cardona will address our education system as a single, interconnected journey that begins at birth (and before) and that must provide equitably and adequately for our students at every step. Of course, this will require aligning and coordinating early childhood work across the federal government, as strengthening early childhood programs and supports won’t be the work of the Education Department (ED) alone. We hope Cardona will champion these investments, even if they might happen outside of the Education Department, and partner closely with his peer leaders at other federal agencies that deeply impact young children, particularly the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Additionally, the collaboration between ED and HHS departments would send a message to system leaders at all levels to do the same — creating an opportunity to use ED’s bully pulpit to drive radical collaboration that benefits all children.

We appreciate the focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and addressing the opportunity gap in the vision that Cardona has laid out. Additionally, we appreciate his commitment to examining school discipline issues and inequities, which have serious implications for all children, including our youngest learners and children of color.

Sens. Kaine and Cassidy also raised issues around supports for learners who have disabilities. Appropriate screening and early intervention are critical to ensuring their success, as is increasing funding the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. We agree with Cardona that this would be a “game-changer” for learners.

Finally, it is important that all educators be offered the opportunity to be vaccinated as quickly as possible, a task that is so much harder in early childhood given the fragmentation of programs and providers. Given the vaccine roll out has varied at the local level, we encourage federal guidance that all educators be prioritized—whether they teach toddlers or 12th graders.

We encourage Commissioner Cardona, as well as the President and Congress, to continue to move quickly on delivering COVID-19 relief to children, families, and those who serve them, including ensuring that educators — beginning with those who teach our youngest learners — are included in priority groups for vaccine access.

COVID-19 has accelerated issues in our early education system that have been overlooked for decades. There has never been a better—or more critical time—for a U.S. Secretary of Education to chart their own course and boldly lead on early childhood.

The good news, addressing early learning and care is one of the few bipartisan opportunities for the incoming Biden administration. Polling from last year shows that early childhood education has broad support among Republicans, Democrats and independents. COVID-19 has shown that early learning and care is not a “nice-to-have”—it’s essential for children, families and our economy.

That’s why we are optimistic about President Biden’s choice in Miguel Cardona for U.S. Secretary of Education. Cardona brings two decades of experience as a practitioner in K-12 and has shown a commitment to equity and early learning, having served as co-chairperson of the Connecticut Birth to Grade Three Leaders Council. Additionally, his personal story is inspiring and reflective of the lived experiences of many of our early learners.

Many of the funding increases at the Education Department (ED) promised by the president during his campaign could allow states to meaningfully increase access to high-quality inclusive early learning programs and services, and we look forward to working with the new administration.

The new Secretary has an opportunity to provide the leadership needed to revise and improve programs, policies and funding streams managed by ED that impact the children and families we serve, including:

Aligning and coordinating early childhood work across the federal government.

As COVID-19 has illuminated, children and families rely on a complex fabric of supports to function and thrive, weaving everything from access to health care and broadband internet together. Similarly, the programs, policies, and funding streams that serve children from birth through age 5 and their families sit in multiple departments across the federal government.

Strengthening early childhood programs and supports won’t be the work of the Education Department alone.

Secretary Cardona will need to reinstitute strong collaborations between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other federal child and family serving agencies to ensure a seamless and comprehensive early learning system for families.

Increasing funding for Title I and ensuring states prioritize investments in prenatal-to-age-5 early childhood education.

Under Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), our nation’s education law, school districts (LEAs) can use Title I funds towards quality early childhood education. However, many haven’t done so, largely due to a lack of understanding on how to use or access these funds.Secretary Cardona has an opportunity to prioritize use of Title 1 funds for early childhood by providing clearer expectations and incentives for this use.

For one, like our K-12 students, our youngest learners face steep learning losses as a result of being out of the classroom for the past year. Studies have found preschool participation fell by half in some places, and few families have remained consistently involved in remote opportunities. When programs offered at-home learning support, most children participated less than once a week. As Title I funds are directed to support learning losses throughout the education system, programs serving children from birth through age 5 should be included as well.

Finally, while the potential increases in funding for preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds that President Biden has called for are exciting, even greater investment must be prioritized for infants and toddlers (and prenatally), to build a comprehensive prenatal-to-age 5 early learning system. We hope Cardona will champion these investments, even if they might happen outside of ED.

Ensuring school districts and community-based programs are set up for success to leverage Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds to support our youngest learners with disabilities and developmental delays across a continuum of settings.

Despite programs and resources designed to support them, children with disabilities remain underserved by early care and learning programs. Cardona can ensure our youngest learners with disabilities and developmental delays have access to early care and learning programs that are designed and resourced to support them by fully funding the IDEA, permanently authorizing the Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities (Part C of IDEA), and significantly increasing funding to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Program.

Including the unique needs of the early learning workforce in decisions around higher education financing, educator compensation and public service loan forgiveness.

The early childhood workforce was facing a crisis even before the COVID-19 pandemic. For years early learning professionals have been systemically underpaid and undervalued, creating a minimally trained workforce vulnerable to high turnover even as demand has increased.

Take the average child care professional. Despite having attained a bachelor’s degree in early learning and care to acquire the specific knowledge and skills needed to provide quality learning and care to our youngest children, she makes on average just $25,000 a year. She works for a private, for-profit child care center, making current options for student loan forgiveness unavailable. As she begins her own family, the pay won’t justify the expenses to find child care for her own children.

There are many ways Secretary Cardona could support a well-trained and well-paid early childhood workforce, including making Pell grants available for those interested in degrees in early learning and care or opening up student loan forgiveness to any child care worker regardless of whether they work for a for-profit or nonprofit child care center.

Countless families continue to lack access to child care, early learning programs or in-person instruction as a result of the ongoing pandemic. In our final Starting Early Begins With… event, a diverse group of experts discussed the dismal state of our workforce and what needs to be done at corporate, provider and policy levels to reopen our early learning programs equitably and safely. Panelists included:

• Dr. Theresa Hawley, First Assistant Deputy Governor, Education, State of Illinois
• Peter J. Holt, CEO and General Manager, HOLT CAT; Co-Chair, Early Matters San Antonio
• Angela Lampkin, Director, Educare Chicago
• Cheryl Oldham, Vice President of Education Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Senior Vice President of Education and Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation
• Moderator: Diana Rauner, President, Start Early

Sources
1. A shocking number of women dropped out of the workforce last month

We are excited to share our annual Start Early 2020 Year In Review report, which showcases the incredible work achieved throughout last fiscal year (July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020). The last half of the year proved to be challenging and uncertain – yet, the unyielding resilience of families and the early learning and care field during a devastating global pandemic has been inspiring.

The highlights from this past fiscal year demonstrate how our work and our longstanding goals for transformation have been accelerated by the crises that face our country. The report also showcases the innovative solutions that early learning champions developed and deployed to address the unprecedented challenges impacting families.

2020 Year in Review

As we look forward, Start Early recommits to strengthening and deepening our role as an anti-racist organization that works in true partnership with communities to ensure the voices of families are represented, heard and valued. We are grateful for the ongoing support of our partners and donors, and together, we can advance better, more equitable early learning opportunities for our youngest children.