Did You Know…….?

The Children's Defense Fund is a national organization dedicated to ensuring that "every child has a HEALTHY START, a HEAD START, a FAIR START, a SAFE START, and a MORAL START in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities". Their mission is to "Leave No Child Behind®".

Anyone interested in the big picture of children's welfare should visit this web site. The Child Care Now! section offers some interesting statistics about child care in America. Interesting, thought provoking and often sad. Why should you care about the big picture? Because today's children are going to grow up to be your child's doctors, police officers and president. Today's children will be the parents and teachers of your grandchildren. Providing children with a quality child care experience is critical to their development and our future. If your child has a warm, nurturing care situation he is fortunate. But it matters to him, and to you, that all the other children have the same. CDF reports:

The majority of children are in child care, many for 40+ hours a week.

> 3 out of 5 children under the age of five are in child care.

> Children enter care as early as 6 weeks of age and can be in care for as many as 40 hours per week until they reach school age.

> Nearly 5 million children are home alone after school each week, during the afternoon hours when juvenile crime peaks.

The quality of the care impacts children. Good child care benefits children, bad child care can harm children.

> Research shows that the quality of child care has a lasting impact on children's well-being and ability to learn. Children in poor quality child care have been found to be delayed in language and reading skills, and display more aggression toward other children and adults.

> Children in high quality child care demonstrated greater mathematical ability, greater thinking and attention skills, and fewer behavior problems than children in lower quality care.

Families can't afford or find quality care.

> Full-day child care easily costs $4000 to $10,000 per year. Yet one out of three families with young children earns less than $25,000 a year, and a family with both parents working full-time at the minimum wage earns only $21,400 a year.

> Good care is hard to find. Recent studies have found that much of the child care in the US is poor to mediocre.

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