State Child Welfare Policy Guide

7.1 Access to quality early care and education

Young children in foster care stand to gain a range of benefits from participation in high quality early care and education.  Brain research shows that the foundations are laid in infancy and early childhood for trust, self-esteem, conscience, empathy, problem solving, focused learning, and impulse control. [i]   Early childhood is an especially critical time for the neurological and cognitive development of children in foster care.  As many as 59 percent of foster children aged two months to two years are at high risk for a clinical level of impairment. [ii]  

Extensive research over many years has demonstrated that high quality early care and education programs have a positive impact on virtually all measures of child development, including cognitive skills, school achievement, social skills, and reduced conduct problems.[iii]  In addition, c hild care centers, head start facilities, and preschools are emerging as strategic and feasible venues for building protective factors critical to child abuse and neglect prevention and to effective responses to families in time of crisis. [iv]   Programs that have a positive impact incorporate specific, high quality components, including family support services, parental classroom involvement, and home visits from a school representative. [v]  

To benefit from high quality programs, children in foster care must be ensured access to the programs.  However, studies show that young children involved with the child welfare system are less likely than other children to have access to developmental services. [vi]   Only 18 percent of the foster parents in a 2000 New York study reported that children in their care were enrolled in preschool programs; most said that no one advised them to enroll the children. [vii]

With the 2003 Rilya Wilson Act (2003 Fla. Laws, SB 1318, Chap. 292), the Florida Legislature stated its intent that children in state care receive an age appropriate education to help ameliorate the negative effects of abuse, neglect and abandonment.  The Act requires that case plans specify participation in child care and, for those participating in early education programs, enrollment five days per week. [viii]

California legislation provides a mechanism to finance child care for children in foster care.  It requires the state child welfare agency to allow counties to use federal Title IV-E funds to subsidize child care by amending the state foster care plan. (2004 Cal. Stats., SB 1612, Chap. 845) [ix]

Policy Options:  States can promote participation in quality early care and education among young children in foster care by adopting and funding the implementation of one of the following policies:

·         Participation is mandatory up to school age

·         Participation is mandatory for children ages three to five

·         Participation is available for children from birth to age three