Author: HyeSook Chung

What do I have in common with Shakira?

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

Shakira has made early childhood development a priority!

And I like to think I have helped make it a priority in the Washington metropolitan area.

Shakira has made policy a focus — policies that have long lasting impact on children’s well being such as nutrition, medical care and early education.

I like to think the Early Care and Education Funder’s Collaborative’s focus on advocacy will make long lasting impact on the well-being of children in low-income communities in the region!

Shakira believes in collaboration and thinks that private charities cannot do it alone!  She thinks public government implementing many of the early childhood programs should be partners in creating long-term change.

I like to think that the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative is a model of collaboration working in partnership with the public government to make long-term systemic changes.

Shakira has made the least glamorous issue fashionable – how can early childhood development and teaching very young poor children be glamorous to those who have influence?

I like to think I helped make early childhood development “fashionable” here at The Women’s Foundation.  It has been an important issue for the region for many years, and now a priority for The Women’s Foundation!

Would you ever think that Shakira and I were kindred spirits — motivated by the same hope that every child, especially in desperate situations — receive quality early education to ensure they are prepared for school, but more importantly for life?

Well, think again!  When it comes to early care and education, Shakira and I are on the same page!

HyeSook Chung is The Women’s Foundation’s Program Officer for Early Care and Education.  (And from now on, her nickname at the office will be Shakira.)

What to make of all this child care talk and why should we all care?

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of dialogue both on the regional and national level about what early care and education is. What should it be?  What should it focus on?

With the recent emphasis on a Birth To Five agenda by President Barak Obama and a focus on child care by First Lady Michelle Obama, is it any wonder so much attention is placed on the very young? 

It’s about time!

But I do worry that all the confusion and debate will fail us.  I worry we will miss the opportunity to finally have a national agenda that promotes the health of the very young and underserved.

Last week, The Washington Post had a piece by Charles Finn, entitled, "Slow the Preschool Bandwagon," which made me think about the recent universal preschool activities in VA, MD and D.C.  Mr. Finn cautions about advocating for universal pre-school.

I am in total agreement that more emphasis needs to be put on infants and toddlers, as well as existing programs that have consistently been proven to be effective, like Head Start and Early Head Start.

But there are a few points I struggled with. I worry about the push for social service programs to become more educational focused. Is advocating for Head Start preschoolers to learn their numbers and letters going to ensure they are going to succeed in school?

I do want to figure out how to ensure children in impoverished communities learn what they need to be prepared to succeed, but I worry  that the social service component (i.e. health, family support services, prenatal care, etc. ) will be compromised.

I would hope that it would not be the only focus.

And a few weeks ago, I was listening to the Kojo Nnamdi Show about the child care challenges in the region.  By the end of the show I was so frustrated. BB Otero, Founder and Executive Director of CentroNia (a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation), tried to explain the complicated debate that is taking place around early care and education and the need to be very clear about how we define this debate.

Is it child care for infants and toddlers? Is it universal preschool for three or four year olds? What does quality mean for infants and toddlers?  What does quality mean for preschool classrooms?

It is not an easy task!  

Callers missed this message completely.  Calls were about their own personal struggles about finding a nanny or an au pair. One caller even advocated for all mothers to stay home to ensure their infants and toddlers get the quality care they need.

How does a conversation about access to affordable, quality child care for all almost turn into a show about nannies?

Whether you are poor or rich, we all need access to quality care.  We all need opportunities to ensure children are afforded the opportunities they need, whether it is child care or preschool.

I could not find quality care for my children in Arlington. I was absolutely shocked that after spending thousands of dollars in application fees, and waiting for months, I never found a slot for my five-year old in either a child care or preschool program.

It simply brought more meaning to the work I was doing.  I had the information and the resources and still struggled to find the care I hoped for for my daughter and son.

And the children in impoverished communities needed far more support than I did.

I absolutely want more support for working middle class families, but the current debate is not about me. The debate we are engaged in is for the children who need it most! 

There are plenty of children whose parents do not have the means or the knowledge that early education is critically important to their children’s long-term growth and development.  By the time a child is three, he/she has grown dramatically by producing billions of cells and hundreds of trillions of connections, or synapses, between these cells.  We know enough from the research that a young child’s brain takes years to complete, but providers and parents can ensure children get off to a right start to establish patterns for life-long learning.

Why should we all care about the current debate for higher quality early care and education, including child care?

  • An increasing numbers of children, including infants and toddlers, spend hours each day in various arrangements because their parents work or attend school;
  • Research has shown that in the majority of infant care arrangements in the U.S., children are not talked to and played with enough, and they do not have the opportunity to form the kind of comfortable, secure relationships with a caregiver who will promote their healthy emotional development;
  • Parents should be given information about how to choose quality care for their children;
  • Special attention should be given to the development and enforcement of standards that promote high-quality care, including adequate professional development for caregivers, low child-to-teacher ratios, and small group sizes; and,
  • Finally, child care reimbursement rates for families moving from welfare to work must be high enough to fund well-trained staff who can deliver developmentally appropriate care and education.

HyeSook Chung is Program Officer for Early Care and Education at The Women’s Foundation.

Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative now seeking proposals to promote access and quality!

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

The Recovery Act will invest $1.1 billion in Early Head Start programs, which will include up to 10 percent for training and technical assistance and up to3 percent for monitoring.  While nearly $354 million will be allocated to improve staff compensation and training under the Child Care and Development Block Grants, a clear message from the Obama Administration is that quality early care and education programs are a priority.

But nothing seems to highlight the importance of quality child care more than Mrs. Obama’s emphasis on quality child care.  Her simple act of prioritizing quality child care affirms the Collaborative’s mission of addressing the lack of affordable, quality child care–a challenge that stretches far beyond low-income communities and into the home of every working family.  Her recognition validates what we collectively believe: access to high quality child care is critical for long-term sustainable changes within our workforce, and in the future educational attainment of our children.

Last Monday, Mrs. Obama stated at the Brookings Institute that, “High-quality child care slots are limited, or too expensive for many families. For those parents who work weekend or evening hours, there are often no child care options outside of piecing together care from friends and nearby family.” 

Low-income single mothers in focus groups we convened confirmed that one of the key problems to keeping their current employment is maintaining consistent, affordable and high-quality child care. 

Without child care, women cannot work!

But care must also be high quality.  There is resounding research that children’s healthy development is helped by high-quality 0- 5 programs. Equally critical is the support parents receive to become effective parents.

With so much public effort in promoting quality programs to support the very young, The Women’s Foundation’s community is rising to the challenge to leverage and support these activities.

To that end, today, the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative releases a Request for Proposals for Access and Quality Grants.  Through these grants, the Collaborative continues to seek ways to invest in organizations committed to implementing effective strategies that can promote, ensure and sustain opportunities to expand access and improve the quality of services for low-income families and their young children by promoting systems reform.

The Collaborative has identified strategies including promoting systems reform, implementing changes in early care and education practices, and investing in public education effort to increase the public will for early care and education as priorities.

The Collaborative’s mission is threefold:

  • To increase the capacity and institutional stability of early care and education programs in the region;
  • To enable these entities to develop and manage their resources more effectively; and,
  • To improve early care and education programs through grantmaking, training and technical assistance.

In keeping with this mission, the Collaborative’s goals are to:

  • Encourage and strengthen partnership(s) among key early care and education stakeholders to promote and/or advocate for systemic change;
  • Support systemic changes in early care and education programs that will improve early learning and ensure the access to and quality of care among young children (ages 0 to 5).;
  • Promote early care and education programs working towards long-term sustainable systemic reforms; and,
  • Strengthen the capacity of early care and education professionals by investing in training and technical assistance for Grantee Partners.

In January, the Collaborative funded six programs invested in systemic change. 

Background of the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative
Washington Area Women’s Foundation established the Collaborative to meet the pressing social and economic needs of low-income families by focusing on improved access to quality early care and education for low-income families in the Washington metropolitan area. A multi-year, multi-million dollar collective funding effort, the Collaborative is supported and directed by corporate funders and local and national foundations. Members of the Collaborative believe that strategic efforts can create meaningful systemic change in early care and education by improving the access to quality services and influencing public decisions.

For additional information about the RFP, click here.

HyeSook Chung is The Women’s Foundation’s Early Care and Education Program Officer.

Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative awards first grants!

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

The Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative is thrilled to announce grants totaling $300,000 for area nonprofit organizations to expand access to and improve the quality of early care and education for low-income children in the region.

Six local groups are each receiving $50,000 grants – the first set of grants made by the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative.

Launched last October by The Women’s Foundation, the Collaborative is a multi-year, multi-million dollar partnership between foundations and corporations to improve early care and education programs by investing in partners focused on strategic advocacy and industry building efforts.

The six organizations receiving the first grants are:

  • DC Appleseed, to increase the wages of child care workers in the District;
  • CentroNía, to increase the number of bilingual trainers and advisers in Maryland who can help entry-level teachers get their Child Development Associate (CDA) credential;
  • Empower DC, to define a policy agenda and train grassroots leaders to serve as advocates to ensure early care and education is a priority for District leaders;
  • Fairfax Futures, to expand school readiness partnerships in the county so child care professionals can prepare low-income children to start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed;
  • Hopkins House, to help low-income women in northern Virginia earn their CDA credential and partner with Northern Virginia Community College to ensure their CDA credits can be applied toward an associate’s degree in early childhood education; and,
  • Voices for Virginia’s Children, to advocate on behalf of young children, families and child care programs to expand the Commonwealth’s quality rating systems to more Northern Virginia child care programs.

Current members of the Collaborative include PNC Bank, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Boeing Co, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, CityBridge Foundation, Freddie Mac Foundation, Meyer Foundation and Rocksprings Foundation.

More information:
Complete grant docket. 
Full press release.
Washington Business Journal article highlighting the grants.

HyeSook Chung is The Women’s Foundation’s program officer overseeing the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative.

Professionalizing child care would be good for kids and for working mothers.

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

Lack of access to high quality child care is one of the biggest missing pieces to welfare-to-work efforts.  The care available to most low-income women and their children is usually unreliable and substandard.  In fact, many former welfare recipients themselves work providing child care – in extremely unstable situations with low wages. 

So why is supporting child care and early learning opportunities important? 

Because it would provide a critical work support for low-income mothers.  It would improve devastating and often irreversible outcomes of at-risk children. 

But most importantly, it would raise the income and career opportunities of many people formerly on welfare, serving as a model of how to upgrade low-wage work into a desirable and supported profession.

Unfortunately, public and private funding is not providing the adequate funds needed to support high quality child care.

Many states have placed income-eligibility limits on child-care subsidies.  States also require co-payments from families, which makes quality care unaffordable to many low-income families. Further, states reimburse providers at less than the cost of quality care. Furthermore, many child care providers will not accept government vouchers because they need to maintain their bottom-line and maintain quality.

Yet with more low-income mothers in the paid workforce, demands continue to exceed the supply and the majority of eligible low-income children are not receiving subsidized care.

The average family earning $36,000, paying for care for a three-year old (at $8,800) and an infant (at $12,000), can spend up to 57 percent of their income on child care.  Earning more money does not solve the problem of access and quality because improving their income makes low-income families ineligible for subsidies.

Is this the best support to encourage families towards self sufficiency?

In the District alone, there are 6,300 full-time equivalent early care and education jobs – more than better established professions, such as public relations, public and ground transportation, and commercial construction. The early care and education industry sustains five times more jobs than investment banking in the District, according to an economic impact of early care and education industry study conducted by the National Economic Development and Law Center.

If we believe that high quality child care and early learning benefits the regional economy by enabling both low-income parents and caregivers to seek the professional advancement they need to earn more, which in turn will increase income tax revenue and improve the overall quality of life for everyone who lives in the region – there’s no question that a better trained workforce supports the region’s economy and attracts new capital investments.

But the job ladder in traditional child care is limited: teacher-aide, teacher, and supervisor.  The child care industry is characterized by long hours, social isolation from adults, few breaks, limited advancement opportunities, and poor compensation.

Job dissatisfaction produces high turnover– resulting in inconsistent, and often inadequate, care for children.

You can see the circular problem this creates, as low wages attract workers with few skills. 

Unskilled workers cannot provide quality child care.  High turnover further decreases the quality of care. Attempts to upgrade the profession fail because there is a lack of money and public will for better salaries.

There is a need for greater professionalization, for the sake of children and child care workers!

Given the difficult economic and social circumstances that many children of welfare recipients face, we (the providers) have two institutional points of contact–public school and child care–with which to improve outcomes of low-income children.

When it comes to early childhood development, there is a huge disconnect between child-development experts who make an overwhelming case for high-quality early care and education and the absence of the political will to acknowledge the need and spend the necessary funds.

A big part of this challenge is to recognize that people who work with our young children need to be well trained, paid appropriately, and appreciated as professionals.

We do know what it takes to professionalize the workers who care for young children.

What’s missing is the public will and financial support needed to make long-term sustainable change.  Investments in professionalizing the child care industry would support child care workers, women trying to transition from welfare to work without sacrificing early learning opportunities for their children, and all parents with young children in care.

HyeSook Chung is The Women’s Foundation’s Early Care and Education Program Officer.

Child care: A sound investment even in this time of economic uncertainty.

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

All the jurisdictions in the region are in the midst of budget cuts to fill huge budget shortfalls.  All around us is gloom and doom news about funding.

Yet, to my delightful surprise – the chair of the D.C. City Council, Vincent Gray, wrote an OP-ED piece in the Washington Informer highlighting the sound investment in Pre-Kindergarten education as a way to invest in children, families and the city overall.

For D.C., the Pre-Kindergarten Enhancement and Expansion Amendment Act will ensure every three and four-year-old in the District has access to high-quality pre-kindergarten.

The hope that every child in the District will receive quality early education to ensure they are prepared to succeed in school and life is so exciting.

We need more key leaders in government and business to stress the importance of funding what is absolutely necessary for a sound future. There is a solid case for investments in early care and education.

So at this time of financial crisis, thank you to those who are advocating for such investments for your commitment to ensure the District’s children are going to be afforded the quality early learning opportunities they deserve!

HyeSook Chung is The Women’s Foundation’s Early Care and Education Program Officer.

The Women's Foundation releases first RFP on early care and education!

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

On October 15, 2008, The Women’s Foundation held a Community Briefing on the importance of early care and education. 

Craig Pascal, Senior Vice President/Territory Manager, Community Development Bank at PNC and Tobi Printz-Platnick, Program Officer, Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, made a strong case for increased investments in early care and education.

The expert panelists presented compelling research and echoed the importance of increased investments.

Our parent advocate shared from her personal experiences the challenges she confronts on a daily basis of accessing quality care for her son with disabilities.

As we learned at the Community Briefing, strategic funds invested in strong organizations can significantly improve the quality of, and expansion of increased access to, developmentally appropriate care for children from birth through five years old.

"During this economic downturn, it is critically important to invest in a proven strategy to support our future workforce.  Investments in young children are sound investments," stated Craig Pascal, Senior Vice President/Territory Manager, Community Development Banking, PNC Bank. "There is no better time than now to invest in the future success of young children to ensure they are prepared for schools and life."

To help foster increased access to and quality of early care and education in our region, The Women’s Foundation has released a Request for Proposals for Access and Quality Grants, seeking to invest in organizations committed to implementing effective strategies that can promote, ensure and sustain opportunities to expand access and improve the quality of services for low-income families and their young children by promoting systems reform.  Such strategies include promoting systems reform, implementing changes in early care and education practices, and investing in public education efforts to increase the public will for early care and education.

Proposals under this RFP are due at 5 p.m. on Friday, November 21, 2008. For more information about this funding opportunity, please review the RFP guidelines.

HyeSook Chung is The Women’s Foundation’s program officer for early care and education.

Early Care and Education Collaborative makes its debut in the Washington Business Journal!

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

I was thrilled to open the Washington Business Journal last week to see the work that we’re doing to form a collaborative around the issue of child care and early education in our region highlighted!  (To view the article online, click here.  Or, for a PDF, click here.)

Seeing the article inspired me to offer a bit more detail about our work on the collaborative and the issues around child care and early education that are impacting the region, and particularly low-income families throughout the region–many of them headed by single mothers.

Research shows that young children (ages 0 to 5) need a strong social, emotional and intellectual foundation to succeed in school. Parents and caregivers have the responsibility to ensure young children get off to a strong start and establish healthy patterns for life-long learning. Young children who enter kindergarten without this foundation for learning are more likely to face significant academic challenges than peers who come prepared.

Quality early care and education can successfully close this “preparation gap,” while facilitating the economic security and long-term financial success of low-income families by supporting parents in the workforce, and by preparing the workforce of the future to meet the needs of the regional business community.

The Women’s Foundation established the Early Care and Education Collaborative (ECEC) to meet these pressing social and economic needs by focusing on improved access to quality early care and education for low-income families in the Washington metropolitan area. A multi-year, multi-million dollar collective funding effort, the ECEC is supported and directed by corporate funders and local and national foundations. Members of the ECEC believe that strategic collaborative efforts can create meaningful change in the early care and education field by improving the quality of services and influencing public decisions.

The ECEC’s mission is threefold: To increase the capacity and institutional stability of the early care and education programs in the region, enable these entities to develop and manage their resources more effectively, and to improve early care and education programs through grantmaking, training and technical assistance.

In keeping with this mission, ECEC’s goals are to:

1.  Encourage and strengthen partnership(s) among early care and education practitioners and key stakeholders.
2.  Support changes in the early care and education programs that will improve learning and ensure the overall quality of care among the very young (ages 0 to 5).
3.  Promote early care and education programs working towards long-term sustainable systemic reforms.
4.  Strengthen the capacity of early care and education professionals by investing in training and technical assistance for Grantee Partners.
5.  Invest in evaluation to ensure the investments and programs have the desired impact.

The ECEC will do so by funding programs or capacity building efforts to enhance the overall scope and effectiveness of the quality of services, which could include professional development, assessment, quality assurance and accreditation and public education and advocacy efforts affecting the early care and education field.

Grant recipients will be limited to organizations working in the District of Columbia, Arlington County, City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, Prince George’s County, and Montgomery County. They will be chosen based on a demonstrated ability to support long-term sustainable early care and education efforts.

For more information, feel free to contact me at hchung@wawf.org.

Hye Sook Chung is The Woman’s Foundation’s consultant on the Early Child Care and Education Collaborative.

Why child care is good business.

Posted on by HyeSook Chung

Quality child care is critical in the development of local economic development. Investments in quality child care programs that support parents, promote the health and safety of children and improve access to high-quality child care help everyone, including businesses.

Looking at child care and early education from the economic development lens – here are some facts:
    • For every $1.00 invested in quality child care and early education programs, there is a long-term benefit of $7.00 in public savings by increasing the likelihood that children will stay in school and become employed, and by reducing dependence on public assistance (High Scope Perry Preschool project in Ypsilanti, Michigan).
    • Every state dollar invested in child care and early education programs leverages $3.00 in federal funds, and each new federal dollar generates almost $2.00 in economic activity (Investing in the Child Care Industry: An Economic Development Strategy for Kansas, Mid-America Regional Council).
    • The internal rate of return (the interest rate received for an investment consistent of payments and revenue that occur at regular periods) from child care and early educations programs exceeds the amount invested in them. (Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return, Rolnick and Grunewald, The Minnesota Fed Bank).

The Early Care and Education Collaborative is a project of The Women’s Foundation and a partnership of private and corporate philanthropies. This partnership offers a unique opportunity for donors and nonprofit organizations to make a critical difference in the lives of women and their young children.

The Early Care and Education Collaborative will work to improve the access to quality, affordable early care and education for low-income, women-headed families in the Washington metropolitan area. It invests in local organizations–Grantee Partners–to improve early care and education through grantmaking and training and technical assistance.

PNC Bank, an ECE Collaborative partner, has made a commitment to child care and early education and is recognizing the importance of subsidized child care as a work support.  In a Washington Business Journal editorial, "Subsidized child care is good business", Mike Harreld, Regional President of PNC Bank, Greater Washington, D.C. area, says, “When low-income working parents are forced to leave the work force, not only do they and their children suffer an immediate loss of pride, income and quality early learning experiences — our companies and communities lose as well.”

In the winter of 2002, 89 percent of the 9.8 million preschools of employed mothers and 31 percent of the 8.2 million preschoolers of non-employed mothers were in at least one child care arrangement on a regular basis (Household Economic Studies, US Census Bureau). 

Child care has become the “norm” for young children. Interest in the use of child care has grown as more and more low-income women are entering the labor force. Child care options and costs associated in selecting “quality” child care are important issues for all working women, as well as relatives, child care providers, policy makers, and anyone concerned about young children!

Access to quality child care for low-income women is not only necessary for economic sufficiency, but also for long-time sustainable economic success. The Women’s Foundation focuses attention on the necessity of low-income women’s access to quality early child care and education. This access is essential for the easy transition for women for the work force, ensuring children are ready for school, and helping to establish the viability of the regional business community.

In his article, Harreld states, “As employers, we count on reliable employees who are fully focused and ready to work. This can only happen when employees know their children are safe and in good care during the workday.”

Additional resources about the economic impact of child care in Washington, D.C. region:

The Insight Center worked with the CityBridge Foundation and the Center for Applied Research and Urban Policy at the University of the District of Columbia to analyze the economics of the District’s ECE system and make recommendations for strengthening the industry. At the release of the report on June 18, 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty, City Council Chairman Vincent Gray, and D.C. Chamber of Commerce President Barbara Lang spoke of the economic importance of ECE and committed to working to make it stronger.

Executive Summary

Full report

America’s Edge is a national non-profit organization established in 2007 to help engage leaders of the business community more extensively in support of local, state, and national efforts to improve the quality of public education. In a global economy, the ability of American businesses to compete depends on the talent, knowledge, and skills of employees at every level; and the demands are rapidly changing. The availability of competent employees depends substantially on the quality of public education in the communities where they work. To develop those talents and to produce the knowledge and skills required in the 21st Century, that education needs to be of high quality and must begin at the earliest years of a child’s life.

Fairfax Futures was launched in June 2004 at the Early Learning is Good Business Summit to highlight the importance of investing in quality early childhood education as an important investment in the future of Fairfax County.  Through the generous support of the Freddie Mac Foundation and strong commitment from Fairfax County’s Office for Children, Fairfax Futures launched a dialogue between early childhood educators who work with our county’s youngest residents. In April 2005, more than 200 early childhood educators came together to talk about building a common framework for school readiness. (Summary of the Early Learning Symposium).  Fairfax Futures continues to build partnerships with the business community, public sector agencies, early childhood educators, community organizations and families who support the school readiness of Fairfax County’s youngest residents and, as a result, help to guarantee the economic and social vitality of the county.

HyeSook Chung is currently working as a consultant with The Women’s Foundation on their child care and early education work.