Parent Voices Heard on Capitol Hill
Today, over 11 million children under age 5 are in some type of child care arrangement every week while their parents work. On average, children of working mothers spend 36 hours every week in child care. Studies repeatedly have shown that high-quality child care – care that provides a loving, safe, stable and age-appropriate stimulating environment – helps children enter school ready to learn. Yet, less than 10 percent of the nation’s child care is of high-quality.
Unfortunately, not all of our policymakers know the facts about child care. Each year, members of the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) come to Washington, D.C. to NACCRRA’s Public Policy Symposium. Representatives from state and local CCR&R agencies from throughout the nation join together to raise the visibility of child care issues, such as the lack of quality in child care, and to advocate for improved conditions. Last year, our members heard from Members of Congress that the need for high-quality child care was not a priority for them because they did not hear directly from parents on the issue. NACCRRA made it a priority to change that by bringing parents to the very next Symposium.
This year, NACCRRA introduced the Parents@Symposium program to ensure that policymakers heard directly from parents. Forty-four parents and grandparents from 39 states were chosen to attend the conference, which was held March 10-14. The Parents@Symposium program included a series of highly interactive sessions designed specifically to prepare parents to meet with their representatives in Congress and the media. The group included parents who shared tragic stories about their children who were hurt or killed in unlicensed child care settings; parents who encountered difficulties finding and paying for child care; and parents who shared contrasting stories about the high-quality settings they experienced in the military child care system. Six family members of children who tragically died in child care came to advocate for standards that will increase safety, training and inspections.
After the parents and grandparents learned about national child care issues, they had the opportunity to meet with their representatives on Capitol Hill. The feedback from the parents and grandparents after their visits was overwhelmingly positive. One grandparent shared that she had no idea how much power she had as one American citizen to make positive changes for children. (Read more about their stories in, “Child Care in America: Parents’ Perspectives” )
This inaugural year for our Parents@Symposium program was inspirational and successful. The CCR&R professionals and staff members who attended Symposium were extremely impressed by the parents’ courage and ability to articulate the issues. In fact, Linda Smith, NACCRRA’s Executive Director, said that the parents were “the highlight of the Symposium. Thanks to these parents’ willingness to share their personal experiences, the CCR&R members of NACCRRA achieved their goal of educating legislators about the realities of child care in America through the power of parents’ testimonials.” We also heard from more than one CCR&R member who said, “This year, the parents helped us make a real difference on Capitol Hill.”
We hope that Symposium marked the beginning of a journey of parent advocacy for the parents who attended, and that the experience inspired them to use the experience as a springboard for future advocacy activity. We are thilled to announce that many of the parents who attended our 2009 Parents@Symposium program will form the first cadre of Parent Leaders in Child Care Aware® Parent Network and will be offered continued leadership training.
