In November, the Easter Seals society released a national report called Our Nation’s Youngest Children at Risk: Easter Seals Releases State-by-State Report on Early Intervention. The Easter Seals Society used the information to lobby Congressional leaders about funding for early childhood intervention.
Our Nation’s Youngest Children at Risk
You can read about the project at www.EasterSeals.com. Click on Our Nation’s Children at Risk: A State-by-State Report on Early Intervention to go straight to links to the entire report, each state’s individual report, and the executive summary. Those links are time savers, because the entire report is quite long and slow to scroll through.
The Best and the Worst
The report lists states providing early intervention to over 4% of their special needs youngsters: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Wyoming, New York and New Hampshire. It also lists states serving less than 2% of children ages 0 – 3: Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Montana, Missouri, Arkansas and the District of Columbia. That means the rest of the states, including Iowa where I live, are serving about 3% of kids, ages 0 – 3.
Spotlight on Kids
The report also tells the stories of children who have benefited greatly from early intervention services. Those stories put faces to the statistics and tug at the old heart strings.
What Do You Think?
Do the statistics for your state jibe with your early childhood intervention experience? What suggestions do you have for improving services? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
