February 28, 2011

The House of Representatives recently passed a funding resolution for the federal government for the current year. This resolution includes many cuts in spending.

Several of these cuts have negative impacts on the programs, services and families served by Children’s Friend. If the cuts become law the impact on our services could include:

1. 420 families who are currently receiving Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) services could loose eligibility.
2. 10 Head Start classrooms serving 180 children could be closed.
3. 77 families receiving Early Head Start services could lose access to those services.

Budgets are balanced and spending is cut by creating priorities and directing funding to those priorities. I certainly wonder what priorities were used in developing the House budget cuts. It does not appear that vulnerable young children where high on the priority list.

The programs and services of Children’s Friend, including those listed above, are evaluated each year by outside independent evaluators to ensure that our services are effective and high quality. National studies continue to find that high quality early childhood services can return to society an average annual rate of return as high as 18%.

Not only are the proposed cuts bad for kids and families they don’t even make economic sense.