Right From the Start NJ Part 3

In Part 3 of this special three-part series, Right From the Start NJ, Steve Adubato, along with leaders in the fields of education, government, and business look at the advocacy efforts on the state and national level to ensure parents have access to affordable and quality childcare and time with their children at the most critical developmental times - from birth to three years old.

Guests Include:

Joseph Della Fave, Executive Director, Ironbound Community Corporation
Dr. Kendell Sprott, President & CEO, Matheny Medical and Education Center
Bonnie Eggenburg, Vice President, Gateway Early Head Start and Head Start Program
Beverly Lynn, CEO, Programs for Parents
Jennifer Santana, President, Coalition of Infant/Toddler Educators & Early Head Start Manager for Center for Family Resources
Kaitlin Mulcahy, Associate Director of the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health, Montclair State University
Joanna Gagis, Host, Life & Living with Joanna Gagis, VP of Programming & Executive Producer, Caucus Educational Corporation
Keri Logosso-Misurell, Esq., Director, Greater Newark Healthcare Coalition

4/13/18 #2133

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"This is Right From the Start NJ. I'm Steve Adubato. We're joined by a group of experts, panelists, we've had two half hours, this is the third half hour. There's still much more to talk about. I want to remind folks that that website, Right From the Start NJ, is dedicated to parents, caregivers, people who care about infants and toddlers. I keep saying birth to three, but in fact, it's prenatal care as well. Doctor Sprott, you wanted to jump in and talk about economics. I wasn't even sure what you meant by that, but I gotta go there, because you always have something important to say. What do you mean by economics of right from the start? What does it mean? Well you just asked about paid family leave. There are some countries... In the last show, right? That's right. Some countries like Norway, there's paid family leave for five years. Either parent. What does it mean, paid family leave? It means that the government pays for the parent to be home to raise the child. And so that's the government saying that this is a priority to nurture the children when they're young. Should we do that in New Jersey? The question is "should we do it as a country?" I think. You know. And when you talk about the money, if you think about public education, if you will, we ought to officially say that we're going to start to provide mandated, funded education for kindergarten in most places up until the 12th grade. And we ignore the first four years. The federal government, as was said earlier, provides a great deal of money for Head Start, for earlier child education. The question is, why shouldn't they do it from birth? Say someone says, "We don't have the money"? Well the question is, there is the money. You know, that's part of the issue. And we could talk about redistribution of the money. But..."