Child Poverty Action Group in New Zealand

In the county of New Zealand as many as 25 percent of children or about 270,000 – currently live in poverty. That is one in every four child. Childhood poverty in New Zealand affects children in similar ways as other countries. 1 in 5 school age children have no breakfast before they go to school. Their living conditions are poor because of inadequate housing or rentals that are run down, cold, damp and moldy which leads to children being extremely sick. In 2012 there was an estimated 190,000 children sick with pneumonia, rheumatic fever, and meningococcal disease. Their rental regulations date back to 1947.

The Expert Advisory Group spent ten months working on the task of providing ways and effective solutions addressing childhood poverty. The economic costs of children who live in poverty in New Zealand are between $6-8 billion per year with a lot of public money spent yearly on interventions. The Advisory group believes that poverty can be reduced. There needs to be specific attention given to overcoming inequalities for the Mäori and Pasifika people while being sensitive to the particular issues facing children in single - parent families. They want the government to be responsible for adopting a strategic framework for addressing childhood poverty issues and ensuring accountability of the outcomes. This group had 78 recommendations.

With the recommendations this group has it puts breaking the cycle of poverty back on the government.  The government has an important role and must ensure that all policies and procedures are working in the best interests of all children and their families. The research group also reiterates the importance of Early Childhood Education. “Supporting children living in poverty, through maternity and child health services and early childhood education, is investing in our future prosperity” (Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. 2013).  

Reference

Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. (2013). Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand: Evidence for action. Wellington: New Zealand. Children’s Commissioner.
http://www.occ.org.nz/our-work/our-priorities/more-children-grow-up-with-access-to-adequate-resources/
 

           

Sharing Web Resources

The newsletter I subscribed to is Zero to Three http://www.zerotothree.org/. The reason I choose this site is for personal growth to learn more about a child’s development from ages 0 – 3.  This is an age group that I have not worked with a lot as a teacher. So as a Director I want to learn as much as I can to be able to help educate my staff, parents and community leaders. 

This is a very comprehensive site that gives Parents, Professionals and Policy Makers information about young children’s development. This could be from developmental milestones to pod casts.  The site has four main topic areas, Behavior and Development, Maltreatment, Care and Education and Public Policy. Zero to Three is a non-profit - research based organization. Their mission is to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life (Zero to Three: Early Experiences Matters, 2014).

The child trend that caught my eye was “Ensuring Assessments and Services for All Maltreated Infants and Toddlers.”  This specific article was from, “Highlights from Changing the Course for Infants and Toddlers: A Survey of State Child Welfare Policies and Initiatives” (Zero-Three: Early Experiences Matters, 2014).

The importance of this article is to note that not all states have adequate programs in place for children who have been a victim of maltreatment.  Only 26 out of 46 states have policies in place for referring a maltreated child within a certain amount of time to a specialist for further assessments. The time frames are very broad from 2 – 60 days depending on the state.

As Early Childhood Educators we continue to improve the quality of care for children in classrooms. We also have to be advocates for children in all settings. If they have been placed in foster care for maltreatment, we have to make sure they get the best possible care and referrals to specialists sooner than later. There needs to be a better system across the board to give children, no matter what state they live in consistency and help when they are in need. 

Reference

Zero to Three: Early Experiences Matters. (2014, January 12). Retrieved from Zero to Three:
http://www.zerotothree.org/: 

http://www.zerotothree.org/policy/docs/ensuring-assessments-and-services.pdf

  

Establishing Professional Contacts

This assignment started off with a lot of road blocks. The two World Forum web addresses both said not found.  http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/about.php  NOT Found. http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php  NOT Found.  

WOW!  As I researched further, I found the following addresses to access. https://www.worldforumfoundation.org/about-us/world-forum-alliance/#issa and http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/working-groups/nature/join-nacc/ . I found personal e-mail addresses and have tried to contact a person in New Zealand, Haiti, and at the World Forum Foundation organization. 

As of this writing I have had no response back to my e-mails but I will keep trying, because I think this will be the more informative way that I would like to learn about other areas. There is the possibility that I will have to use the alternative approach.

I went into The Global Alliance of NAEYC for early childhood professionals worldwide:
http://www.naeyc.org/resources/partnership/globalalliance and found the web site of

International Step by Step Association – Haiti   http://www.issa.nl/network/haiti/haiti.html this is one organization I would like to explore. I am very interested in early childhood programming in areas hit by natural disaster along with children who live in poverty like in Guatemala and how their lives are affected and progressing. These are countries I have been researching in previous classes.

I think this will be a fun project but also a time consuming one. I have also wished I would have former student’s home e-mails to contact. Throughout my Graduate Certificate degree there have been students from around the world who I have communicated with but as I look over their previous blogs, they have not posted since finishing their degrees. They were from Korea, Iran, India, and Jamaica. It would have been interesting to get their perspectives.