Third grade reading and prison!

This morning, the Valley Council for Health & Human Services' Early Childhood Task Force held an interesting breakfast with Elaine Zimmerman, Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission on Children as the speaker. She was there to discuss child poverty in Connecticut and the fact that 35,000 Connecticut children will fall into poverty during the current recession. She presented an overwhelming body of evidence including statistics showing the terrible costs of this problem.

One bit of information that jumped out at me was an assertion that third grade reading scores are being used to forecast future needs for prison capacity! On the surface that may seem surprising; but when you think of the long term impact that a lack of reading skills can have on someone's life, it is not as surprising as it may seem. She further made the link to pre-school education programs and the beneficial effects of ensuring that all children arrive at kindergarten with the basic skills needed to succeed.

She pointedly remarked that the Valley's efforts in this area are outstanding and that the level of cooperation that she has seen throughout the area is remarkable. What she didn't realize was that she indirectly played a role in helping to facilitate that collaboration years ago.

Just about fifteen years ago, she spoke in that same room at a Valley United Way government breakfast - and she spoke about early childhood and children back then as well. The group in the room included not only government leaders, but also the nonprofit health and human services agencies. The year before, a similar breakfast focused on substance abuse and resulted in the formation of the Valley Substance Abuse Action Council. This time Elaine's message was overshadowed by a proposed state plan to regionalize the delivery of services that would have had a devastating effect on the delivery of service to Valley constituents.

The group in attendance banded together and got the state to change the proposal to keep the Valley together and ensure that the Valley delivery system would remain intact. What also happened is that group realized the potential for working together and decided to form the Valley Council for Health & Human Services which has continued to meet monthly ever since to foster cooperation and collaboration among Valley nonprofits.

It was only fitting to have Elaine back today in light of the fact that the very first committee formed by the Valley Council was a youth committee which has evolved into the current Early Childhood Task Force!

Let me close with one very positive statistic that Elaine gave which shows why the work of the Task Force is so important. She noted that the return on every dollar invested in early childhood is 16 dollars. That's an amazing statistic, and one that we in the Valley should be very proud of.