Children's Summit

Synopsis of the Summit Panels

Additional materials are available on the Speaker's Web site.

The first panel, focused on the science of early child development, provided a comprehensive review of research in this arena. Children’s brains, as noted by Charles Nelson of Harvard Medical School, are constructed over time, continuing into the late teens and early 20s. However, there do exist ‘sensitive periods’ of development, with the first three years in a child’s life playing a particularly crucial role. Experts emphasized that children are the product of an interaction between genes and environment; early deprivation- including chronic stress, abuse, neglect, or malnutrition- may have long-term outcomes such as lower academic achievement or increased difficulty with social interactions. The parent-child relationship was highlighted as the key source of learning for infants, providing a foundation for emotional learning, communication, self-efficacy, sensory knowledge and education. Based on this commentary, panelists offered the following recommendations:

assure access to basic healthcare in order to insure healthy development,
increase focus on social and emotional needs (as opposed to solely cognitive ones),
support early intervention programs (e.g. intensive pre and post-natal home visiting) that provide significant outcomes, address the shortage of well-trained early childhood personnel, and
develop policies that affect the entirety of childhood.

The second panel convened practitioners and business executive in an attempt to discuss exemplary implementation of best practices. James Rohr, CEO of the PNC Financial Services Group, stated that PNC's Grow Up Great program had been successful in integrating a $100 million commitment with community volunteerism. Financial incentives, he noted, were particularly useful; program centers earned more money when their employees volunteered for 40 or more hours. Ponder, CEO of North Carolina Partnership for Children, commented that businesses should seek to invest in children so as to insure a future workforce that would be well-prepared and highly educated. The Chief of Police from Waco, Texas highlighted the ties between early intervention and the juvenile justice system, emphasizing the necessity of breaking cycles of violence. All panelists emphasized the need for solutions based at the community level, allowing for the largest degree of flexibility and the development of accountability.

The third panel reflected on the health and mental health status of children, focusing particularly on the rise of chronic disease. Paul Wise, of Stanford University’s School of Medicine, noted that 90 percent of all non-trauma mortality in children was due to chronic illness (e.g. asthma); in discussing this trend, he particularly emphasized the degree to which current health insurance models (developed in the 1960s and 1970s around infectious disease) were ill-equipped to deal with such change. Experts on the child welfare system noted the degree to which emphasis had been placed on safety and permanence rather than child well-being. Based on the above testimony, panelists called for:

increased ability to identify problems at an earlier dater (e.g. ensuring that Medicaid agencies require use of screening tools),
extending the reach of family services,
extending Medicaid eligibility to parents of those children who are eligible, and
revamping the health insurance system to reflect health trends.

The final panel examined the extent to which income hardship and material hardship influenced outcomes of child well-being. Low birth weight, an indicator of socioeconomic status, was found to be significantly associated with decreased cognitive capacity, higher high school drop-out rates, and decreased earnings in the workforce. Experts cited numerous studies indicating that children’s well-being improves as income increases. Jody Heymann, the director of the Global Working Families Project at Harvard, cited studies refuting the claim that increased parental leave would hamper America’s ability to compete globally. Recommendations arising out of this panel included:

expansion of earned income tax credit and the reach of food stamps,
increasing access to affordable housing, and
increasing the child tax credit.