MAXIMIZING LEGISLATIVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EARLY CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND DAY CARE PROGRAMS

Abstract

Day care is a social service. Day care as distinguished from a custodial program should be a child development program. There is no social services program that is not also a mental health program. An overview of traditional social services programs bears this out, no matter from what vantage they are observed. These include the child welfare tasks of rearing and protecting children; family service counseling and related programs; those which care for persons of all ages in nonclinical or semiclinical institutions; those which plan and organize people, social institutions, and community groups for community betterment programs; those which serve unmarried mothers; those which provide homemakers or day care; and even those euphemistically described as group or group work services which range from pure recreation to stimulants of social interaction or social action for individual and group betterment. The incentive for the provision of early childhood development programs in the United States is increasing, particularly in day care because so large a percentage of the work force and potential work force is made up of women of childbearing age, because mothers want to be free, and because of knowledge about early child growth.