Social Policy Issues in Improving Child Health Services: A Child Advocate's View

Abstract

Child advocates share many goals with pediatricians. All of us, regardless of the perspective from which we approach the familiar issues, are dedicated to finding ways of improving the life and health of children. While the rhythm of the advocate's rhetoric and the cycle of our daily activities may differ from that of the health professional who works with and for children, most of us share a vision of a better world. Our efforts are informed and enriched by exposure to each other's views. None of us can afford to be doctrinaire; all of us must remain ready to look, case by case, issue by issue, at what is best for children and families. The Children's Defense Fund is a child advocacy organization that grew out of the civil rights movement, the poor people's campaign of the 1960s, and a variety of efforts undertaken during that period to narrow the gap between federal promise and performance as it affected less fortunate people in our society. By the early 1970s, there was increasing evidence that the problems faced by the poor and the Blacks were not as isolated as they had seemed. Marian Wright Edelman, who heads the Children's Defense Fund, and had been organizing through the South during the mid-Sixties, said at the time that "the problems that I thought were Mississippi poor and Black, turn out to be problems of children in Maine, Iowa and Beverly Hills." The Children's Defense Fund was created to provide long-range, systematic advocacy for all children in the fields of health, education, juvenile justice, the handicapped, foster care, day care and child development.