Supporting Grandparents who raise Grandchildren

According to Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf (2009), in spite of the fact that families continue to work together with one shared goal- to give all children opportunities to pursue their dreams and achieve success. For me, this an important practice. I feel that every child learns in their own way. However, you need to keep in mind of the challenges that families are faced with. With the fall of our economy, increased drug use, and other challenges, as early childhood educators we need to nurture, guide, and work with families. As educators, we need to collaborate with families to meet the needs of each child.
With our program, at the beginning of the year we do home visits. The purpose of the home visit is for the child to become familiar with his/her teacher. For all children, this is their first learning experience. Therefore, the home visit helps the children to feel comfortable sharing their space with unfamiliar adults. This usually makes transition smoother for the child.
In addition, we have three rating periods- fall, winter, and spring. For each rating period, there is a parent/teacher conference. For the fall conference, we set goals for the child and parent. In addition the parent will share any questions or concerns they may have with their child. At times, there are grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, or aunty's that may come to the conference. Many times parents are not able to get off from work. Therefore, we may share some of the information with the adult. However, I do a telephone conference with the parent.
For our program, we have mandatory parent meetings in the evenings. This is to accommodate working parents. For the past few years, it has been very successful.
If we do have further concerns for a child, our program offers additional support. We now has a full-time counselor. The counselor will work one-to-one with the child and families. This is new for us, but since we have had a counselor, it has been such great help for the parents.
More and more, I see grandparents taking the role as parents. There are personal reasons because of this. However, as educators we need work with our kupuna and kokua. With kokua it maybe reminding them of daily routines, upcoming events, and going the extra mile. As a result, it will make the classroom a better learning environment for all families.

From Whitlam to Economic Rationalism and Beyond

After reading this article, it made me reflect on the changes in Early Childhood Education in the United States. Has is improved? Or has service decreased? If it has improved, how has it improved? Or how has it decreased?
For Australia, there has been a shift in change. During the years of the Whitlam Government, there was substantial funding for child care. Funding changed where there was a fee subsidies for users for-profit services and the removal of operational subsidies to not-for-profit services in 1997. In 2000, there has been an introduction of the Childcare Benefit to stimulate private sector investments in child care. The Australian Government announced a 30 percent fee rebate scheme to further enhance the appeal of childcare provision to for-profit operators and investors. By 2004, fewer than 30 percent of children attending long day care services attended not-for-profit services, a dramatic contrast to the Whitlam era when almost all were not-for-profit (Sumison, 2006).
In my opinion, money is the driving force behind all Early Childhood Education Programs. Is this right? No. I feel that money should not talk for a program. On Kaua`i, there has been a serve decrease in Head Start hours. The employees start at 7:45 am and end at 11:30 am. So why such a drastic change in hours. The reason is decrease in funding. As a result, the children suffer. I feel that we need for advocate for our children. There needs to be policy for all children to receive early intervention. How do we do this? We need to write to our leaders who we placed in office. Will it make a change? I am not sure. However, if just sit back and watch changes happen then I feel that we agree to disagree.
President Judy Radich (2004) has emphasized, however, the need to make our advocacy efforts more 'strategic, effective, and sustainable'. In this article, I go a step further to argue that we should consider shifting our priorities from advocacy to activism and from policy to politics. These are fine distinctions and warrant elaboration.