EMILY TATE SULLIVAN, ED SURGE

The last few years have been a strain on nearly everyone, with routines disrupted, social interactions curtailed, and stress and anxiety running high.

There’s been much written and discussed about how those challenges have impacted students in K-12 schools and colleges — how they're suffering in the wake of the pandemic and experiencing alarmingly high rates of mental health concerns. But what about kids who are even younger — infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children who also lived through the pandemic and are not immune to the stressors that it caused?

Those kids — yes, even babies — have suffered too, experts say. And given how foundational this period of their lives is for future outcomes and development, it’s especially urgent that the mental health and well-being of infants and young children be addressed early.

“We like to say that the social-emotional health [and] mental health of little ones is all our jobs — anyone who touches the life of a child — because of the fact that brain development is so rapid in the prenatal-to-3 space of life,” says Meghan Schmelzer, senior manager of infant and early childhood mental health at the nonprofit Zero to Three. “We can see the huge consequences when things don’t go right in the first three years of life.”

While this idea is supported by research, it is not yet widely known, accepted or understood among families and other adults.

When Angela Keyes, an associate professor of psychiatry at Tulane University and co-director of an infant and early childhood mental health consultation program, tells people she is an infant mental health specialist, she says they often ask her, incredulously, “Infants can have mental health struggles?”

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FUNDING OUR KIDS 101, CHILDREN’S FUNDING PROJECT

What Is Blending and Braiding?

Though the terms often are used interchangeably, blending and braiding represent two different strategies for comingling different funding sources:

• Blending refers to incorporating funds from two or more revenue streams together to fund a specific initiative. Funds are merged into one central pot and costs are not necessarily allocated to the separate funding streams.

• Braiding is a practice in which two or more funding streams are used in a coordinated fashion to support a single initiative, but costs are closely tracked and allocated to individual funding streams. There may be restrictions as to which funds can be used for which purposes.

There also is a third related strategy, known as layering. With layering, different funding sources are used to support the same initiative, but funds are used somewhat discretely and are not integrated together. This means they are easier to disentangle without impacting the entire initiative if one funding source is removed.

How Does Blending and Braiding Work?

Funds can be blended or braided at a few different points:

1. Multiple revenue streams can be mixed together at the point of origination when the funds are granted to a state or locality.

2. The state or locality can mix revenue streams together when administering a program.

3. Individual recipients of government funds, such as a contracted nonprofit organization, may mix different fund sources together at the point of service delivery.

In this fact sheet, we focus primarily on the second category: when states or localities take the multiple revenue streams at their disposal and bring them together to achieve a particular policy goal. Blending and braiding may be relevant in different circumstances. Blending requires more flexible funding streams but allows administrators greater autonomy over how they then use the funding. Braiding can
be done with more restrictive funding streams, but requires closer accountability, monitoring, and reporting.

To assess opportunities for blending and/or braiding as a strategy to meet a particular programmatic objective, state and local leaders should do the following:

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SANDERS, WINTERS & ROCHESTER, CHILD TRENDS

According to our new analysis of data from the 2020-2021 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH),[1] most Black children in the United States live in neighborhoods that lack amenities associated with children’s healthy development and well-being—a legacy of residential segregation and other racial and environmental inequities. Black children’s access to these neighborhood amenities (sidewalks/walking paths, recreational centers, parks/playgrounds, and libraries/bookmobiles) differs by geographic location and family income. Black children with the lowest reported access to all four neighborhood amenities live in the South,[2] the region with the highest concentration of Black children and families.

Figure 1: Black children in the South have the lowest access to all four amenities associated with healthy childhood development and well-being, relative to Black children in other Census regions

Percentage of Black children, by Census region, whose neighborhoods feature sidewalks/walking paths, recreation centers, parks/playgrounds, and libraries/bookmobiles

Moreover, Black children living in neighborhoods with fewer than all four amenities present are more likely to have family incomes below 200 percent of the poverty threshold[3] (i.e., < $53,000 for a family of four) than to have family incomes at or above 200 percent of the poverty threshold. In neighborhoods with zero to three amenities, 65 percent of Black children have families whose incomes are below 200 percent of the poverty threshold (lower incomes), while in neighborhoods with all four amenities, 50 percent of Black children have families that have lower incomes.

Photo Credit - Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file

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YORDY, NCSL 

Prevention is a hot topic in child welfare policy conversations, and for good reason. Preventing child maltreatment helps families thrive and reduces the frequency of tragic outcomes. The Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 propelled prevention efforts forward and launched a national conversation about keeping children out of foster care except when absolutely necessary.

The State of Child Welfare

Child maltreatment rates have declined dramatically over the past 30 years. Between 1992 and 2019, physical abuse declined by 56% and sexual abuse declined by 62%. Public policy, awareness programs and decreased stigma associated with seeking help contributed to these changes.

By contrast, rates of child neglect remain high. Neglect is the most common type of child maltreatment in the U.S. Until recently, federal child welfare policies primarily responded to maltreatment without much attention to addressing risk factors. The outcome was to inadvertently punish struggling families more than help them.

More than 480,000 children were impacted by neglect in 2020, and it was a primary or contributing factor for 64% of children entering foster care the same year. By comparison, 13% of children entering foster care in 2020 were victims of physical abuse and 4% were victims of sexual abuse.

What Is Neglect?

Most experts agree child neglect occurs when the needs of a child are unmet by their primary caregivers. Inadequate clothing, food, shelter, medical and emotional care, along with unsafe environments, exposure to substance abuse and lack of supervision, are often included in definitions of neglect. Even with these definitions, pinpointing cases of neglect can be challenging. Policymakers and researchers are rethinking historical definitions, which often are intertwined with poverty. States have authority to define exactly what neglect means through legislation, and there is considerable variation.

Research shows the presence of one or more child maltreatment risk factors, such as poverty, can make a child more vulnerable to experiencing neglect. While risk factors do not cause maltreatment, buffering or reducing them is a promising prevention pathway.

Photo Credit - NCSL

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STANFORD CENTER ON EARLY CHILDHOOD

Since March of 2021, The RAPID Survey team has been listening to the voices and experiences of child care providers across the country. Our sample includes center-based teachers and directors, home-based providers (likely licensed or listed), and
family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) providers. In the surveys, we’ve been asking questions about experiences with housing to help understand the economic well-being of this workforce that supports American society and its economy.

For most Americans, housing is a large part of monthly expenses. Unstable housing can cause stress and lead to significant disruptions to employment, family life, and overall well-being. On the other hand, homeownership is a primary wealth building strategy for many Americans and creates stability for families. Providers who cannot access a mortgage or own their homes have difficulty building wealth and finding financial stability. For home-based child care providers, their homes are both where they live with their own families and the location of their businesses. Furthermore, their homes are the learning environment for the young children in their care.
For these providers, housing insecurity disrupts not just their own family but the well-being of the families who rely on them for care.

ONE IN FOUR CHILD CARE PROVIDERS REPORTS DIFFICULTY AFFORDING HOUSING

A quarter of all providers surveyed from March 2021 to December 2022 reported difficulty affording housing expenses, whether they rent or own their home. The rate of housing hardship was even greater among Latinx (36%) and Black (35%) providers, as compared to white providers (21%). 

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MAXFIELD AND THOMSON, CHILD TRENDS

Families with low incomes who have infants and toddlers face barriers that limit their ability to invest in supports for child development, such as sufficient nutritious food, safe and stable housing, learning materials, health care, and high-quality child care. Lower family incomes are often driven by racist and structural inequities in access to livable-wage jobs, educational opportunities, and other economic mobility resources. In addition, families with low incomes face stressors that can further undermine members’ mental health and relationships. As a result, being part of a family with a low income can have a profound effect on a child’s development.

The brains of infants and toddlers are especially malleable and sensitive to new experiences, making the events of a baby’s first years critical for their future health and development. Yet, in 2019—even before the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated previous disparities—two out of every five U.S. infants and toddlers lived in families with low incomes of less than twice the federal poverty level (measured by the official poverty measure). In general, for a family of four, this amounted to an annual income of less than $51,500. There are qualitative differences in the experiences of infants and toddlers growing up in families with low incomes, relative to their higher-income peers; such differences shed light on how economic hardship—often exacerbated by structural and racial inequities—can negatively affect the lives of infant and toddlers in families with low incomes. Addressing these gaps during the critical infant and toddler years can improve outcomes throughout children’s lifetimes.

Cash transfers—payments, typically from the government, made directly to individuals or households—are effective and cost-effective mechanisms for supplementing household incomes during times of economic hardship, supporting pathways to economic mobility, and reducing economic disparities. In the United States, cash transfers include refundable tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the refundable portion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The expansion of the federal CTC, as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), effectively cut the child poverty rate in half and led to renewed political interest in cash transfers. While this temporary federal expansion was not made permanent, as of 2022, 10 stateshave implemented a yearly state-level child tax credit. At the local level, mayors have been piloting another approach to cash transfers: guaranteed basic income programs, which offer recurring direct payments to qualifying participants.

Photo Credit - Unsplash.com

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