Early Childhood Success depends on access to education and care.
A child’s household income shouldn’t restrict their access to high-quality early support, like education and childcare.
All kids deserve access to a high-quality education and care. But sometimes that access is different depending on what neighborhood a child is from or on their household income.
For kids under the age of five, not having that access could mean falling behind their classmates for the rest of their academic careers, leading to missed opportunities beyond high school and in the job market.
When you support United Way, you help give our youngest community members access to the high-quality education they deserve.
The Impact of Poverty on Kids
One in five children under five years old are from families who live in under-resourced areas.1
The stress of living in situations where adults are struggling to make ends meet takes a toll on kids. Children may experience food insecurity, a lack of safety or other negative environmental influences. Research shows that kids from these environments can experience:
- lower brain activity2
- increased challenges in social-emotional development,
- health problems
- developmental delays.3
High Cost of Care and Early Education
Even when high-quality education is available, it may be financially out of reach for families who have a lower income. Currently, the average cost of childcare and pre-kindergarten education is over $10,000.4,5
Multiple studies show that 90 percent of a child’s brain develops before they are five years old.6
That means in those formative years, children are making more neural connections and developing faster than in any other time in their lives.
How much can kids learn at such a young age? Some experts say that even when kids are playing, they are developing skills in language, executive functions, mathematics and spatial language, scientific thinking, and social-emotional areas that they will use as adults.7
Having adults – whether they be parents, caregivers or teachers – who are informed and ready to engage with children helps prepare them for kindergarten and reach important milestones in later grades.
United Way’s Role
United Way of Greater Chattanooga supports access to high-quality childhood education to all children – especially those from under-resourced neighborhoods. We partner with and connect donations to local nonprofits who are working to make care and early education more affordable, to support professional development for educators and daycare center staff members and to provide tips for parents on how to support the development of their children.
Stay tuned throughout the next several months to learn more about the research efforts and nonprofit organizations that United Way of Greater Chattanooga partners with to support our community’s children.
Sources
1Kids Count Data Center
2University of East Anglia via Science Daily
3American Psychology Association
4Care.com
5BabyCenter
6National Center for Biotechnology Information
7The National Association for the Education of Young Children