Published: February 18, 2008 10:26 pm         

KIDS COUNT launches effort to improve child care

West Virginia KIDS COUNT has worked for 17 years to improve the opportunities and well-being of the children of West Virginia.

The group releases a detailed report each year that gives West Virginia residents an idea of how well the state is providing for its children. The report presents a wealth of information on each county, from teen birth rates to high school dropout rates.

In 2007, KIDS COUNT conducted research and found that parents and caregivers want a way to rate and improve the quality of the state’s child care.

“We have roughly 64,000 kids in child care, and only 9.2 percent of those facilities are nationally accredited,” said Margie Hale, executive director of KIDS COUNT. “Most of the care is mediocre to poor.”

At the same time, having effective early child development programs helps young people to “have better academic achievement later in life, and stay in school,” Hale said.

Recognizing that change would not come without grassroots interest and support, KIDS COUNT is launching seven regional “Kids First Communities” focused on organizing parents, providers and community leaders to advocate for new investment in West Virginia’s child development programs.

One of these regional groups is forming in Beckley. Its goals will be to bring parents, providers and community leaders together to educate them about the state of child care in their communities, and to improve the quality of local child development programs.

One key to improving the programs is to develop a child care quality rating system, Hale said. She explained that the system could be as simple as assigning a number of stars to each child care facility — from one to five stars, depending on the site’s quality.

This would provide incentive for care providers to improve their programs, and would give parents better information about which facilities to choose for their children.

Another goal of KIDS COUNT is to increase awareness of child development issues in the state Legislature.

“We hope to have legislative funding to do this by 2009,” Hale said.

The 2007 KIDS COUNT report shows some troubling trends in the well-being of older children, Hale said. In particular, high school dropout rates and low birth weight rates continue to be high statewide.

The report ranks West Virginia’s 55 counties in terms of the care and health of their children. In the rating, Monroe County ranked eighth, Greenbrier County ranked 23rd, Nicholas County ranked 29th, Raleigh County ranked 30th, Fayette County was 38th, and Summers and Wyoming counties ranked 46th and 47th.

For more information on the findings of the KIDS COUNT study, or to view a detailed breakdown of child well-being indicators by county, visit www.wvkidscountfund.org.

— E-mail:

bbilleter@register-herald.com