Geania B. Dickey is the immediate past chair of AECA’s Public Policy Committee. Geania has been named a National Exchange Leader and the recipient of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Friend of Children Award, among others. Her work in ECE began when her oldest son was a toddler and will tell you that she felt a renewed commitment to this work following the birth of her grandchildren. Geania went back to school “as a grown up” to earn a Master’s in Public Administration.
Yesterday, I shared my thoughts about three categories of advocacy; forward facing, behind the scenes, and sidelines. I promised to share some ideas to help you move away from the sidelines. So, here you go…
When thinking about advocacy, there is a…
Message – What do we want people to know?
Audience – Who is the message for?
Mode – How will we share it?
For Step 1, the audience is our families and your mode is whatever you already use to communicate with them. This might be emails, text, apps, or conversations at pick-up… the choice is yours. The message is to help families understand the recent changes to School Readiness Assistance (SRA) funds and how those changes are impacting child care. Especially if they may not be directly affected. (At the end of this post, there is a little summary of the message to help get you started.)
Why is this advocacy work so important for this moment? During a time of crisis, we have to be careful that we don’t start blaming the wrong people. For example, imagine you have a parent who has a business and is frustrated because one of your colleagues stopped accepting children funded with SRA funds. Now, her employee can’t come to work due to child care issues. But that’s only one side of the story. What if the employer knew that your colleague couldn’t make payroll at the new SRA reimbursement rate and was forced to take only parent-pay families? They might better understand the situation—and maybe, join us in asking decision makers to help find better solutions.
Great advocacy is not about blaming others but coming together to find a better way. Partners and allies can be our strongest advocates. But first, they must understand the situation/challenge – that’s where you come in.
I hope you will share our talking points or make them your own. I’d LOVE to hear how it goes.
Here’s a message summary to help you get started:
The changes to the School Readiness Assistance (SRA) reimbursement rate will impact NOT just the families receiving School Readiness Assistance but ALL Arkansas families.
The SRA rates have changed to one rate tiered to infants, toddlers, and preschool children. Families will start paying a co-pay based on a sliding-scale copayment structure based on family income. They were given less than two weeks’ notice of this change. And although the rates may appear small, families were given less than 2 weeks to add this expense to their very tight budgets AND of course if I have more than one child, those costs add up quickly. Additionally, providers will no longer receive rates based on the quality of their program.
Despite the wages we can offer in early education, in our attempt to keep rates affordable to families, child care is not babysitting and it’s more than a provided service – it’s the infrastructure that allows families to work, businesses to operate, and communities to thrive. Child care operates on a razor-thin profit margin. Our highest cost of doing business is the payroll for the nurturing and knowledgeable staff that care directly for children.
These cuts will result in early education programs throughout the state closing or being forced to stop accepting families using SRA as their form of payment, leaving parents at every socio-economic level, without care or with less affordable care. The decisions made to reduce the reimbursement rates for services provided throughout Arkansas will undermine and weaken the child care system and the infrastructure of our communities.
Geania B. Dickey
Recent Comments