Access

All children and their families have access to, and support for, healthy development, emotional well-being, and educational achievement.

The Expectation

• All children and their families have access to high-quality development and education opportunities, from child care for infants and toddlers through early elementary school, including after school and summer learning.
• All children and their families have access to support and intervention services that allow each child and family to take advantage of that education—including safe housing, healthy food, safe transportation, and health and dental care.
• Adults will pay attention to factors impacting school attendance and remove these barriers.

The Why

To fully participate in their education and developmental opportunities, children need to be healthy, safe, and present. This means their families need access to safe housing, healthy food, quality health care (including vision and dental care), and transportation.

But simply offering a needed service doesn’t mean it will reach the right child in the right place at the right time. There are currently gaps in enrollment in the earliest educational services such as preschool, where the participation rate for Latinos is 40 percent (compared to 50 and 53 percent for African-Americans and Caucasians, respectively), and the enrollment for lower-income children is 41 percent compared to 61 percent among children in higher-income categories.

Rates of participation in after-school programs are relatively low among disadvantaged and minority youth. The reasons cited for this include participant fees, poor access to safe transportation, and conflicts with other responsibilities.

Unlocking the supply and demand issue for access requires six keys.

The Science

Access to services is multidimensional, beginning with Awareness that services exist (for example, for education these may include state-funded pre-K programs, after-school or summer programs, or libraries), what the service provides, and how to obtain the services. The ability to enroll in services, even free ones, must start with awareness.

Services must be Affordable, based on the income level of the child and family. These services include those directly related to education such as preschool programs, after-school programs, and summer educational offerings, as well as support services such as ones for health and dental care.

Another key question is whether the services are geographically Accessible and located in the area needed by that population. Studies demonstrate that health care is generally less geographically accessible for lower-income children and/or those in rural areas.

It’s also necessary that a service is Available in sufficient quantity to meet a population’s needs. There’s a body of work linking the availability of books and other printed materials to language and/or reading development at various ages. Most youth are purchasing materials rather than obtaining them from schools or libraries. The study found the most popular materials were available in limited supply in schools, but that ensuring classrooms were book-rich could be helpful toward reading development.

Services can also be Accommodating, where the form and timing of delivery meets the needs of the population. This is especially important for health care, where normal operational hours may require students to be absent from school to obtain health care, dental care, or vision exams. The more a child is absent from school, the greater the gaps in learning and achievement. Services also must accommodate those with disabilities, such as hearing or vision problems. For reading materials, this implies libraries should have good ways for those with disabilities to access materials.

Services should be Acceptable, which implies there’s a match between the service and provider and the population being served. This key also encompasses some aspects related to English-as-a-second-language learners, where studies have found some instructional techniques are more suited than others. We believe having access to needed supports and services means all of these six criteria are met: awareness, affordability, accessibility, availability, accommodating, and acceptability.

The Value

We believe having access to needed supports and services means all of these six criteria are met: awareness, affordability, accessibility, availability, accommodating, and acceptability.

How Are We Doing?

Check out this population-level data indicating current conditions related to access to health care and high-quality, developmental, educational, and supportive services.

What’s Happening?

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