In the case of education I would say that we all agree, I think, that education should be a generic educational system for preschool and schoolchildren. However, the case is now that many States have developed preschool programs that are not in the education system. Again, agencies in the State of Washington, in the past have had a very difficult time in getting funding. Mr. BRADEMAS. I think, gentlemen, we are going to have to cease the questioning of all of you. We thank you very much. We hope you will also be willing to reply to Mr. Bell's set of ques tions. The subcommittee will recess until the quorum call has been answered. Then we will come back and hear Ms. Helms. [The subcommittee recessed from 12:15 to 12:25 p.m.] Mr. BRADEMAS. The subcommittee will resume and come to order. The subcommittee is very pleased to welcome to the witness chair Judith S. Helms, executive director of the National Council of Organizations for Children and Youth. STATEMENT OF JUDITH S. HELMS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF ORGANIZATIONS FOR CHILDREN & YOUTH, WASHINGTON, D.C. MS. HELMS. I would like to include a statement drafted and endorsed by 35 member organizations of NCOCY. I hope this will be made a part of the official record. Mr. MEEDS. Without objection it will be made a part of the record. MS. HELMS. In closing I would respond to President Ford's statement that we can't afford new social programs. I say that we cannot sacrifice our children for the sake of cutting Government budget costs. I say quite emphatically that we cannot afford not to provide child care service for our Nation's most valuable resource, our children. Mr. MEEDS. Thank you very much, Ms. Helms. Let me first apologize for the chairman, who had an engagement at 12:30 which he could not get out of and he asked me to extend to you his apologies. Let me also join with the chairman in welcoming you to the committee. I think most members of this subcommittee have had the privilege of working with you, when you were a legislative assistant to a Member of Congress from New York, and working in the very field to which you are now applying your talents. I would like to compliment you on your statement. Because of the nature of your representation of a number of divergent groups I think you have done a fine job in pointing out what seems to me to be the two major fields of resistance which we had at least in the 1970's to the Child Development Act. The early resistance to the Childhood Development Act came from those kinds of souls who had some Norman Rockwellian concepts of America, that mother met junior on the back stoop every night after school with a piece of mincemeat pie. As you point out, since 1948 the number of working mothers has risen from 18 percent to 44 percent; almost half of the mothers are now working; 26 million children have working mothers, 6 million of whom are under 6 years of age. This is not the Norman Rockwell of the 1940's. Most people don't realize that. Second, and I think just as important, you point out that the number of children being unattended by parents is continuing to increase and will continue to increase in the absence of the passage of this bill. It was again maintained by some other of those good souls-some of them not so good-that such a bill would provide an impetus for women to go to work and cause the working-mother problem to in crease. But, as you point out, this problem will be exacerbated without passage of this bill. So my compliments on your statement. I will ask you one question and you may answer this in an unofficial capacity. Do you think the formula provided in the bill will provide for a proper distribution of funds? MS. HELMS. First of all, I think that our major concern-and I think I can speak on behalf of most of our membership-is a point that has been made earlier, and by Congressman. Miller as well, and that is that it seems to us a terrible shame that we have to start examining formulas. We all feel very strongly that this is such a high priority that there ought to be enough money available so that we wouldn't have to say, "Well, we only have a very small piece of pie and therefore how do we go about dividing this up in such a way that this group or that group gets a slice. Clearly as soon as you decide that you have a limited pot of money and that you are going to have to make some decisions about who is going to get the major amount of that money and who in the process is going to be left out, then you raise a very, very serious question. It is a question that I don't know how to answer. I don't know how to answer as to which children need these services more than any other children need them. My response is that wherever the children are, whether they are in single-parent families, whether they are in poor families, whether the parents are working, whether they are children whose parents are home but need help, they all need those services. I find it very discouraging that we have to start out talking about formulas for distributions. I recognize, however, in terms of your question that the formula is there. Rather than comment on it specifically I will just say I would be more than happy to refer you to various members from organizations who can comment specifically on it. But again, my overwhelming reaction to your comment is that I am obviously discouraged to simply think of the fact that we have to start off with formulas and try to decide who gets what amount of money. Mr. MEEDS. One other question. I don't mean to in any way pit you against other witnesses. But I personally would disagree with Mr. Reid's statement this morning when he indicated that if there were only $150 million that that should all go into ongoing programs. It seems to me that $150 million is so insignificant as compared to the total problem that it too could better be utilized in the development of programs. I would just be inclined to disagree with Mr. Reid. Do you have any opinion on what ought to be done if we only had $150 million? MS. HELMS. Clearly we couldn't do very much at all to provide services with $150 million. But I think the point Mr. Reid was making-and CWLA is a member of NCOCY and I am sure that other member organizations would agree is that the need is so great and that there are already plenty of people programs to quickly absorb that money. No one would disagree that we ought to put a certain amount of money into training or research, but it would be possible to implement this program immediately if the money were available and there would be plenty of programs that would use it up very quickly. I think that is the point that is being made. It isn't a question of one use of funds being more important than the other. Mr. MEEDS. One final thing. Would you be so kind as to circulate your statement to the member groups and then indicate to us those who endorse it? MS. HELMS. I would be more than happy to. Mr. MEEDS. Second, would you encourage your member groups, some of whom have already testified, but those who have not testified to present to us prepared statements, written statements on their concepts on this and any specific recommendations they have. Ms. HELMS. I will certainly do that particularly because I feel that over the past several years a lot of organizations which have not been terribly active have now become so and may very well wish to let that be known. Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry that I missed your presentation. But I had to go prove I'm not a member of the Tuesday-Thursday Club. You raise a couple of points, one of which I came across last night. I am sorry. I can't find the place in the legislation, but it was dealing with nutrition and whether or not this program ought to cover that, because this act doesn't spell out nutrition education for parents and children. Do you think this should also be a specific part of the service you wish to see provided? MS. HELMS. I would say definitely this is a very valuable service. I would hope that one of the strengths of a bill like this would be that it is flexible and allows the community to decide what kinds of services are most needed. We have a large number of organizations that are very active in the health field. They all feel very strongly that along with simply providing people with the food that is necessary that education is also very important particularly since as many pregnant women about to deliver are encountering a physician for the first time. Many have never had a prenatal examination, many women have no idea, no concept, of the value of a nutritious diet. 57-649 76 - pt. 2 17 We are finding more and more that all kinds of problems occur because women are malnourished-lower birth rates, all kinds of disabilities, and of course there is the whole question of the relationship between proper nutrition and retardation. Therefore I believe this would be a very valuable preventive program, one which is not very costly but which reaps enormous benefits when measured against the cost of providing this kind of service. Mr. MILLER. I would suggest that perhaps one of the ancillary problems is that most physicians don't understand women's nutritional problems. Also, on page 14 of the legislation, in determining the number of children for the purposes of allocating proportions of funds under this section the Secretary shall have the use of the most recent satisfactory data available to him. I wonder whether your organizations through cooperative efforts might consider whether there ought to be a hearing on that data. I think we have found in the past that the official agencies of either State or Federal Government miscount or leave a lot of people out in terms of apportioning and therefore misrepresent the needs at the local level. Do you think there ought to be some methods by which those figures could be challenged, if you feel they are incorrect. We went through this on the census of Mexican Americans. I know that very often we come across statistics. Statistics have a way of floating around Washington. Someone comes up with them. We are never quite sure of where they came from. But all of a sudden they start appearing in more and more places. It builds up until the statistics become an established fact without anybody really knowing where they came from or how accurate they really are. Of course you are also alluding to an issue that I referred to before. I would say again that I really feel it is so unfortunate that we have to gather these statistics to figure out how much of one tiny piece of the pie you will give to one segment of the population. Mr. MILLER. Also on page 6 of your testimony you talk about children who simply are left home alone. I think you state that we have no way of knowing. At one time didn't the garment workers do a study of what they call "latchkey children?" MS. HELMS. There have been some studies. The Women's Bureau did a study as I remember. The latest statistics that I have seen are from 1965, and the number was in the hundreds of thousands. If there are more recent statistics I would be interested in seeing them. But if the 1965 figures are any indication then I think we obviously have a monumental problem. Mr. MILLER. Finally, I wonder if your group might considerbecause it is made up of advocates in many varied areas dealing with children-whether they can pull together for this committee—and perhaps this is the role of the Government or perhaps you may be able to do this in a more expeditious fashion-the results of the various health screening programs that we have, whether it is the WIC program where children are required to be screened to see whether they are eligible for food supplements, or various educational screening programs, to begin to get a profile of what we are finding. I think too often nobody sits down and says, "what did we find out about the children that we have had at least minimal contact with as far as screening procedures and what are the disabilities?" I know we had a national nutrition study but it got lost in the computer. I just wonder whether you have the capability or might consider whether you have the capability to pull those kinds of things together. I think it would help strengthen the case since this bill does lead very directly to health screening and meeting health needs. MS. HELMS. In terms of what we could do there I am not sure. But I would certainly be willing to look at the question. We are not a very large organization. However many of our members are very large and they do have access to this kind of information. There are two comments I would like to make about your question. One is that what you are saying points to the fact that we do not have any central place in the Government that has any concern about children. We have OCD, which really has a very limited program jurisdiction, and SRS, where welfare and Medicaid are housed. We have the Assistant Secretary for Health Programs and the Commissioner of Education. So one of the problems is that there are a wide range of agencies in Government which have a minor interest in children, but there is no central focus. This is something that a lot of our organizations are very much concerned about. Another comment I would like to make is that one of the unfortunate things about a lot of these screening programs and I can think of the EPSDT program as an example is that the Government does not have very stringent requirements about screening and about keeping accurate information about what is actually occurring. EPSDT is a program that is available potentially for 14 million children and has only reached a tiny percentage of these eligible. And we know too little about what is happening. There are no strong requirements by SRS to require that States keep track of what happens to a child once a child is screened. So in many cases we simply don't know. I think that is tragic—we screen a child and then we lose track of him. We don't have any idea whether they were ever treated or where they go after that. It is not enough to find a problem. We have to make sure it is treated. Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. Mr. MEEDS. Ms. Helms, would you please also submit answers to the written questions for Mr. Bell which will be given to you? Ms. HELMS. I would be happy to. Again, within the limitations that I have in terms of our variety of opinions among our members. Mr. MEEDS. This committee is unaware of any limitations you have. MS. HELMS. Thank you. Mr. MEEDS. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Ms. Helms and subsequent material supplied follows:] |