AMCHP 2006 ANNUAL CONFERENCE
EARLY CHILDHOOD: BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR LIFELONG HEALTH
March 4-8, 2006
PETER VAN DYCK: Thank you Pete. It gives me great honor to accept this award--no that was last night, wasn’t it? Armani.
Good morning everybody. It’s really a pleasure to be here and to see so many friends from across the country. I always look forward to MCHP to get reconnect with many of you. Please come up and talk to me or see me during the meetings. I’ll be here all day today and most of the other days. I and the bureau really value our partnership with MCHP and the state directors and all of your staffs. I wonder if the bureau folks in the room could stand, just so people can so people have an idea that we do participate in the meeting. It’s a little early for us in the federal government. But, yeah everybody stand. There’s a number of them. They do great work, just great work. Just great work and they also get lonely sometimes. So, please search them out during the meeting and chat them up and let them know what you’re doing and if you want to have some imput into what the bureau does, we really welcome that.
The theme of the meeting Early Childhood, Building a Foundation for Lifelong Health; very supportive of the theme in the bureau, because it supports a major initiative of the bureau and early and it programs to increase or improve early childhood infrastructure and services in states. It’s a program that really a partnership with you. And just, why did we begin this kind of an effort together? Because the human brain achieves approximately 85 percent of it’s adult size by age two and a half and 90 percent by the age of three.
Early Childhood represents the period where young children obtain developmental milestones that include emotional, regulation and attachment, language and development and motor skills. And we believe in the bureau that critical components include access to the medical homes, to address the needs of kids at risk for the development of mental health problems, early care and education services for children from birth through five, parent education services and family support services. But gap remain, nine, ten million children depending on how you count don’t have health insurance maybe six million of those kids are eligible for CHP or Medicaid. There’s a need for enhanced health professionals knowledge and skills for addressing developmental behavior and psychological problems. Maternal depression goes unrecognized for it’s potentially negative impact on a child’s development. Many communities have gaps in service delivery pathways to facilitate entrance of risk children into appropriate child development and mental health delivery services. And some childcare providers are expelling children from preschool placements, due to the providers’ inability to deal with psychosocial issues.
So there’s ample reason, and wonderful partnerships that merge with this theme of early childhood. Thank you for your work in this effort, for helping us make this program initiative that we partner on a success and together we’ll work to make a difference.
I just want to read a poem, to end. It was written by Francis Cornford, who was born in 1886 and died in 1960; and the title of the poem is Childhood. I used to think that grown-up people chose to have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose, And veins like small fat snakes on either hand, on purpose to be grand. Till through the banister I watched one day my great-aunt Etty’s friend who was going away, and how her onyx beads had come unstrung. I saw her grope to find them as they rolled; and then I knew that she was helplessly old, as I was helplessly young.
Let’s work together to support youngest citizens. Thanks very much have a meeting.