Piyush strikes again.
This time, the victims are low-income children under the age of 6 who are considered at-risk of developing social, emotional or developmental problems—and 76 state employees who will lose their jobs—while Piyush redirects federal funding for the program to other areas of the state’s budget.
Remember approximately 15 months ago, when Gov. Piyush Jindal announced that he would not seek a $60 million federal grant in early childhood education funding for the state because, he said, the state’s system for early childhood education is “inefficient” and mired in bureaucracy? “We need to streamline the governance structure, funding streams and quality standards in our early childhood system,” he said at the time.
Now, Jindal’s latest move is to terminate the Early Childhood Supports and Services mental health program that provides assessment, counseling and case management to young children in low-income families in the parishes of Orleans, East Baton Rouge, Terrebonne, Lafayette, St. Tammany, and Ouachita.
And it should come as no surprise that he would justify this latest budgetary cut by falling back on the old reliable claim that the program is “inefficient.”
In terms of standard measures of child health and well-being, Louisiana has been ranked 49th or 50th for each of the past 15 years.
Research has demonstrated that poverty is the single greatest threat to a child’s well-being and the percentage of children living in poverty in Louisiana is 27 percent, 50 percent higher than the national average of 18 percent.
Louisiana has experienced minimal success in providing services for the early childhood period. Some of the services cited as essential for helping these children are access to medical care, mental health and social-emotional development, early care and education, parenting education and family support, according to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (SECCS) grant (known in Louisiana as BrightStart).
Instead, Jindal has chosen to disembowel the program, effective Feb. 1, explaining that children with intensive needs can seek help from pediatricians, family resource centers or nonprofit groups.
Program proponents, however, have expressed concern that the program’s termination will result in children receiving medication but having to go on waiting lists for therapy or going without altogether.
What’s more, Piyush plans to take the $2.8 million in federal funding the program is scheduled to receive over the next five months and use it elsewhere in the state’s $25 billion budget.
Even worse, Janet Ketcham, executive director of the McMains Children’s Developmental Center in Baton Rouge will now have to scrap plans for a grant for her center. She said she was contending for a grant to collaborate with Early Childhood Support and Services in order to make it easier for parents get their children into speech therapy programs.
“Now I have to withdraw the grant,” she said.
But the biggest irony of all?
At the same time that Piyush was announcing the dismantling of early childhood services, he was jumping on another bandwagon, albeit somewhat late.
While services to address social, emotional and developmental problems were being eliminated, Piyush was announcing the formation of a study committee on school safety nearly a month after the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
And this is the same governor, remember, who turned his back on a $60 million for early childhood education funding. His official mouthpiece, Kyle Plotkin, said that three separate departments had done a thorough analysis of the grant and determined that it was “the exact opposite approach our state should take to help our kids.”
Fully one-third of the children in Louisiana are living in poverty and applying for a $60 million grant for early childhood education was deemed the opposite approach the state should take to help these kids.
Such is the mindset of this administration.
And we still have three years to go.
Louisiana Voice 
…and Nero continues to torch Louisiana while legislators revel at the baccahanalia disguised as a legislative session. Shame on them all.
For all of his foibles and supposed diminishing of Louisiana by his activities, Governor Edwin Edwards never did to the state of Louisiana what this pompous and misled boychild has done to it. Why people cannot see what is happening in the state and to the state from this man’s insane behavior…
This comes from the place where we hear daily how our students are not being prepared for the future and daily the leader of one of the poorest states on paper continue to Rob our future, a state with so many homeless people, this governor has again stomped the future of Louisiana in the ground. We all can’t afford whatever it takes to survive with what is offered to succeed in Louisiana. Something must be coming down the River to make this administration treat its people so baaaaad.
Wake Up!
So what’s his approach? Throw poor children into the Mississippi river? Hope another big hurricane comes through and displaces them to other states? I guess the idea is if the family becomes dysfunctional enough, then the family will take action. How’s a pediatrician going to do squat if the family never takes the kid to the doctor? The fallacy in his approach is that it presupposes that the families in question behave in the same way as an upper-middle class family might behave if its child were having difficulties. And that these families have the resources (time, transportation, money, willingness to act) to follow through on some indirect treatment plan. Here’s a newsflash: children at risk very frequently have parents who have serious problems (addiction, unemployment, chronic poverty, etc. etc. etc.).
Austerity economics does NOT work as a multitude of studies has indicated, including this recent one from the Iowa Policy Project (www.goodjobsfirst.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/snakeoiltothestates.pdf).
Does anyone including our wonderful govener know what is the plan for the children in our state…..Has anyone from his office contact all of the parents and explained to them the plan for their child….prob not….this is a serious problem for everyone how can we continue to allow this pompus individual continue to destroy this state….and for those who continue to support him how can they continue to look at our children and think that this is the best for them to take away their current means of care and not provide them an alternative method to get the proper care….this is an embarrassment….these are the same type of people who look through people in need and not at them, they turn their heads at the wake of their destruction and believe that if they don’t look at it, it will all just go away….but WE ALL MATTER……EVERYONE DESERVES MEDICAL CARE….EVERYONE…..this administration obviously lives by the notion that unless it affects them it doesn’t matter…..Governor Jindal we are all just one sick child of sick spouse from having to use these services!!!!!!! Shame on him and shame on the rest of this legislature for allowing him to continue to disrespect the people of Louisiana!!!!!!!!!
I told you all Jindal was waiting for the NRA funding strain to come through before addressing the massacre at Newtown, and now with all he has done to destroy public education, he will end up doing an absolutely useless study and then wind in with Woody Jenkins who is so concerned with our children he will get some idiot to recommend AR 15 s to the schools and everyone will get rich with these sales…by the way, wonder if security was an issue when he and the Chas Roemer passed the voucher to schools which didn’t even have desks…and yes, I know AG Ieyoub and his folks worked very hard and silently to fix a lot after Columbine. Assault rifles or multiclip should be for the military, and not in our homes and schools. In ffff sane. ron
ECSS is the single source of mental health services for Medicaid recipients, ages 0 through 5, in Region 4. No pediatrician, parent resource center, non-profit or mental health center provides any form of specialized, mental health counseling to this age group. It has become very difficult over the past year for children who are Medicaid recipients to find medical homes, access sub-specialists, or services for children with special needs due to bone deep cuts across all publically funded medical, protective, mental health and educational programs.
With all that is going on in this country, the epidemic of the FLU in Boston, what in H— are we to expect when we don’t try and help the sick, we (in this state) talk this Bull about reform education for the children,but let them die and we will not have to educate them,this sounds hard,but I am sick and tired of what is allowed to happen here.
Somebody tell us what to do about this jerk. We never see him anywhere, but then we don’t see legislators either. What will it take to dismantle what he has put in place? Really, what will it take? Please don’t tell me the answer is legislative action…………….really, again! Their inaction for not standing up to this AH astounds me daily. They are all on his payroll in my opinion. Should we all rally on a Saturday to Baton Rouge. It would have to be in mass numbers.
Can it be legal to divert Federally earmarked funds in this way?
Have you ever thought about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is valuable and all. However think of if you added some great pictures or video clips to give your posts more, “pop”! Your content is excellent but with pics and video clips, this blog could certainly be one of the very best in its field. Superb blog!|
I’m a techno dinosaur but I’m trying to learn a step at a time. As I learn new tricks (like how to add web links, which I’ve started doing) I will work them in. Thanks for the suggestion; they’re always welcome.