Name changes but childhood program strong

By Ro Foege and Maggie Tinsman

Iowa's community empowerment program is nationally recognized as an exemplary model of citizen engagement in developing programs and services to improve young children's healthy development and readiness for success in school.

Iowa invests in community boards that design and fund strategies to strengthen and support families in nurturing their young children birth to age 5, improve the quality of care of children in all settings and foster coordination across health, education, and other services children and families need. These local boards leverage community resources and voluntary organizational efforts and community activities, often through civic and faith organizations, to support Iowa's young children.

This year, the governor and Legislature rewrote the community empowerment statute and changed the name from Iowa Community Empowerment to Early Childhood Iowa. Through an extensive debate and review of the operations of both the state and local community empowerment boards, state legislators reaffirmed the citizen structure and multiagency emphasis of Early Childhood Iowa.

Community Empowerment was subject to more scrutiny and review than almost any other state government program, and it passed with flying colors. The review showed that, with limited staffing but strong citizen engagement, Community Empowerment demonstrated its ability to maintain sound financial records and strong oversight over expenditures while designing programs to meet the needs of each community.

Community Empowerment has a particularly strong emphasis upon tracking the quality and impacts of the services it provides, with performance and child outcome measurement used for continuous improvement. This statewide early childhood initiative was established in 1998 with nearly unanimous bipartisan support and included an innovative and groundbreaking provision that required the reporting of results. This results-based requirement was one of the first in the nation, and other states have modeled legislation on it.

Because of the broad involvement of faith, business, health, family, and civic interests on local and state boards, Empowerment also has leveraged substantial and vital community resources to support young children and their families.

In short, Community Empowerment, now Early Childhood Iowa, puts Iowa at the forefront among states in supporting young children with a variety of community services and supports, particularly in the critical period of birth to age 3.

The new legislation provides additional emphasis upon quality improvement. Community empowerment is one area in state government that has continued to receive particularly strong bipartisan support, because it establishes government's role as supporting community and family actions to protect, nurture, and support young children.

While some lawmakers raised concerns over potential mismanagement of state funds during the debate, extensive searches did not reveal any such mismanagement. Instead, lawmakers found that the information available from Community Empowerment was extensive, both in terms of financial oversight and in terms of program review and accountability for results.

Iowa would be well served if all state government activities exhibited the kind of transparency and citizen involvement present in Early Childhood Iowa. Problems we have seen in other government agencies such as the film tax office and Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium are examples of what can happen when it is not in place.

Ro Foege of Mount Vernon is a former state representative and Maggie Tinsman of Bettendorf is a former state senator.