We, like many of you, are a few paychecks away from our world being turned on its head. All it would take is a car accident, a medical diagnosis, a loss of a job (add your own sit-up-in-bed-panicking fear). What would happen then? We’d struggle through, but if it was serious enough we’d have to turn to the safety net of programs and services available to people in Maine. We’d become more of those people, people who make our taxes higher by refusing to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Of course, for many people those programs and services are their bootstraps. Well friends, those bootstraps are about to be shortened.
You probably know that Maine is in a rough financial state and to make matters worse federal changes in Medicaid rules mean that starting next month Maine is going to begin losing another gazillion bucks. That loss is going to translate into real pain for real people. Jobs will be lost and people will lose services that they have come to rely upon. It makes me thankful that I don’t need any of those services on the block, but it also makes me nervous — what if someday I need them and they aren’t there? I can’t see this as just affecting other people.
I work closely with York County Head Start. The Medicaid changes translate into a loss of just under $300,000 for the year. I have no idea how this will play out, but it won’t surprise me if the only solution is that classrooms are shut down. Let’s say just one classroom is cut. Where are those children going to go? Since an equivalent situation costs way more than their parents can afford, they’ll have to go in a different direction — maybe babysitting by a relative, hopefully a safe situation, but certainly not a structured learning environment that will prepare them for kindergarten.
Fast-forward to 10 years from now. Some of those kids who would have been prepared for school because of Head Start weren’t. They have struggled to keep up since. As a result, they hate school and are always in trouble. Those kids make it harder for your kid to learn, they impact your life because your kid doesn’t get the attention he or she needs. In the end, the long-term costs are higher than keeping a Head Start classroom open.
Look, I get it, we spend a lot of money on supporting people and programs that most of us never need and we want to get value for that spending. But programs that support children and parents do that. By investing in people up front, we reduce the cost of supporting them later. I’ll climb down off my soap box now, but I’m keeping it handy, cause next month I’m writing about Iraq and the girls turning 5.
Brian Clark is the father of twin girls and is program manager for the STRONG Fathers Network, which supports men in their efforts to be skilled, active and strong parents. It is a program of York County Community Action Corp. and is funded by a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Brian’s views and opinions are solely his own. Unless you like them, in which case you may borrow them. He can be reached at brianc@strongfathersmaine.org.