Minding our future: Help infants and toddlers thrive in Tarrant County

If I ask you to close your eyes and imagine the face of a homeless person, I bet most of you wouldn’t picture the face of a baby.

Yet in Tarrant County, infants are more likely to become homeless, followed by toddlers from 1 to 3 years old.

In fact, infants and toddlers are the Tarrant County population most vulnerable to poverty, malnutrition and poor development. And poverty is overrepresented among Hispanic and black children.

Infants in Tarrant County have the highest mortality rate of any urban area in Texas — up to 22 percent higher.

As the head of the largest child development agency in North Texas, I stood recently at the front of a room filled with city and county officials and released a report that is more than eyebrow-raising about the current state of Tarrant infants and toddlers and the geographic clustering of risk factors.

Why focus the report (“The First 1,000 Days — a Briefing on Infants and Toddlers in Tarrant County”) solely on infants and toddlers?

For the last 10 years, our community, schools and families have successfully rallied to help make sure 4-year-olds are provided access to early education, primarily in the form of public pre-Kindergarten but also through quality child care, Head Start and private preschools.

In the Fort Worth school district, voters approved bonds in 2013, classrooms were built, schools redesigned and the district creatively layered public funding to support universal, full-day pre-K.

For many children, this one-year boost to literacy and socio-emotional skills from quality pre-Kindergarten may be enough.

However, more is needed for children growing up in poverty.

We know from the last two decades of brain research that the first three years of life — the approximate 1,000 days beginning at conception and continuing through the toddler years — represent a period of rapid growth and development.

Early brain development helps us be amazingly adaptable and resilient, but these qualities come with a price tag.

Positive early experiences are incredibly important to brain development.

But growing up in poverty or amidst neighborhood violence creates negative experiences for infants and toddlers.

Children age 0-3 years are particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of poverty, poor nutrition, unresponsive adults and violence, and these impacts linger well into adulthood.

In Tarrant County, we need to recognize that children’s youngest years are a window of opportunity for parents, caregivers and community leaders. Positive early experiences dramatically impact children’s chances for achievement, success and happiness.

For our early education programs, we need to ensure we have the learning, play and care facilities needed to support children 0-3.

We also need to look at our city and county budgets.

For example, Mayor Price and the city manager’s office are introducing steady investments into areas of high poverty.

We must make sure these neighborhood revitalization investments include infrastructure and services focused on infants and toddlers, starting with Stop Six.

Our resources should support our youngest residents.

This story was originally published February 10, 2017 at 3:34 PM with the headline "Minding our future: Help infants and toddlers thrive in Tarrant County."