Addressing some of our social challenges

If there was a program that reduced child abuse rates 99%, kept children in school longer, decreased welfare and dependency rates, reduced teen pregnancies 50%, and saved the taxpayers $7 dollars for every dollar invested, wouldn’t a sensible government implement such a program? Well such an initiative does exist in a smattering of places across North America. It is the Head Start Program. At its root, the Head Start focuses on better parenting. Why it works can be proven by science.

These days we can peer into the developing brain with something called a Positron Emission Tomography Scanner (PET scanner) and see how it functions. Parents know that children under the age of 8 are little sponges, learning at an extraordinarily rapid rate.  At this time, the brains nerve cells or neurons are making connections. At no other time during a person’s life does this happen with such vigour as during the first 8 years of life. Subject the child during this time to love, good nutrition, play, being read to, physical activity, and the nerve cells tend to make good connections. Subject a child to abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, violence, poor nutrition and these nerve cells do not connect up as well. This can have a profound negative impact upon the future of that individual. Thus, the Head Start Program can help build the pillars of a stable, integrated individual.

How can this work? For two hours every second week, a parent or parents can come to the school with their child and learn about nutrition, literacy (being read to or reading), physical activity, and good parenting skills. Simple, easy to do, inexpensive, a Head Start Program done in this way will have a profound impact upon the future of our children.

It may not seem obvious, but there are many parents who do not know that a can of Coca Cola and a bag of potato chips is not a good breakfast, that putting a child in front of a television set for hours on end instead of reading to them, is not helpful to the child’s development and that regular physical activity is exceptionally important to the future physical development of the child and their future health as an adult. In Hawaii, their Head Start Program reduced child abuse rates 99% and there is a host of other effective programs from Michigan to New Brunswick that we can draw from.

This program is tied, in some part, to the people we see living on our streets. I had an opportunity to walk through some of the rougher parts of Victoria recently with our police. There one can see lives destroyed by an array of life’s tragedies.  Many of these people face complex problems involving homelessness, substance abuse, brain injuries, and psychiatric problems.  Solving this problem will require all our communities to help. Therefore, I am working to pull together representatives from our municipalities, police, health care, the business community, and others to implement a number of concrete solutions that will enable us to get more detox beds, emergency housing, psychiatric help, and a comprehensive harm reduction strategy. This is a very big and costly problem for our business community, tourism, and importantly for our police who work extremely hard on the street to address a problem that requires social solutions.

My goal is by working with others and pulling a team together involving the political community, business community, medical community, and police we will be able to implement solutions that will help these people.