Session 3: How Will Climate Change Impact Early Care and Education Systems?
Capita and This is Planet Ed (the Aspen Institute) have co-convened the Early Years Climate Action Task Force to draft the first-ever U.S. Early Years Climate Action Plan. The plan will recommend ways the country can help young children, ages zero to 8, flourish in the face of climate change. It will be published in late 2023.
Climate change is a direct threat to our children’s health, safety, and ability to flourish. Yet experts in child development and climate have been slow to join forces to address this crisis. We are proud to bring together experts from both worlds to share, learn, and unite their efforts.
This listening session, the third of six, explored the effects of climate change on children, families, and the early child care system. After presentations from four expert panelists, the session opened up for questions.
The experts:
Lois Kedrick, Florida Family Child Care Home State Association
Sara Mickelson, Early Childhood Initiatives—Harris County, Texas
Yasmina Vinci, National Head Start Association
Corey Zimmerman, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
Climate change is causing many types of harm to children, families, and the early child care system.
According to Zimmerman, “climate change is the global trend for the next decade that will have the largest impact on the early care and education field.” Panelists offered many examples of how climate change is affecting the early years sector. Kedrick, a child care provider, described extensive damage to her home-based business, which forced her to close for four days after Hurricane Ian. Houston-area providers have told Mickelson about the challenges of navigating both extreme heat and—for the first time—freezing temperatures. Vinci pointed to the effects of California wildfires: the fires themselves, plus smoke and planned power outages.
Young children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change because early childhood is a period of rapid development. In addition, children are experiencing trauma and learning loss. They are missing vital play and outdoor time. Many are uprooted from damaged homes.
Providers may suffer trauma long after weather events. Many are struggling financially and are already behind on upkeep, which leaves them even more vulnerable. Insurance is often a problem. In Texas, many providers lacked flood insurance to help cope with the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.
Climate change causes toxic stress that affects children’s development.
Zimmerman drew particular attention to the role of climate change in elevating stress in children and their caregivers, affecting children’s development. At tolerable levels, stress can help children build resilience. But stress becomes toxic when it is persistent or when children don’t have help from caregivers in managing it.
The early childhood sector has long understood the need for buffering children from stress and helping them build resilience. But the focus has been mainly on the relationships around young children. When caregivers are stressed, it’s harder for them to form responsive relationships with children. Climate change will make caregivers’ stress worse.
But the importance of another source of stress for children—the physical environment—is becoming clearer. The built and natural environment affects children’s development, and climate change is affecting those environments. These effects are another pathway through which climate change can trigger toxic stress.
The early childhood infrastructure needs increased resources to prepare for and respond to climate change and to buffer children from toxic stress.
The early childhood field must harden and prepare facilities so they can stay up and running during emergencies. As Zimmerman said, “investing in early childhood infrastructure is a way to enable the built environment to be a protective factor in children’s development.” In other words, improving the physical infrastructure of child care will help protect children from climate-related stress: both their caregivers’ stress and the stress caused by the changes to their physical environment. It can help ensure that the child care environment is a source of resilience, not adversity.
Vinci ticked off multiple needs: reinforcing against fires, improving filtration, installing air conditioning, erecting shade structures, elevating buildings to protect them from floods. But such improvements are out of reach for many providers, who are already financially stretched. Financial assistance is often tied to declared public emergencies or disasters, so it is available only after the damage has occurred. This aid doesn’t consider the underlying issues caused by climate change, such as year-round polluted air. And it can be very slow to arrive. Vinci discussed a barrier to federal funding faced by Head Start facilities: the painstaking, slow, and inconsistent process informally known as 1303, which stymies many of them.
Simply put, the child care system needs money to adapt to climate change and build resilience. The field needs help in gaining access to new sources of funding for climate action from federal and other sources. Mickelson gave an example of how this might work: her county is using ARPA funding to consider the best physical locations for child care to better withstand flooding or extreme heat.
When we think about climate adaptation and resilience, we must think about child care. Government must step up its support.
We must mobilize support for a broader conception of climate adaptation and resilience that considers the needs of children and caregivers. Early childhood systems must have a greater profile when communities, cities, and nations plan for climate adaptation and resilience. They must be integrated into emergency planning.
Panelists said that government needs to view supporting caregivers as part of its role—to “own” this issue and to be more proactive. County or state agencies are usually in charge of disaster planning, so they are a natural target. Mickelson noted the general assumption that “someone else is taking care of it.” She is often told that early childhood is a responsibility of the state or federal government, not of local or county government. Yet no entity is tasked with making sure “that young children are cared for or served in a systemic way.” This points to a need to build more knowledge about early child care, to make it more visible, and to encourage counties or cities to invest in the physical infrastructure.
Participants also considered the pros and cons locating centers in or near affordable housing or schools. They discussed the importance of faith communities in responding to disasters and their role in building resilience, along with roles for local mental and general health practitioners in planning for, responding to, and recovering from disasters.
Caregivers feel forgotten. They are stressed and need more support.
When it comes to protecting their children and their environments, caregivers are doing too much on their own. Providers and families are under extreme stress.
Kedrick described the many hats she had to wear in responding to Hurricane Ian: “mother, neighbor, provider, social worker, spiritual counselor.” She had to do an enormous amount of preparation on her own and then to actively network with agencies in her community to secure resources to keep her business open. She worked hard to provide a calm and caring environment for the children in her care and to reassure their parents, many of whom were in the midst of relocating or trying to recover from the storm’s devastation. Mickelson said that providers told her they need a better disaster response in the future, “more applicable to child care providers, and for them to know they’re not forgotten in these big weather disasters.”
Reducing stress on child care workers will require new policies, including to increase their wages. Vinci noted that Head Start is working to provide access to mental health care and to make its programs trauma informed. Another recommendation: including the child care needs of first responders during emergency planning, so they will be able to respond to crises without worrying about the safety of their own children. Kendrick also cited the need to ensure that caregivers, both parents and providers, are aware of climate-related risks and have the necessary tools to prepare and respond.
The early childhood sector brings many assets to the struggle against climate change.
The session ended on a positive note, with moderator Diana Rauner asking panelists to describe the unique strengths that the early childhood field brings to the fight against climate change. A few of their responses:
a deep passion about children and families
strength as advocates
a strong, persuasive grounding in science
strong relationships
the ability to connect communities and families
an entrepreneurial spirit
the ability to help children appreciate the climate threat and the natural world overall.