Los Angeles Mission College
Lilamani de Silva
Advocacy
 Why early childhood advocates are needed?
 The political process, in both the public and private sectors, directly impacts the lives of
children.
 Children lack access to the political process.
 Since children’s needs are unmet in many ways we need to advocate on their behalf.
 What are some of children’s needs that are unmet? (Interactive)
Children therefore, are dependent upon adults (who do have political access) to speak for
them, to make their needs visible, and to take part in the political process.
 Children need us to:
 Vote
 To lobby
 To inform, and
 Speak out on their behalf.
 As early childhood educators, in partnership with parents and other concerned adults, we
have the power to create change.
 If we do not assume this responsibility, other groups competing for the same resources
will be heard instead, and children’s needs will remain unmet.
 Early childhood advocacy, fundamentally, means standing up for children and their needs.
It is an attitude, a process you go though, and all the steps along the way that bring about
changes to help children grow and develop fully.
 We are teachers, program directors, teacher educators, and related professionals.
We experience either directly or indirectly the personal stories behind the statistics.
 Our professional knowledge enables us to express the relationship between children’s
experiences and their growth and development.
 Our relationships with parents create the opportunity to release parents’ power on behalf
of their own as well as other children and our connections with the community place is in a
unique position to inform others about the needs of children and families.
 Advocacy on behalf of children needs to become a part of our professional-and even
ethical-responsibilities.
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How we can contribute to the decision-making process?
1. Sharing our knowledge
2. Sharing our professional experiences
3. Redefining the “bottom line” for children
4. Standing up for our profession
5. Activating parental power
6. Expanding the constituency for children
Targets for Advocacy
Early childhood educators can become involved in three areas of advocacy
1. Public policy advocacy – challenge and reform public systems that affect children and
families to change the broad developmental context for children’s growth. This area of
advocacy is directed toward the legislative, administrative and budgetary processes.
Involves all three levels of governments, local, state and federal.
2. Private sector advocacy – Private organizations, businesses and institutions also set
policies that affect children’s growth possibilities. Examples, content of commercial
learning materials influences both teacher education programs and practices in early
childhood classrooms, the world of work, has important consequences for the quality of
family life and parents’ ability to respond effectively to the demands of childrearing.
3. Personal advocacy – There are many opportunities for early childhood educators to
speak out on issues that effect young children, families and the profession.
Although sometimes these actions can lead to changes in public and private policies,
they are more personal efforts, such as supporting children and families in need, raising
awareness about early childhood issues with neighbors and friends or speaking up about
a school practices that needs improvement.
Five steps in the Policy process
1. Identify a problem that requires government action
2. Convincing the government to accept responsibility for helping to solve the problem
3. Developing and adopting acceptable solutions to the problem
4. Monitoring the government’s solution to the problem
5. Evaluating the program
Actions early childhood advocates can take
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