Date: 10/26/2015

Final
Impact of Domestic Violence on Early Learning and School Readiness

EARLY CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL READINESS

Votes: View--> Action Taken:
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01:11 PM -- Impact of Domestic Violence on Early Learning and School Readiness

Lydia Waligorski, Lindsay Wyrick-Bruner, Bill Jaeger, and Elizabeth Collins introduced themselves. Ms. Collins, representing the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence distributed a handout (Attachment A). She spoke about the prevalence of domestic violence and the ties between domestic violence and maltreatment of children. She described the effect of domestic violence on children and what happens when victims attempt to separate from their abusers. She defined domestic violence as coercive control, and spoke about the emotional responses that children have. She discussed the neurological effects of trauma on children and common responses that children have to domestic violence. She spoke about resiliency and the need for children to maintain a close relationship with their primary caregiving parents.

15EarlyChildhood1026AttachA.pdf15EarlyChildhood1026AttachA.pdf

Ms. Waligorski, representing the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence, talked about the guiding questions used to prepare the panel discussion, such as what happens when one parent flees the home. She said 13,000 people are turned away from domestic violence shelters each year, and that those turned away are usually women and children. She spoke about the loss of jobs and how this can lead to homelessness. She described the importance of basic documentation such as social security cards and birth certificates to people attempting to access bank accounts or apply for services. She described how abusers control access to documents as a means of controlling their victims. She listed immunization records as an example and said that without access to these, parents cannot access childcare or enroll their children in a new school. She said that for school-age children, federal law provides for navigators in schools and districts to assist families, but that for children ages 0 to 5, no guidance is provided.

Mr. Jaeger, representing the Colorado Children's Campaign, spoke about programs and systems that make it difficult for individuals experiencing a transition due to domestic violence. He said that the age of children most likely to be in homeless shelters is infancy, and that most families that are homeless are headed by women, with one infant. He described the obstacles to enrollment in programs that would enable vulnerable children to develop the close relationship with a caregiver that is the most important factor in resiliency. He spoke about how to lower barriers for families experiencing domestic violence and homelessness and described efforts in other states, such as more inclusive definitions in the Child Care Assistance Program; a period of presumptive eligibility in a domestic violence situation, to enable access to childcare while searching for job or enrolling children in school; a grace period for providing documentation while enrolling in childcare; and more Mckinney-Vento liaisons for early childhood.

Ms. Bruner, representing Domestic Violence Support Services Family Tree, Inc., described the requirement that parents comply with child support enforcement while applying for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). She spoke about the problems this requirement presents for survivors of domestic violence and said that often when victims choose to leave their relationships and try to access services, the requirement to get child support enforcement from a battering parent can bring the batterer back into their lives. Ms. Waligorski spoke about how mothers that do not live in poverty can choose not to pursue child support enforcement, but poverty-stricken mothers are required to.

Representative Singer asked about the McKinney-Vento advocates program and why intervention is only provided to children ages 6 and up. Mr. Jaeger responded that he is researching the nature of that barrier. He said that McKinney-Vento liaisons can identify families with kids under age 6 and work with them, but that these liaisons may not have the opportunity to come into contact with young children because children under age 6 may not be enrolled in school. Representative Singer asked about presumptive eligibility and a grace period for documentation, specifically asking how long the grace period should be, since it can take a year or more to get a homeless family into a home. He asked whether or not counties already have flexibility to put in presumptive eligibility. Mr. Jaeger responded that Colorado has a process in place that allows counties to allow presumptive eligibility, but that the provider must agree, and if the family is later found to be not eligible, the cost falls to the provider with no reimbursement. He said that more counties would take advantage of a presumptive eligibility period if reimbursement was guaranteed and described programs in other states that have enacted grace periods of 60 days for immunization records.

Representative Singer asked about child support enforcement. Ms. Waligorski spoke about good cause waivers that are granted on a county-by-county or caseworker-by-caseworker basis and cause trouble to those attempting to navigate benefits systems. Mr. Jaeger added that for service-providing organizations working with domestic violence victims, child support enforcement is the single biggest challenge to accessing services and stated that having a waiver on the books does not lower the barrier sufficiently for families fleeing an abuser. He spoke about other states that allow child support enforcement to be the choice of the individual rather than the choice of the county.

Representative Singer asked about metrics and how domestic violence hurts school performance. He asked if any organization in Colorado had made an attempt to track this on an epidemiological scale. Ms. Collins responded that she is unaware of any widespread tracking of that information. She spoke about limited access to data that would show these results on a statewide basis, and discussed the limitations of having to look at numbers by arrest category and having no way to correlate this information with educational outcomes. Mr. Jaeger spoke about graduation rates for homeless and foster youths, and said that in Colorado, the graduation rate for foster children went from 31 percent to 29 percent from 2007 to 2012, while other groups' rates were increasing. He said that domestic violence has a 40 percent co-occurrence rate with maltreatment of children he described an adverse childhood experience study that showed that for children with four or more adverse childhood experiences, the probability of diseases and negative outcomes goes up four times. He said there is much correlational evidence, but a lack of hard data linking domestic violence to health or educational outcomes. Representative Singer spoke about how principals might like to know how to help communities.

Ms. Collins added that the adverse childhood experience study shows that children exposed to domestic violence are more likely to experience other adverse life events, like homelessness, and that there is an adverse impact on them. She added that behavior problems can have roots in traumatic experiences.

Representative Wilson asked about the handout (Attachment A), and commented that someone who leaves home without identification documents cannot prove who they are. He asked about the barriers to accessing data. Ms. Waligorski responded by pointing out the difficulties of replacing a birth certificate without a driver's license or social security card. Senator Martinez Humenik spoke about her experiences talking with women, who report that the threat from their abusers was so great, they left with only the clothes on their back. She spoke about issues of identity theft. Representative Wilson asked how this is different from losing a wallet. Ms. Bruner responded that people with no identification have to start somewhere, and that there may be a financial barrier to gaining new identification. She said that victims first need to access birth certificate, and that can take a long time, but that most domestic violence shelters have a 30 day stay limit. She said that victims may have birth certificates for themselves and their children by then, but nothing else. She spoke about how victims need to get a state-issued identification card, and that this is not an immediate process. For example, she stated that state-issued identification cares are mailed to recipients, but for those without a home address, that's a barrier. She spoke about what happens when domestic violence victims cannot get an identification card, and then cannot get a job without one and stated that this is why many victims return to their abuser when their children are homeless and hungry. Representative Wilson asked about solutions. Mr. Jaeger replied that in order to be able to navigate those systems, victims with child under the age of 6 need expedited access to an early learning setting for their children. He spoke about lowering the barriers to access for child placement so adults can navigate the systems they need.