About Child Advocates of Blair County
The Benefits of Early Childhood Education
Child Advocates of Blair County, Inc. is a private, nonprofit, community-based organization founded in 1982 that provides high quality programming focused around the total needs of the family. As part of its strategic goal plan, the program has worked to develop and implement innovative practices and responsive programming for children and families to ensure we are recognized as the model for a premiere early childhood provider in Blair County.
Educational Programming
CABC, Inc. is the grantee for the Blair County Head Start program and a local grantee for the PA Pre-K Counts program. It also offers Teen Link Connection and research based Nurturing and Networking programs.
All programs provide a range of high quality educational and social services that cross the span of ages from preschool to adulthood.
Fast Facts About Early Childhood Education
In using real materials such as blocks and trying out their ideas, children learn about sizes, shapes, and colors and they notice relationships between things. In time, they learn to use one object to stand for another. This is the beginning of symbolic thinking. For example, they might pretend a stick is an airplane or a block is a hamburger. These early symbols – the stick and the block – are similar in shape to the objects they represent.
Long Term Results
Quality early learning programs yield impressive long-term returns to society – up to about 16 dollars for every dollar invested – in the form of increased earnings and income taxes, reduced special education and welfare costs, and reduced crime.**
More Likely To Graduate
Children who attend quality early learning programs are up to 48 percent less likely to be placed in special education and 51 percent less likely to be held back in school. They are also far more likely to graduate high school.**
Proficient Academic and Social Skills
The percentage of four-year olds with proficient academic and social skills more than tripled to 76 percent after participating in Head Start programs in 2012-13. In fact, there was a six-fold increase in the percentage of children with proficient mathematical thinking skills.*
Improved Vocabulary
Did you know that the average 3-year-old from a low-income family demonstrates an active vocabulary of around 500 words, whereas a 3-year-old from a professional family demonstrates a vocabulary of over 1000 words? And this disparity only increases as children get older.**
Continued School Success
In Pennsylvania, the percentage of four-year olds with proficient academic and social skills tripled to 82 percent after participating in PA Pre-K Counts programs in 2012-13. School districts also report children from PA Pre-K Counts classrooms continuing school success through third grade.**
Less Likely to be Arrested
Children with first-time, low-income mothers who participated in a nurse home-visiting program were 59% less likely to have been arrested by age 15 compared to their peers.**