Description:
Save the Children commissioned the Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute (ECI) to assess the current child care capacity and need for child care in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, 10 months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and caused major flooding in New Orleans. This report describes that assessment.
At the time of the assessment, no plan existed for coordinated restoration of early childhood services in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, or a wider area. The Bureau of Primary Care and Rural Health of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals had developed a plan for restoration of health services in several areas of the state, including the area of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes (Bureau of Primary Care & Rural Health, n.d.a.). However, the plan did not rank neighborhoods in terms of priority for restored health services, instead indicating only that the parishes should "build new, permanent facilities in appropriate locations throughout the rebuilt areas, based on returning population and demographics" (p. 75). The Office of the Mayor subsequently announced a plan to develop the Unified New Orleans Neighborhood Plan (New York Times, July 6, 2006).
Thus, assessment of current and future needs for child care requires at least one of the following: (a) a projection of where within the parish families with young children will most likely move, or (b) a strategic plan for community redevelopment.
The assessment described here was a pilot project of ECI's Early Childhood Emergency Preparedness Initiative. Lacking current population data at the planning district or neighborhood level, ECI relied heavily on location and capacity of open schools with grades Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, or First as indicators of where families with young children have returned or relocated and potential early childhood program strength across the 0-8 age span.