Talking about child care
In 2000, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation funded a multi-year media advocacy project designed to increase public support for investments in child care. They wanted to increase the visibility of child care issues in the news and shift the frame on child care from a mechanism for warehousing children while parents work to its value as a social and economic good. They contracted with us to provide media advocacy training for Packard grantees who were part of the Local Investment in Child Care project in nine California counties, and to develop media advocacy tools for advocates working in California and elsewhere in the nation. Ultimately this training was intended to help improve the quality of child care, its financing and accessibility.
Monitoring the media
We monitored newspapers for articles on economics, child care and early childhood development and disseminated them electronically to child care advocates. We also summarized recent news coverage of child care issues in local newspapers’ business pages and in key national newspapers. This information helped advocates become better able to respond and add their voices to the policy debate.
Training
Through intensive media advocacy training sessions, child care advocates learned how to write op-ed articles and letters to the editor, to pitch stories to reporters, and to present child care as an economic issue when interviewed by journalists.
Strategic consultation
We helped advocates make a case for investments in child care as a substantial part of local allocations from the Prop. 10 fund, a statewide fund for early childhood programs funded by a voter-approved tobacco tax.
Media advocacy
We wrote Making the Case for Early Care and Education: A Message Development Guide for Advocates to help the national child care community communicate effectively with journalists and others. The guide summarizes current public opinion and media research on child care and provides a menu of tested messages for advocates. It is modeled on a similar document created in the 1980s by the Advocacy Institute for the National Cancer Institute to assist tobacco-control advocates.
“Making the Case”
The appendix contains a report from Ethel Klein of EDK Associates in New York, who conducted the public opinion research BMSG commissioned for the message guide.