By: Nancy Merrill, communications co-ordinator, Community Action Towards Children's Health in Kelowna.

We've long known that when it comes to health care and social program spending, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Research proves that early childhood development investment helps raise healthy children at half the cost of treating children with health problems, and 17 times less what it costs when a child grows into a troubled teen. A recent survey shows 89 per cent of taxpayers in the Central Okanagan want tax dollars spent to help parents raise healthy children.

But reliable research also tells us that we are not getting the job done.

One in every four children starting kindergarten in the Central Okanagan is not doing well on one or more of the key measurements of healthy early child development. Every February, kindergarten teachers measure their students' physical health, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development or communication skills and general knowledge. Most of the causes for these poor results are preventable, but once established these habits will last a lifetime in these children.

That's because before age six, our brains grow the neural pathways that we use for the rest of our lives. As babies, toddlers and preschoolers experience their environments, these pathways are growing into lifelong patterns of thinking and behaving.

A good environment of loving relationships, nutritious food, adequate stimulation, security and sleep produces one set of pathways. Environments where these positive influences are missing most of the time produce other pathways. The pathways most often used are the ones we keep for life. By age 12, the pathways least often used are mostly pruned away.

Yes, we do learn new information and we can change thinking patterns throughout our lives, but we are now learning that our tendencies and capacities to live our lives well or poorly are defined before age six. Instead of the saying "everything we need to know in life we learned in kindergarten" what we should be saying is what we learned before kindergarten is probably how we'll behave and learn for the rest of our lives.

So by age six the pathways that largely determine our lifelong physical, mental and emotional health are already apparent. When we look at the bright eager faces of our community's children anticipating their first day of school we know that educational achievement is already at risk for every fourth child.

Unless we act, one in four children will continue to reach kindergarten less likely of growing into the socially and emotionally competent adults we want and need them to be for the sake of our future security.

The good news is that six priorities for action to change this picture have been identified. Hundreds of parents and the professionals who are trained to help them raise healthy children, as well as concerned people from all walks of life took part in three years of consultations in neighbourhoods across the Central Okanagan. They developed six priority goals.

One of the community's priorities is to develop more affordable and stable child care options. Since many parents earn their wages outside the home and need child care, one known way to provide young children with the best early start is to make high quality professional care-giving available.

At present there is only space for 22 per cent of the children under six in licensed centres, where high care-giving standards are achieved through regulation and staff training.

Ranked second on the priorities from the community is the development of central places in the community dedicated to meeting the needs of young children and their caregivers.

The community's third priority calls for more support for vulnerable families, including lone parents, young parents, fathers and grandparents throughout the region. Likewise, people raising children say a fourth priority is access to more recreational opportunities for young children and their caregivers.

This leads to the fifth priority, civic planning that enhances the livability and inclusiveness of our communities.

Finally, all of us in the community can learn about the critical importance of the early years from conception to age 6. Research conducted in the last two decades shows clear evidence that the wisest investment decision we can make as a community is to support healthy early childhood development. One recent telephone survey found that 79 per cent of the people surveyed in the Central Okanagan already agree that it takes a community to raise a child.

Now let's act on what we know and encourage healthy emotional, social and learning patterns for life in our children. Then, let's use what we know to make our community child-friendly and a safer, better place for everyone. If we do that, then we will have a community that really is doing its job to help raise every child.

The coalition of everyone who wants to make the Central Okanagan the best place to raise children, Community Action Towards Children's Health (CATCH), helped to arrive at these priority goals and has published them on the website at www.catchcoalition.ca.

Visit the website at www.catchcoalition.ca to learn more about the community consultation process that arrived at these six priorities for an Early Childhood Development Plan for the Central Okanagan and learn more about the next steps our community can take to achieve them.