Early childhood conference to be held in Santa Fe

Santa Fe Community College and the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation are bringing together state government agencies, nonprofit organizations and leading researchers for a sold-out early childhood conference this week at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center.

Monday’s Early Childhood Development Symposium and Tuesday’s New Mexico Home Visiting Summit will examine how improving child care is a solution for crime rates, reading scores and many other challenges the state faces.

“Childhood trauma really is at the heart of almost every challenge we’re facing,” said Anna Marie Garcia, the early childhood director at the LANL Foundation. “In prisons and schools and in all of our communities, you can trace the problems back to childhood trauma that has not been healed.”

On Monday morning following an opening address by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Dr. Bruce Perry — an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and neuroscience — will give a keynote speech. His clinical research and practice have focused on the effects of neglect and trauma and how they change the biology of child’s brain and his or her health.

Perry has supported traumatized children following high-profile incidents such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine school shootings, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

On Tuesday, Perry will give another address as the conference shifts focus to the home-visiting program, in which the state Children, Youth and Families Department and private nonprofits and health care organizations around the state educate new parents about child care. In the future, the home-visiting program in New Mexico will fall under the umbrella of the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, which is scheduled to begin operating in July.

Garcia said she is more hopeful than excited about the future of early childhood care in New Mexico.

“It is heartbreaking to me that we can’t protect our children in this state, and that comes back to educating our families,” Garcia said. “The brain research in the last few years has really led us to recognize more than we really ever realized that those first three years are absolutely the most important in a child’s life.”