It costs a lot to help disabled infants and toddlers.
But it costs a lot more not to help them, experts say.
“The earlier you work with them, the less intervention you’re going to need over time,” said Kathy Patterson, a former D.C. Council member who now lobbies to get preschooling help for children. “Any jurisdiction that doesn’t do early intervention will have higher costs.”
Some critics draw a straight line between D.C.’s failing early intervention program — which cost $2.1 million last year — and its failing special education system, which will cost more than $300 million this year.
“One of the reasons why this is such a big problem is that providing interventions at the earlier age gets you the greatest benefit at the earliest time,” said Margaret A. Kohn, a lawyer who has filed a class-action lawsuit over D.C.’s early intervention program.
A study of children in early intervention programs in Chicago found that they were 41 percent less likely to wind up in special education, 40 percent less likely to flunk later grades and 30 percent more likely to enroll in college than children who received no early intervention.
A Detroit study found that children in early intervention programs increased their lifetime earnings by more than $50,000, were 17 percent less likely to rely on welfare and were nearly 40 percent less likely to be arrested than children without early intervention.
Dr. Nathaniel Beers, director of the Children’s Health Center at Children’s Hospital, says early intervention is crucial because infants’ and toddlers’ brains are the most “plastic.”
“If you’re someone who wants to learn Chinese, if you haven’t heard Chinese by the time you’re 12 months old, there’s certain sounds that you’ll never be able to make,” he said.
