When LaTasha Williams shared her story, she illustrated exactly what the Early Childhood Coalition’s policies would mean for communities across Oregon.
LaTasha’s Story
Not every event has a powerful and potentially life-changing moment, but the Early Childhood Coalition (ECC) gathering on Jan. 10 had an unforgettable one.
More than 100 people attended the virtual event to hear ECC’s announcement of its policy priorities for the 2025 legislative session, which starts Jan. 21. Each policy would help children, prenatal to five, and their families, and when LaTasha Williams shared her story, she illustrated exactly what those policies would mean for communities across Oregon. Williams, the Director of Talent Acquisition for Morrison Child and Family Services, spoke not as a professional but as a wife and mother of five. A mother in grieving, a mother in joy. She lost her daughter, Essence, on Dec. 6, 2020, during a preterm labor condition called “cervical incompetence.”
“She’s not in my arms today because during the pandemic, I didn’t receive the care that I needed and deserved,” Williams said.
When she became pregnant again, Williams was terrified. Then an African American ob-gyn, Dr. Kimberlynn Heller “changed the trajectory of the prenatal care” she received, connecting her with a doula, Desha Reed-Holden, who also shared Williams’s race and culture, she said. Her doula was crucial to her care. She empowered Williams to speak up for her needs and advocated for her when she could not. Williams’ baby boy, Mekai, was born healthy.
“Today, I hold him in my arms because of the power of culturally responsive care and congruent care,” she said.
It helped Williams and her family to have providers who looked like her and understood her. She said that’s why the ECC and Black Futures Initiative’s 2025 policy priorities include increasing the number of black and brown doulas, nurses, midwives, and lactation specialists.
“Representation and understanding in health care doesn’t just save lives, it gives generations and saves generations,” Williams said. She added that she often wonders if Essence would still be alive if she had the same doctor and doula in 2020. She cannot ever know for certain.
“But I know this,” she said. “The wonder of creating life should be met with a healthcare system that centers families and listens to those that it has failed. In my story, I hope you hear the love, the continuous pain, and the urgency in my voice. Remember Essence and use your power to create a healthcare system that doesn’t just see us, but it truly hears and prioritizes our healthcare needs. Choose to close this gap of healthcare disparities one womb at a time.”
Experts and changemakers at the Jan. 10 event gave Williams an outpouring of support: state legislators, state agency reps, child-care and health providers, leaders from early learning hubs and coordinated care organizations, and highly experienced doulas.
“Thank you, LaTasha, for sharing and for your advocacy,” said Christopher McMorran, Chief of Staff for Sen. Lisa Reynolds, District 17. “Hopefully, we can make a real difference this session.”
Other attendees also shared an urgency for change, including Kali Thorne Ladd, CEO of the nonprofit Children’s Institute, which convenes the ECC.
“There are choices that we can make every day; this legislative session we can choose differently,” Thorne Ladd said. “I want to be clear this is not only about what is good for children and child development. It’s also good for the economic infrastructure of our state.”
She said the state of Oregon relies on income tax revenue, which relies upon employers. Employers need workers.
“Yet we don’t have income if we don’t have jobs,” Thorne Ladd noted. “We cannot attract, retain, grow businesses, or jobs in our state if we don’t have the infrastructure to support early learning and care. Those are the facts.”
Our Policy Priorities
The ECC advocates for legislation that benefits young kids, prenatal to Grade 5. That’s because early childhood services can break cycles of poverty, decrease maternal and infant mortality, and ensure long-term stability for children and families across Oregon, families including the Williamses. Here’s how the ECC is striving to do just that during the 2025 long session:
Early Education and Childcare
- Employment-Related Day Care (ERDC): Expand it to serve the more than 8,000 families on the ERDC waitlist and the 4,000 ERDC families without a provider.
- Child-care Navigation: Improve the support for families in ERDC to help them find a child-care provider.
- Child-care Workforce: Grow the workforce by investing in pay, apprenticeships, and higher education. (These professionals meet children’s most basic needs (such as diapering and feeding) implement age-appropriate curriculum and support children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development.)
- Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP): Ensure children receive nutritious meals, stabilize child-care providers, and bring federal funds to Oregon, benefiting local farmers.
- Inclusive Child-care Zoning: Create by-right zoning and provide best practices and guidance for cities and counties. (This involves reducing regulatory barriers to expanding early learning and care facilities.)
- Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education (EI/ECSE): Restore and improve services for children with disabilities as well as the delays in eligibility for EI/ECSE.
- Birth-5 Early Literacy: Secure expanded funding for early literacy, including $25 million increasing funding for Reach Out and Read.
Maternal-Child Health
- Doulas and Lactation Counselors: Expand access to proven peer support, and reduce birth and postpartum disparities in physical and mental health.
- Perinatal Workforce Work Group: Make recommendations for diversifying the perinatal workforce. (Perinatal is the period of time when you become pregnant and up to a year after giving birth).
- Social Emotional Health (SEH) Workforce: Expand behavioral health capacity to serve young children, 0-5, and parents. (SEH is the ability for a child from birth to 5, to develop relations, express emotion, and learn about their environment. The workforce involves the counselors, clinicians, therapists who help children with their SEH.)
- Elevate Children in Coordinated Care Organizations (CCO) 3.0: Ensure CCOs prioritize the first 1,000 days, when health and development set a foundation for future wellbeing. (What is a CCO? A CCO is a network of all types of healthcare providers (whether for physical, mental, or addiction care) who work together in their communities to serve people who receive health care coverage under the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid). The State of Oregon contracts with CCOs to provide these Medicaid covered services, and CCO 3.0 is the latest phase in this initiative.)
Supporting Families
- Relief Nurseries: Support 13 additional therapeutic early childhood classrooms and five outreach workers. (Learn more about relief nurseries and home visiting services on this website.)
- Healthy Families Oregon: Expand and sustain home visiting services across the state. (Learn more about relief nurseries and home visiting services on this website.)
- Nurse Family Partnership (NFP): Continue to provide the non-federal Medicaid match funding needed to provide proven NFP services. (Data show the NFP increases the likelihood of healthier births and pregnancies.)
- Upstream Pilots: Allocate state funding to seven local regions to support child success models as demonstration projects. (The Upstream Initiative focuses on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, a critical period for a baby’s physical health and brain development.)
How the Priorities Came About
Many of these policy priorities have been influenced by community input, expert consultations, data, and research, such as December 2024 study commissioned for Oregon’s Department of Early Learning and Care. The study, which focused on workforce barriers in early childhood education, encouraged an equity focused and greater funding.
“Addressing the prevalent systemic barriers found through this study, requires a system-wide, appropriately funded, coordinated effort led by strong and committed leaders that prioritize long term and equity-focused outcomes. This effort needs to prioritize the workforce’s sustained quality of life, well-being and professional growth which will in turn, benefit all Oregonians.”
These policies were created with data and research, and the decisions on these policy priorities matter. Their impact will also be long-lasting, noted one event speaker, Chenoa Landry, Education Mode Lead for Future Generations Collaborative.
“We are impacted by our ancestors seven generations ago, and the decisions, actions, and choices made today will carry on for seven generations in the future,” Landry said. “We have the ability to make decisions today that will positively impact those who are disproportionately impacted by structural and systemic barriers and contribute to the healing and thriving of generations to come. Through continued funding and investments into early education and childcare, Oregon has the opportunity to be a part of the healing in our communities.”
Next Steps
What’s next after the Jan. 10 policy priority announcement? Children’s Institute (CI) staff members and a few community partners plan to visit the Capitol Building in Salem on Feb. 17 to speak with legislators and to inspire action, change.
On Feb. 17 and every day, CI will remember families like the Williamses, and we will continue to advocate for choices that are good for the Oregon families of today and for the many generations still to come.