Celebrating West Virginia’s First Female Senator
Senator Shelley Moore Capito On Raising Resilient Children
Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia has been a Head Start champion on Capitol Hill from the moment she was elected to Congress nearly 20 years ago. In honor of Women’s History Month, we celebrate Senator Capito’s leadership on behalf of children and families and her trailblazing work as West Virginia’s first female U.S. Senator.
Senator Capito is a proud Head Start ally because she sees the benefits of Head Start’s whole-child, whole-family approach for West Virginia families and for families in every community across the country. “I’m a champion for Head Start because Head Start champions thousands of children in my state,” Senator Capito explained.
Most recently, Senator Capito has championed Head Start’s role in addressing the country’s substance abuse crisis and supporting children who have experienced trauma. Senator Capito’s state of West Virginia has been one of the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, so she is especially aware of the challenges families face and dedicated to finding solutions that wrap around the whole family in response.
“Our state has wonderful and beautiful people, but we have challenges,” Senator Capito explained. “We have economic challenges, we have challenges most recently with the opioid epidemic, and we have a lot of our families really in crisis. Unfortunately, our state has been hit very hard by the opioid and the addiction problem. We have the highest mortality rate from drug overdoses of per capita of any state in the entire country. And, when you think about how that affects a family, often the biggest impact and the most uncertain impact on the future is for the children in the home.”
“So I became very interested in making sure every child has a chance, that every child has a good chance. Because really the only way to break that cycle of poverty or hopelessness, is through education, and that’s where Head Start really caught my eye.”
“I realized early as a young mother, what you do in those formative years from zero until when they go to kindergarten, sets the path for a child. And that’s what I think Head Start does–it gives them a head start that some children have quite naturally because of the family they’re in or where they live.” Senator Capito explained. “I also got involved with a program called Birth to Three, which deals with children who have disabilities at a young age. Through that service, I was able to see what kind of strengths families have and where communities might be falling short. And I see Head Start provides that kind of tree of opportunity for services that can’t be found elsewhere.”
Senator Capito is a Head Start advocate herself in Congress, and she emphasized the importance of advocacy at every level. “It’s very important that Head Start comes [to Washington] every year and tells me how are they doing–what are their needs, but also, where are they falling short? Nobody has a perfect program, and I think Head Start has done a lot of soul searching over the last ten years to find where they have gaps in their service, where they could better help our children develop, where they could get more professionalism in their teachers, and make sure they’re looking at the whole child.”
Senator Capito explained that when Head Start advocates share their programs’ specific needs, she is able to elevate those needs to her congressional colleagues and fight for the funding and resources necessary to fill them, as was the case with securing the fiscal year 2020 recently Quality Improvement Funds for trauma-informed care.
Head Start is lucky to have long-standing congressional allies like Senator Capito who are partners in ensuring every vulnerable child has the opportunity to reach their potential. “Head Start has been here for 55 years and they’ve changed a lot of lives,” Senator Capito said. “They’ve helped a lot of people that are now producing families of their own, and using the lessons that they learned, that were embedded in them in their early years in Head Start. So, as the first woman Senator, a trailblazer for West Virginia, I want to support the programs that support the future–so they can have a future, so they can be the next Senator, particularly the girls! I’m proud to be one of the champions of Head Start.”
