HANGING ROCK – Hillary played Hanging Rock and it was much of the same.

Her visit Thursday was touted the day before as the venue to unveil her child care plans. But details in the town hall forum were few.

In a press release handed to invited guests and press, Clinton states goals as cutting child poverty in half by 2020 and ending child hunger by 2012.

Her strategies include bolstering the food stamp program; providing nurse home visits, early Head Start, raising the mininum wage, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and new job training, according to the release.

In the panel at the Ohio University Southern’s Child Development Center, Clinton pushed the need to help families.

“He have to focus on children and families and it has to go hand-in-hand,” she told the cheering audience of about 200. “If we could help families, if we had more Early Head Start and Head Start, by the time the child was 5, that child would be better prepared.”

Early on, Clinton introduced two women from the audience who gave personal accounts of the struggles on single motherhood and a child with delayed development.

“I don’t know how single moms do it,” the senator said. “How could you do that without a reliable safe place for your daughter?”

Her child poverty, education plan revolved around the concept that the problems of children cannot be separated by the welfare of the parents.

“When a child is sick, it affects the whole family,” she said. “If you don’t have health insurance for everyone you are not going to get out of this. We have to figure out how to provide affordable health.”

For more information on this story, see Friday edition of The Ironton Tribune.