Priorities Update
January 2, 2017
New items in red text
Priorities Addressed / Activity /Get Ready Guilford Initiative
· All New Parents Connected to Needed Resources
· Leverage and Expand Parenting Education Resources
· Improve Developmental Screening Process & Connections to Resources
· Improve Referral Processes
· Build Culture of Continuous Quality Improvement / ● The Duke Endowment is partnering with Guilford County to build a continuum of care from the prenatal period to age three through medical homes. This is called the Get Ready Guilford Initiative; you can read more about it on our blog at www.getreadyguilford.org/blog-2
● Christina Dobson has been hired as the Get Ready Guilford Initiative’s Project Manager.
● 46 people, representing local, state, and national partners, convened in Charlotte on December 7th to provide feedback on the Theory of Change that will guide the work, to get updates on the progress of Get Ready Guilford and to begin planning an April site visit with a national funding organization that is interested in this work.
● R/R staff is in the process of sharing the model with partners throughout Guilford County.
Building the Continuum
● Series of of meetings with national and local representatives from Partnership for Community Care, OB Care Management, Nurse-Family Partnership, Family Connects, and HealthySteps to plan how current processes and practices will be integrated to drive population-level outcomes. Community Action for Healthy Babies serves in a partnering role.
● Natalie Tackitt has been hired as Guilford County’s HealthySteps Coordinator and hiring of HealthySteps Specialists (6 FTE) is underway.
● Two pediatric practices have agreed to participate in the HealthySteps pilot program: Rice Center for Children and Adolescents and Greensboro Pediatrics. We are close to securing a third site in High Point.
Exploring a Data Infrastructure to Support the Continuum of Care
● Feasibility study for Integrated Data System is underway; delivery of final report is expected in January 2018.
● Progress is being made on getting a Guilford County Schools identification number added to the birth certificate of children born in Guilford County.
● United Way of Greater Greensboro convened seven initiatives within Guilford to explore development of a common IDS.
Coaching to Strengthen Community Capacity
· Continuous Quality Improvement work with Root Cause is underway, with a Task Force meeting for the first time in early January. The first cohort, consisting of 15 programs, will launch in April 2018.
Messaging to Build Awareness & Drive Action (See public will building)
Evaluating the Results
● An evaluator for this effort is in the process of being identified by a small, cross-organizational team.
Build System Responsive to and Respectful of Family Voice / ● Guilford’s Family Action Learning Team (Family ALT) will lead a workshop at the 2018 Annual Smart Start Conference to share their work about how to engage families in local decision-making. January meeting will focus preparing for the Smart Start Conference and continuing production of the videos described below.
● Families are working independently on videos about how to talk to your infant, and how teachers and families can have good two-way communication.
● One priority for 2018 is High Point expansion of Family ALT. We’re working with service providers to determine how to best launch a HP-specific ALT. In service of reaching more families, R/R will provide High Point Neighborhood Association Leaders monthly updates they care share with families, including parent tips, NC Pre-K registration information, and other resources to help families with children age 0-5.
● As a result of connections made at the NC Infant Mental Health Association meeting on family engagement in Guilford, Jodi-Ann Hudgson (Family ALT member) will serve as a panelist at an upcoming screening of “Resilience: The Biology of Stress and Hope” in Chatham County. We’re proud of Jodi-Ann and are exploring a similar screening in Guilford.
Leverage and Expand Early Literacy Resources / ● Strategic plan developed and implementation underway.
o Proposing kindergarten readiness workshop to parents of children 0-5 who also have school age children and can be reached through Guilford Parent Academy.
o Reach Out and Read invited Ready/Ready to participate in pilot of online training for Active Reading, which is an approach to reading (not a new program) that is gaining traction in Charlotte and across the state.
o The work of the GCS and early childhood team that participated in the Harvard Public Education Leadership Program over the summer continues making progress in developing a cohesive birth to age 8 literacy approach.
o Exploring how Reach Out and Read can be scaled within pediatric practices, especially those in the pilot for a prenatal-to-age-three continuum of care.
o Promoting Ready4K texting service and exploring customization to connect parents to ongoing supports and resources
o The K Readiness Task Force (part of Say Yes Guilford) will help implement part of the early literacy strategic plan.
● LENA Start Pilot:
o The first two LENA Start cohorts are graduating this month. A third cohort will graduate in January.
o Guilford Child Development is planning to launch a cohort in spring 2018.
o A cohort in High Point is planned in spring 2018 (Fairview Elementary & Oak Hill elementary are potential partners)
● Book Acquisition Strategies:
o Dolly Parton Imagination Library: Partnership for Children of Guilford County will receive funding from Smart Start to implement in targeted ZIP codes in both High Point and Greensboro. An information session was held for providers interested in applying to administer the program. Applications were accepted through December 15th. The Partnership will make an announcement about the process in January 2018.
o High Point University NPHC service group is hosting a book drive for babies born in High Point; Ready/Ready Book Brigade and volunteer leaders are working on book drive effort to raise 6000 books by spring 2018 – one for each baby born in Guilford – to be distributed to families along with Active Reading strategies.
Increase Demand for School Readiness through Public Will Building / ● Two areas of focus: Advocacy and Sustainability
o Build Advocates: Communication campaign under development by Cemala Foundation.
o Policy Change: Consider focus on two areas: (1) Child care affordability & accessibility; (2) Health care systems change. Sustainability focus in collaboration with The Duke Endowment.
● December 11: R/R Steering Committee heard the results of the Schoolhouse Partners funding study of early childhood system in Guilford County. We are working on a webinar that can be shared more broadly with community members.
● December 15: Ten Guilford County participants attended training with North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation (NCECF) and two other communities on public/private financing of early childhood programs.
Make High-Quality Child Care Available to Every Family / ● The Partnership for Children is working with Ready/Ready on a design process with a cross-organizational team to identify root causes related to the inability to attract, engage and retain talent in early care and education field (with a special focus on compensation). The first meeting of the design team took place on November 30. Participants learned about local conditions and delved into root cause analysis, and began the process of preparing for interviews with stakeholders, to be conducted in January. This work is supported by grants from Child Care Services Association (through Z Smith Reynolds) and the Partnership for Children.
Pre-K to Kindergarten Transition / ● The Pre-K to K Transition team will reconvene in January 2018 to continue their work.
● Ready/Ready and Partnership for Children staff met with GCS staff about two-week summer camps run by GCS’s Early Language Learner (ELL) team which show good results for helping children and families with the transition to Kindergarten. The Partnership will work with GCS to fill summer camp slots at Fairview and Rankin elementary schools with ELL students who are currently on the NC PreK waiting list and otherwise might not have a “school” experience before K entry. The Partnership continues to explore creative ways to make sure the 600 eligible 4-year-olds who are on the waiting list for NC PreK are prepared for school when they enter next year.