13 Early Local Childhood Programs Partner
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HIGH POINT — In an effort to boost success in school and beyond, 13 programs serving Guilford County’s youngest children and families will participate in a two-year continuous quality improvement (CQI) effort in partnership with Ready for School, Ready for Life and Root Cause.
Each participating program will receive technical assistance to strengthen capacity around collecting, analyzing and using data in programmatic decision-making.
Together, the cohort serves more than 23,000 children prenatally to age five. The programs in the first cohort include:
• Adolescent Parenting Program, YWCA High Point
• Adopt-a-Mom, Guilford County Coalition on Infant Mortality
• Care Coordination for Children (CC4C), Guilford County Department of Health and Human
Services
• Early Head Start, Guilford Child Development
• Family Connects, Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services
• Healthy Start, Family Service of the Piedmont
• NC Infant Toddler Program: Children’s Developmental Services Agency, NC Department of
Health and Human Services
• WIC, Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services
• Wise Guys, Children’s Home Society
A CQI Task Force advised the cohort selection process. CQI Task Force members include representatives from The Foundation for a Healthy High Point, United Way of Greater High Point, United Way of Greater Greensboro, Cone Health Foundation, Guilford Education Alliance, Nehemiah–The Leadership Group and Partnership for Children of Guilford County.
Each provider will work with a Root Cause coach, a national leader in helping organizations achieve better outcomes to assess strengths and opportunities, develop a capacity improvement plan and work together to strengthen capacity. This work is funded by The Duke Endowment as part of a multi-year effort to improve outcomes for Guilford’s youngest children and their families.
“Ultimately, we want to build a culture of continuous quality improvement across the entire early
childhood program landscape,” said Susan Schwartz, co-chair of Ready Ready’s board of directors and executive director of the Cemala Foundation.
In addition to the cohort, early childhood programs that are not participating in the first cohort can take advantage of community-wide CQI technical assistance offerings designed with Root Cause that will begin by early 2019. As the first cohort launches, Ready Ready will evaluate timing for the launch of a second cohort.
Ready, Ready is a collaborative effort to build a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Its vision is that every child born in Guilford County will enter kindergarten developmentally on track in five key areas: physical development; language and communication; social-emotional development; cognitive development and approaches to play and learning.
This is important because 80 percent of brain development occurs by the time a child reaches age three. About 45 percent of children in Guilford County arrive at kindergarten developmentally with a strong likelihood that they will not read at grade level in the third grade. Kindergarten readiness is the No. 1 indicator of whether a child will read at grade level in the third grade. Reading at grade level in the third grade is the No. 1 indicator of whether a child will graduate from high school able to enjoy a successful life.