Healthy Child Development Suggestions for Submitting a Strong Proposal

1. Healthy Child Development Suggestions for Submitting a Strong Proposal

2. Healthy Child Development Overview • Goal is to ensure that young children are ready to learn when they enter school • What is the need in the community? • United Way’s responses and strategies • Helping parents nurture their children so they can learn in school and succeed in life • Closing the achievement gap in early childhood • Improving the delivery of services statewide • The change United Way wants to achieve by FY’13

3. In all measures • Carefully review eligibility criteria – in Healthy Child Development (HCD) this includes program types within each measure; • Be specific in the description of your target population, who benefits most from your program and what success will look like; • Measurement is critical—need to be able to validate your results • Make convincing arguments why United Way should invest in your program vs. another just like it. Why is your program more likely to improve the lives of young children and their families?

4. Screening, Assessment and Referral Outcome Statement: Children with developmental or behavioral concerns or delays will be identified before entry to school. The focus of this measure is ensuring that young children experiencing developmental or behavioral concerns or delays are identified as early as possible and have access to needed services and supports.

5. Screening, Assessment and Referral Agencies submitting a strong proposal will: • Note the eligibility criteria for specific program types • Early Education and Care • ECE programs must use one of 4 child assessment tools approved by EEC • If not using child assessment tool, provide detailed plan for implementation using a tool on EEC list • Home Visiting, Early Intervention and Mental Health Services • Must use tool on approved list or provide citation demonstrating validity and reliability of an alternative tool • Mental Health Services - clinical assessment counts as screening • Be specific in describing your Approach (Question 5): Interim Outcomes – Outline steps around engaging, retaining the child and family, and finally assessing or screening the child.

6. Intervention or Treatment The focus of this measure is capturing children’s improvement over time in domains where an identified behavioral or developmental delay or concern was identified. Outcome Statement: Children with developmental or behavioral concerns or delays will improve in areas of concerns or delay so they are ready to learn when they enter school. Child Outcomes United Way is moving beyond collecting information about program quality to Measuring changes for children.

7. Intervention or Treatment Agencies submitting a strong proposal will: • Clearly demonstrate your past successes in providing intervention or treatment for children within the agency’s own programs (internal) or at community-based programs (external). • Internal – Early care and education programs • External– Mental health consultation, mental health services, early intervention and home visiting • Qualification of professionals providing intervention/treatment • Measuring Improvement (Question 7) • What tools are you using to measure improvement? • Mental health services – clinical assessment is an acceptable form of measuring improvement.

8. Building Strong, Competent Families Outcome Statement: Families who need significantly more knowledge and resources to support their children’s development and learning will have what they need. The focus of this measure is on increasing parents’ capacities to provide the nurturing, responsive care necessary to build a strong foundation for a young child’s healthy development and learning. • A child’s primary caregiver is the most influential adult in their lives and their relationship with that caregiver provides the foundation for future development and learning. • Shifting caregiver behavior to improve the odds of positive outcomes for a child has shown to be difficult, especially for families facing numerous challenges.

9. Building Strong, Competent Families Agencies submitting a strong proposal will: • Provide services through the program types as defined in the impact paper • Measure improvement (Question 4) • Multiple program models within a single program type • Provide detail about particular program components (Question 8) • Multiple program models within a single program type

10. Public Policy: Healthy Child Development More Focused Policy Agenda • In FY’11, there is more specificity as to the early childhood and family support public policy agenda in which we will invest limited funds. More Stringent Eligibility Criteria • Eligibility criteria have been tightened. United Way will only fund: • statewide efforts where the agency takes a leadership role • agencies that have paid or volunteer staff dedicated to policy • agencies must measure their advocacy activities or have an internal logic model • agencies that are able to measure success over time. • Successful proposals will articulate the characteristics of the beneficiaries of a successful policy effort and the nature of those benefits, as well as how efforts support the overarching framework of achieving school readiness in early childhood.

11. Questions?