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Theresa Hawley
Executive Director |
Dear Early Learning Partner,
I hope you had a wonderful Independence Day and a great weekend celebrating our freedom as a nation. We've got some great articles this month to ease you back into the working world. Learn about what our office has been doing to focus on child and parent health. Read about how a plan to promote excellence turned into so much more. Explore an impressive network of child care homes, and see how Illinois has been featured nationally! Enjoy the issue, and thanks as always for all you do.
All the best,
Theresa
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Early Learning Council & Governor's Office Focus on Child Health
In a measure of the State's focus on
health as an essential facet of child development, the Early Learning Council (ELC) has been full of health-related projects and presentations over the past month.
Two ELC subcommittees recently produced reports on child health and well-being. The Systems Integration and Alignment Committee's Health Subcommittee (SIAC) published a report and proposal to integrate health into early care and education systems with a particular focus on integrating health into policy. The full report and its executive summary are available on the Early Learning Council website. In addition, the Home Visiting Task Force's Health Connections Workgroup recently developed recommendations focused on ways of improving child health in home visiting programs, such as the provision of materials, consultations, and training for home
visitors. OECD is working to compare the sets of recommendations and identify which agencies can best put them into action.
On a broader level, ELC members learned about the State's efforts in maternal and child health when Brenda Jones, Deputy Director of the Office of Women's Health and Title V Director at the Illinois Department of Public Health presented on the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant, a partnership between the federal government and states to focus on creating healthy foundations for women, children, and youth. ELC members found the presentation engaging and interesting, and came away hoping to get more real-time data on births in the state and to focus on mental health, especially in the mother. Moving forward, ELC and OECD hope to take this information and turn it into action for the children of Illinois.
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ACF Report Documents State Advisory Council Work
In May, the U.S. Department of Education's Administration for Children and Families (ACF) released a report, available for download here, focusing on State Advisory Councils (SACs) on early childhood education and care and their accomplishments since 2009, when the federal government began funding them.
The report highlights the SAC grants, which provided states with pre-existing early childhood systems an extra push to take their systems to the next level. The grant program's success inspired and informed President Obama's early learning plan for 2013. Moving forward, ACF has pledged to support states as they develop plans to sustain agencies, councils on early childhood, and early childhood systems in general. This will include building and expanding relationships with partners for new funding sources, focusing on strong communication strategies, and engaging governors and other leaders in the important job of sustaining the councils. Thanks to the foundational work done through these
grants and the vision of the federal government, councils will have a
major role developing each state's vision and direction for child well-being and early learning.
In Illinois, the report details the successes
of the ELC and OECD. For more information on these grants, received by Illinois and 44 other states, read the full report.
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Belmont-Cragin Meeting Highlights Partnerships for Excellence
The Belmont Cragin Elementary School
and Early Childhood Center in
Chicago was recently the site of an Illinois Action for Children cohort meeting that represented the coordination and spirit of teamwork between leaders of the ExceleRate Illinois Awards of Excellence in the areas of Family and Community Engagement and Linguistically and Culturally Appropriate Practices. Early Learning Programs at the ExceleRate Illinois Gold Circle of Quality are eligible to apply for Awards of Excellence which recognize the highest level of quality in five areas, all shown to have benefits for a child's healthy development.
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Photo courtesy of Belmont Cragin Elementary School
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In May, Letitia Parker, Family & Community Engagement Manager at Illinois Action for Children, who supervises the work of the Award of Excellence in Family and Community Engagement, hosted a coaching day to prepare potential applicants. Understanding the importance of engaging families who speak all languages, she invited Cristina Sanchez-Lopez, Education Specialist at The Center: Resources for Teaching and Learning. Sanchez-Lopez and colleague Patricia Chamberlain guide the work of the ExceleRate Illinois Award of Excellence for Linguistically and Culturally Appropriate Practices. Sanchez-Lopez introduced providers to the importance of engaging multi-lingual or dual language learners with instructional resources and culturally responsive practices, which exposed providers to new resources and allowed them to see the idea of "engagement" as connected to a family's culture, language, and history.
Cooperation among the leaders of these two awards will make requirements and guidelines for each award more streamlined - meaning that no matter which award a school is working toward, excellence will be measured the same way. Because of the success of this first partnership, other Awards of Excellence leaders are planning to expand their collaborations, too.
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MIECHV Meets Federal Benchmarks
One of the requirements for receiving funding through the Federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program is demonstrated improvement in at least four of six "benchmark" areas determined by the Federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau after the State has spent three years in the program. The benchmark areas are maternal and newborn health; child injury, maltreatment, and emergency department visits; school readiness and achievement; crime or domestic violence; family economic self-sufficiency; and coordination and referrals to other community resources. As of May 2015, Illinois MIECHV Programs demonstrated improvement in five of the six benchmark areas. We are proud of the work of MIECHV staff over the past three years to improve the quality of home visiting programs.
Community Systems Development Work Progresses
OECD thanks all of the state agency leaders and community stakeholders, including members of the ELC's Community Systems Development Subcommittee (CSDS) and the staff of the Consortium for Community Systems Development, who have been working together on follow-up items from the 2014 Community Systems Development (CSD) State Plan. Initiatives that are currently underway include...
- In response to partnering communities' requests for local-level data to better measure outcomes and progress, a work group has begun to meet to gather better data, which should be available as early as this fall.
- To address collaborations' requests to improve the alignment of contract language for service providers in relation to community systems and community collaborations, a work group of the state's InterAgency Team on Early Childhood is finalizing aligned language drafted by the CSD subcommittee to include in FY 2017 contracts.
- To help communities achieve collective impact, the Consortium on Community Systems Development is coordinating a pilot of the ABLe Change Framework as developed by Michigan State University. The first cohort of Illinois ABLe Change communities, along with teams of state-level coaches, recently started its trainings on how to use the framework.
- Starting in February 2016, targeted areas of the state will begin to roll out regional hubs. Before this process begins, OECD will hold a series of CSD listening sessions throughout the state to gather community feedback and ensure a strong state infrastructure is in place to support the hubs. During
 these sessions, OECD staff will learn more about what works at the local community level and what state supports are needed, as they discuss initial plans for the hubs.
For more information about these initiatives, please contact Joanna Su.
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Partner Name
Since 1996, Skip-A-Long Family and Community Services has been home to the Skip-A-Long Home Child Care Network (HCCN), which serves the Quad Cities and Peoria, working with providers and families in 10 counties across central Illinois to serve more than 400 children every day.
Skip-A-Long's HCCN for licensed providers focuses its model on the importance of parent schedules. The program believes that respecting the schedule of a parent who works or attends school makes success easier on that parent and promotes economic development in the family and throughout the area as the effects of degree-holding, working parents spread. To make life and continued learning easier on parents, the provider network specializes in odd-hours care to support families with non-traditional schedules.
To further raise the standard for excellence in family child care quality, the Home Child Care Network's coordinators mentor family child care providers on an individual basis to coordinate
curriculum, ensure safety, and provide resources. The quality of programs is enhanced when Skip-A-Long's network coordinators visit each family child care home bi-monthly or more frequently to support, coordinate, and stimulate learning, and when they support providers going through the ExceleRate Illinois application process.
Do you know someone doing great work for early learners in Illinois? Tell us about them, and they could be highlighted in a future newsletter!
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Gateways to Opportunity Launches Smartphone App
In April, Illinois launched a free smartphone app for the Gateways to Opportunity Registry. With this app, Gateways Registry members can now scan QR codes for sessions they attend at professional development conferences, which are immediately sent to the member's Professional Development Record - no more long lines needed! Download the app for Android or iPhone, or check out the Gateways Registry video on YouTube.
U.S. Department of Education Features Illinois in Monthly Newsletter
Each month, the U.S. Department of Education produces an Early Childhood Development Newsletter. One column highlights the work of of Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge grant awardees. This month's issue features work in Illinois, including the launch of the Gateways to Opportunity Registry smartphone app. Read the article and the full newsletter here.
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From June 15th-19th, The East St. Louis Innovation Zone provided a free developmental screening project over five days. In that time frame, they screened 122 children - with 100% of families saying they would recommend the screening to a friend. The screenings would continue for the rest of the month, with some creative advertisement techniques - for example, on-duty police officers distributed screening "coupons" to residents while they were on patrol!
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