March 2017 | ISSUE 30
This Early Childhood-LINC newsletter connects communities across the country as they build and strengthen systems to help children and families thrive. Click the box below and enter your email address in the Stay Informed box to sign up. 
 
      

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NATIONAL NEWS
COMMUNITY NEWS
Trauma Training Resources Now Available

A training resource from the Boston Public Health Commission's (BPHC) Division of Violence Prevention is now available for use in other communities. The Trauma, Domestic Violence & Resilience Training Institute was developed over the past three years in collaboration with Boston Healthy Start Systems to increase provider knowledge and skills related to trauma and domestic violence, and to support resilience in children and families. The training materials are designed for home visitors, early care and education providers and others working on an ongoing basis with parents and children, prenatal to 5 years of age.
"Unfortunately many families are exposed to trauma and domestic violence," said Bronwen White,
Training Coordinator at BPHC. "We know from providers that this can have an impact on their interactions with families and on children's learning and development. There's also a tremendous amount of resilience, and providers play an important role in supporting that resilience. A provider can be a key resource for a family that doesn't know where else to turn."

Trainers in other communities can now access these materials to guide conversations or to provide up to 21 hours of interactive training. (White strongly recommends that trainers work with a domestic violence advocate to deliver portions of the content.) The materials support providers to: 
  • Learn the ways trauma and violence can impact clients, their children and staff;
  • Understand the multiple forms of trauma and violence clients may experience in the home, the community and systems;
  • Develop practical strategies to support resilience in clients and their children;
  • Learn ways to increase safety for clients and their children experiencing domestic violence;
  • Understand the role of identity in experiences of trauma and violence, and barriers to safety and healing;
  • Learn ways to increase safety and well-being for staff and practice self-reflection & self-care at work; and
  • Strengthen advocacy skills and connect to local resources & support. 
For more information, including guidance on delivering the training in your community, contact Bronwen White at [email protected] or 617-779-2154.
Storytelling Project Features Men in the Early Childhood Workforce
 
Soren Gall, a specialist for infants, toddlers and families at Denver's Early Childhood Council , knew firsthand that men in early childhood jobs often lack male co-workers or a network of male colleagues in the field. While doing research for his capstone project in the Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program, he found that men in the early childhood field were looking for mentoring and advocacy for the important roles they play.

In 2016, Gall and two friends launched an online digital storytelling campaign to gather stories from men in early childhood. By the end of year, with $2,000 raised through crowdfunding, they had recorded nearly 50 stories from men across the United States and Australia. "I wanted to collect these stories to show men that they're not alone in the field, and give them opportunities to hear about what other people are doing or how they've been successful in their careers," explained Gall.

Gall also hopes his project might help individuals and communities embrace the "benefits of men in the classroom - their different styles of play and communication, their ability to be positive male role models and the real-world gender diversity they bring," as Chalkbeat reported.

Gall voices a belief that many men in the field hold, that "they may have a better sense of what boys need to be successful in the classroom" than female teachers. "Often it's more of that active movement, some of that superhero stuff, and males might be more able to help young boys by redirection, giving them activities they might be successful at," said Gall. With this project, Gall hopes to advance the early childhood field's ability to attract and retain men, to the benefit of all children in their classrooms.
NATIONAL NEWS
Can ESSA Be a Resource for Community Early Childhood Systems?

In 2015, Congress authorized the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While federal implementation guidance is currently under debate, the legislation gives state and local education agencies significant flexibility in spending federal education dollars, which may open the door for states to expand early learning opportunities.

Unlocking ESSA's Potential to Support Early Learning , a March 2017 paper from BUILD Initiative and New America, helps the early childhood community understand how the legislation can be a resource. The paper touches upon both state and local funding opportunities and highlights areas in which the U.S. Department of Education will distribute funds on a competitive basis.
New Home Visiting Website Launches

This week, the Home Visiting Coalition launched a new website at http://homevisitingcoalition.com/ to provide information and resources as Congress considers reauthorization of the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program. Among the resources are state fact sheets detailing how MIECHV funds are used in each state, including the program models used and how many families are reached.
NEW FROM CSSP
New Blog Series on Community Innovations for Healthy Child Development
 
CSSP has launched a blog series to recognize, document, share and celebrate the innovations taking place at the community level to promote healthy child development and support families.  First off is a post from the renowned early childhood expert Joan Lombardi on Stepping Up Efforts to Build Communities Where Young Children and Families Can Thrive . Over the next year, the series will feature pioneering national experts, mayors, local leaders, foundations and researchers.
New Brief Series Highlights Actionable Health Policy Strategies

In a new brief series, CSSP highlights the potential impacts of proposed changes on our most vulnerable populations of families and children and covers several concrete, actionable policy strategies that policymakers at the federal and state level can take to ensure children and families continue to have quality health care and health insurance through Medicaid, CHIP and the ACA. The three briefs released this month are:
Stop Asking about "Fade-Out." Ask This Instead.
 
A new CSSP blog post tackles the media resurgence of the "fade-out" effect , a misleading representation of the value of investing in early childhood systems and programs. As the post asserts, "The 'fade-out' argument, in actuality, grossly misleads readers to lump findings from research studies of programs of various quality, dosage and populations into one question: 'is investing in early childhood education worth it?'"

Rather, the post pivots to a second, more important question - "Is our investment enough?" - and offers approaches for paying attention to, and investing in, programs that incorporate strategies to address the contributing factors to successful interventions.
RESOURCES FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD SYSTEM-BUILDING: 
Learning from State Policy
Policy Vision
California
 The new report Starting Now: A Policy Vision for Supporting the Healthy Growth and Development of Every California Baby , offers specific policy opportunities for high-level strategies that support the state's children from the start: promote healthy children, foster strong families, enrich early learning and strengthen communities.
Policy Road Map
South Carolina
The 2017 Early Childhood Common Agenda offers a policy road map for South Carolina to create a brighter future for young children and their families. It reflects months of work from a coalition of experts and offers specific recommendations to build a smart, comprehensive early childhood system for children 0-5 years old.
EXPLORE MORE RESOURCES  FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD SYSTEMS
    • For parents: Family Leadership Project Learning Materials provide materials to help parents become leaders and advocates for their families and communities. The Project formed to cultivate parents of deaf-blind children; however, the materials are relevant to all current and emerging parent leaders.
       
    • For providers:  This 2017 joint statement from the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services provides recommendations to states, territories, tribal entities and local programs to identify and enhance opportunities for collaboration and coordination between home visiting (specifically, MIECHV-funded programs) and early intervention (the IDEA Part C Program).
    • For researchers: A landmark, longitudinal study published in the February 2017 Lancet has found that deprivation in early childhood can negatively affect mental health in adulthood.
    • For policy makers:   A research team consisting of economists, developmental psychologists and a neuroscientist is developing an experiment to examine the effects of a basic income on the neural development of young children.
 
Early Childhood-LINC is a learning and innovation network developed by and for communities.  Our mission is to support families and improve results for young children in communities across the country with a focus on accelerating the development of effective, integrated, local early childhood systems.  We are currently made up of 10 member communities across the country.