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Archive for the ‘Family engagement’ Category

Tax relief for families of young children

Posted in Family engagement, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, tagged , on March 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

This week, in her testimony at the Revenue Committee hearing in the State House, Amy O’Leary shared a vital message with Massachusetts legislators:

Families with young children need economic relief. And Massachusetts can help by passing the bill An Act to establish a Child and Family Tax Credit, H.2761/S.1792, into law.

“Across Massachusetts, families are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of food, housing, and childcare. At the same time, those earning the least pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than higher-income families. That’s unfair,” O’Leary, the executive director of Strategies for Children said in her testimony.

O’Leary drew on work done by the Early Childhood Agenda, which solicited feedback from across the state and created a roadmap for improving children’s lives. One vital goal that emerged in the Agenda’s work is to help families become financially secure.

The strategy for achieving this goal is Solution #3 on the Agenda:

“Provide a guaranteed minimum income for MA families and ensure we have an adequate safety net—expand the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), create a robust and inclusive Child and Family Tax Credit (CFTC) and raise cash assistance grants.”

Governor Maura Healey has already called for a new family tax credit for residents “who are struggling to get by as the cost of living continues to skyrocket past them.”

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Our Advocacy Network in action: MyHanh Barrette and her love for families

Posted in Boston, Family engagement, Infants and toddlers, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children, tagged on March 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The second cohort of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network is underway, and we’re excited to share the stories of this year’s participants. 

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MyHanh Barrette

MyHanh Barrette moved from Vietnam to the United States when she was 11 years old, and her path to advocacy started with figuring out her own strengths and then helping to elevate the strengths of the families she works with.

One tool she uses in her work is love. 

“If I don’t love my community, if I don’t love my country, then I won’t want to change anything,” she says. “If I don’t love an organization, if I don’t love my school, I won’t want to improve them.”

Barrette’s professional story began years ago with a practical question. 

“My Mom and Stepfather said, Okay, are you going to be a doctor, a pharmacist, an engineer, or a lawyer?” 

Barrette made a practical choice and graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a computer science degree – which she never used in her work. Instead, she became a court-certified interpreter, helping families who spoke Vietnamese access the legal system. 

“Language was used as a commodity, as part of the power dynamic: You don’t have access to language and I do, so I’m going to assume that because you don’t speak English, you’re ‘less than’ in every other aspect,” Barrette says. 

“As an interpreter, I was there to remove the language barrier. When I did that, I saw other barriers that these families faced. But even with these barriers, families were thriving in their own ways. They were facing so much, but they were resourceful, and they were strength-based. I learned so much from them, and I came to see myself as a facilitator, as someone who empowers families.” 

In her spare time, Barrette helped lead a co-ed Scout troop, which built on her love of children. She went on to raise her own children, and as they grew, she thought she might want to be a teacher. A trip to the library changed that. A career coach, who was volunteering at the library, listened to Barrette and said, You don’t want to be a teacher. You want to be a social worker. 

(more…)

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Lessons from Somerville: How to build a strong and sustainable early childhood system

Posted in Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Family engagement, Funding, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Philanthropy, Pre-kindergarten, tagged , , , on February 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Somerville, Mass., has spent years building a strong foundation for its early education and care programs.

somerville

Photo: Huong Vu for Strategies for Children

Now, a case study – One Somerville, Every Child — explores how Somerville has used a three-year (2019-2022), $1 million grant from the Commonwealth Children’s Fund to make vital progress that will support young children and families – and set an example other cities can learn from.

This work began in 2018 when representatives of the City of Somerville and the Somerville Public Schools were introduced to team members from the Commonwealth Children’s Fund – thanks to the Harvard Education Redesign Lab’s By All Means Initiative.”

Somerville officials “shared plans and dreams they had for expanding their early childhood services, and the CCF team shared their plans to start investing in communities piloting innovations in early childhood systems,” the case study says.

Somerville had three goals it sought to achieve:

• expand and institutionalize its early childhood programs

• expand its existing preschool initiatives, and

• bridge the gaps between children’s birth and when they start school

Another program that was central in the grant-funded work was “Somerville’s light-touch, universal home visiting program, SomerBaby,” a first point of connection “to early childhood services and supports for many families.”

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“Early Childhood 101” – a new resource for Massachusetts

Posted in Child care, Family engagement, Head Start, Health, Infants and toddlers, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Philanthropy, Pre-kindergarten, Research, Social-emotional development, tagged , on February 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“A child is born in Massachusetts… then what happens?”

That’s the important question that the new website EC 101 tries to answer for parents, providers, policymakers, and philanthropists who want to promote healthy childhood development across Massachusetts by mapping out the state’s many early childhood programs and resources.

Ideally, Brian Gold says, the answer to What happens after a child is born? should be that children “grow and thrive.” Gold is the executive director of the Massachusetts Early Childhood Funder Collaborative, a group of individuals and foundations that worked with the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy to create EC 101 (short for Early Childhood 101).

But Gold — as a professional, a former foster parent, and the father of a 15-month-old child — sees a clear need for more clarity.

To create this clarity, EC 101’s goal is to tame the state’s complex early childhood system by creating “a visual, accessible format that allows for clear understanding of the current conditions of the early childhood landscape.”

To do this, the website draws on feedback from parents, stakeholders, and experts as well as on state and national research to create an interactive tool that’s full of information. The website can also be translated into multiple languages, everything from Albanian and Chinese to Thai and Yiddish.

An EC 101 webinar is posted above.

One important distinction that EC 101 makes is that there are early childhood systems – and there’s a “non-system.”

(more…)

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The Early Childhood Agenda releases its work TODAY at the Massachusetts State House at 11 a.m.

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Family engagement, MA governor, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, tagged , , , on January 24, 2023| 1 Comment »

Join us TODAY for the release of the work done by the Early Childhood Agenda – a unified plan that draws on many voices to improve early childhood programs in Massachusetts. 

You can register here and meet us at the Grand Staircase inside the Massachusetts State House at 11 a.m.

Starting at 11 a.m., we will also livestream the event on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

We’ll be sharing “a targeted list of policy priorities… shaped by community voice and needs, and the different perspectives and lived experiences of partners to highlight the field’s top priorities for the next two years.”

These priorities cover five broad areas:

• Financially Secure Families

• High-Quality Experiences

• Thriving Early Childhood Workforce

• Robust System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships, and

• Healthy Beginnings

So please join us live — or via our livestream — to ensure that Massachusetts is a place where all young children can thrive.

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Join us for the release of The Early Childhood Agenda: a plan that draws on many voices

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Family engagement, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children, tagged on January 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Last fall, we kicked off a statewide strategic effort, the Early Childhood Agenda. 

Next week, we’ll release the results of this exciting work at the Grand Staircase inside the Massachusetts State House at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 2023. 

As we explain on the reservation page for next Tuesday’s release:

“Strategies for Children has convened almost 500 early childhood professionals, advocates, and parents around The Early Childhood Agenda. Our mission, to bring communities from across the Commonwealth together to identify solutions and drive policy change, has yielded new partnerships, robust discussions, and a long list of challenges faced by caregivers and educators of young children.”

To build consensus, agenda participants participated in five working groups:

• Financially Secure Families

• High-Quality Experiences

• Thriving Early Childhood Workforce

• Robust System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships, and

• Healthy Beginnings

What we’ll share on Tuesday are the results of this process, “a targeted list of policy priorities… shaped by community voice and needs, and the different perspectives and lived experiences of partners to highlight the field’s top priorities for the next two years.”

We believe that speaking with one voice will make it easier for policymakers and the public to support our vision of a future where families across the state can enroll young children in thriving, high-quality, and affordable early education and care programs. 

Please register and join us next Tuesday at the State House to learn more. 

And if you can’t make it in person, stay tuned and we will provide more information about a livestream of the event. 

Help us make Massachusetts a place where it’s easy for young children to thrive.

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Research on how best to transition from Head Start to kindergarten

Posted in Family engagement, Head Start, National, Pre-K to 3, Research, Strategies for Children, tagged , , , on January 12, 2023| 1 Comment »

What helps children make a successful move from Head Start to kindergarten?

Strong systems that rely on sound policies and practices.

Figuring out how to build these systems is the work of the Understanding Children’s Transitions from Head Start to Kindergarten (HS2K) Project. And now the project is sharing several briefs and a report on how best to do this work in Head Start programs and other early childhood settings.

It’s research that promises to guide policymaking and program practices.

Launched in 2019, the project “is a systems approach that recognizes that effective transitions require intentional engagement from both the sending programs (Head Start) and the receiving programs (elementary schools),” its website explains.

The HS2K project is “organized around four prominent mechanisms (‘4Ps’) that can influence the transition experience: perspectives, policies, professional supports, and practices.”

These practices “must be implemented at multiple levels — among classroom teachers in Head Start and kindergarten, families and teachers, elementary school principals and Head Start directors, Head Start grantees and school districts, and state and federal agencies.”

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with NORC (a nonpartisan research center at the University of Chicago), the National P-3 Center, and Child Trends.

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Talking about child care – join this event on Wednesday 12/14

Posted in Business and economy, Child care, Family engagement, tagged on December 13, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Who should be talking about child care? Parents, providers, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. 

All three of these groups know that high-quality child care is essential for families and for the economy.

So please join in tomorrow (Wednesday, December 14, 2022) at 7:00 p.m. on Zoom for a conversation about parents’ and caregivers’ perspectives on child care solutions. 

Hosted by the Massachusetts Essentials for Childhood Initiative and Strategies for Children, this event will feature Sarah Savage, a senior policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, who will share preliminary findings from the Fed’s “2022 Child Care Survey: Intersections of Parental Care Needs and Work in New England.”

The event will also include small group discussions where participants can discuss unmet needs, priorities, and solutions.

Parents, of course, are experts, especially when it comes to child care needs that they can’t fill. As one Mom who wanted to work a second job explains in a Federal Reserve video (posted above), “I needed a night job to keep up with the bills.” But she would have needed child care at night, and “There’s no such thing as night care. It’s tough when you need the care and it’s not available.” 

Sharing these valuable perspectives is crucial for making progress. To make the event more inclusive, Spanish and Portuguese interpreters will be available. And invitations to the event written in different languages are posted here.

Please sign up and join the conversation – and share this information with families and colleagues in your network. 

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Please take the Early Childhood Agenda Survey – and catch up on the Agenda’s work

Posted in Child care, Family engagement, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, tagged on December 13, 2022| Leave a Comment »

This fall, Strategies for Children has convened meetings of The Early Childhood Agenda, bringing together nearly 500 early childhood professionals, advocates, and parents. The Agenda’s mission of bringing communities from across the Commonwealth together to drive policy change has yielded new partnerships, robust discussions, and a long list of the challenges faced by caregivers and educators of young children.

As we move closer to prioritizing these challenges, we’d like to hear from more voices, especially yours.

Please participate in and share our Early Childhood Agenda Prioritization Survey with your colleagues, neighbors, and friends. To access this brief survey in other languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese), click here.

The survey will be available until Tuesday, December 20, 2022. For more information or questions about the survey, please email info@earlychildhoodagenda.org

On Tuesday, January 24, 2023, we will meet at the Massachusetts State House to release the Agenda results. 

To catch up on what’s already happened with the Early Childhood Agenda:

• Visit the Agenda’s website

• Watch the videos, and

• Sign up to join us on Basecamp (where we’re tracking our progress) and you’ll receive updates and be invited to future events

Here’s what’s coming up next:

• The 9:30 Call on Monday, December 19, 2022, at 9:30 a.m. on Zoom 

• Final Meeting on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at 10 a.m. on Zoom

• The Early Childhood Agenda Release on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, an in-person event

Please join us and encourage your coworkers, colleagues, and the families you serve to do the same. The Agenda should include everyone’s voices.

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Massachusetts has elected new leaders: time to reach out to the Healey-Driscoll administration — and their transition committees

Posted in COVID-19, Diversity equity and inclusion, Family engagement, MA governor, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Social-emotional development, tagged , , , on December 2, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Next month, Massachusetts will have new leadership, so it’s time for advocates to learn about and reach out to key players in state public policy.

One good place to start is learning about the transition teams that have been created by Governor-elect Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor-elect Kim Driscoll.

The key committee for early childhood advocates to focus on is called “Thriving Youth and Young Adults.”

Chaired by Amanda Fernandez, the CEO of Latinos for Education, and Worcester Public Schools Superintendent Rachel H. Monárrez, the committee is looking at, “How we address learning loss from the pandemic and give all children and families equitable access to the educational, social, emotional and behavioral supports they need.”

Serving on the committee are well known members of the early education and care community, including:

(more…)

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