Dear Ready Ready Supporter,
 During the Week of the Young Child (April 2-8, 2022), we learned that the Child Care WAGE$ program has come to Guilford County. This program provides education-based salary supplements to teachers, directors, and family child care providers working with children between 0 and 5. The program was designed to increase retention, education, and compensation for early childhood educators. Low wages in this industry have frequently led to these essential educators taking second jobs or leaving the industry to earn enough to support their families.
According to the Child Care Services 2019 Early Care and Education Workforce study, starting teachers and assistant teachers in Guilford County earned an average of $10.25 per hour. Statewide, that wage is $12.00 per hour. This data was collected before the COVID-19 pandemic, which only exacerbated the child care crisis.
During the pandemic turmoil and unprecedented challenges for working parents, the early childhood workforce became essential frontline workers to provide stability and education for children and their families. For child care directors, finding and keeping qualified staff for child care centers made a typically challenging situation even worse.
At a critical time when children’s brains grow and develop – 80 percent of brain connections are made by age 3 – staff turnover has a huge impact. The bond children create with their teachers sets the groundwork for learning. When their teacher leaves, children experience a loss, affecting their social-emotional development.
The Child Care WAGE$ program is an education-based salary supplement program that rewards workers for staying in the same licensed child care program for at least six months and achieving early childhood education levels. We applaud this program’s availability in Guilford County and support this vital work. If you’d like to hear directly from Guilford County teachers about the importance of their work, watch our Worthy Wages video. You can learn more about applying for the program below in this newsletter.
We encourage you to share this information with your colleagues and networks. Thank you for your support of Ready Ready’s work.
Sincerely,
Charrise Hart
Chief Executive Officer
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Build public will for early childhood priorities
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- Ready Ready was featured in a panel discussion at a Duke Sanford Center for Child and Family Policy conference on April 13 and featured in an EdNC article the next day. The statewide “Continuing the Conversation: Building a Universal System for Families with Young Children in North Carolina” conference followed a virtual national conference the day before. Board Co-Chair Ed Kitchen, CEO Charrise Hart, Legislative Action Subcommittee Chair Ryan Blackledge, Parent Liaison Sanaa Sharrieff, and Family Connects Founder Ken Dodge offered lessons from our system-building work in Guilford County. The panel discussion was moderated by The Duke Endowment Director of Special Initiatives Meka Sales.
- CEO Charrise Hart presented information about Ready Ready’s mission and work to Guilford County commissioners during their March retreat.
- Collaborating with the American Heart Association, Every Baby Guilford, and the March of Dimes, Ready Ready has trained Guilford County barbers and stylists in The Basics Guilford. The participating barber shops and salons will also have book nooks and Basics information available to customers as part of the program, funded by the Cemala Foundation. The news was shared in Yes!Weekly and on the Ready Ready website and social media channels.
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Develop navigation system to connect families with effective services
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- Children’s Home Society (CHS) finalized and implemented a credentialing process to ensure Navigators will deliver the model reliably and consistently.
- CHS has scheduled eight site visits with OB/GYN clinics implementing navigation services. Site visits help strengthen implementation.
- We have completed interviews with initial prenatal access survey participants who indicated they’d be open to continued conversation. We will use this information to further inform survey results that identify barriers to early pregnancy care. The survey remains open along with data collection.
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Expand and integrate proven programs to meet community need
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- UNC-Chapel Hill has begun working with CHS to develop navigation services orientation plans for program partners.
- The Community Alignment Team has started User Acceptance Testing with Coastal Cloud to streamline the collection of information from partners and providers for the Agency Finder.
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Build a culture of continuous quality improvement (CQI)
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Twelve programs from Cohort I have been invited to participate in CQI in 2022.
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Ready Ready staff has met with 11 of the 12 programs, and 75 percent have completed an initial readiness assessment.
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Build technology to support data-informed decisions
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- Programs and providers asked for additional User Acceptance Test and Training time, which pushes the release out by two weeks. This additional time for testing and training will be incorporated into subsequent releases.
- IBM has provided a draft multilateral data sharing template as part of project completion.
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Conduct rigorous evaluation process and build sustainability for system-building work
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- An Outcomes/Impact Task Force identified measures for the outcomes and impact studies and used stakeholder input to finalize that list of criteria. MDRC will use these measures as it designs the evaluation.
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Ages 3-5
Ready Ready released a Request for Proposals in mid-March, seeking local partners to lead the initial implementation of community-wide strategies designed to improve outcomes for children ages 3-5 in Guilford County.
Prospective partners viewed the RFP Webinar, which provides an overview of Ready Ready’s current and proposed work. There are three strategies selected for initial implementation. You can learn more by viewing a strategy-specific webinar linked below.
The submission period has closed. You can find additional information about the process on our website.
The Basics Guilford
One pediatric practice is piloting the use of Basics video books with patients as a new way to share the Basics Guilford. These unique video books allow parents and caregivers to share videos about The Basics on a portable, engaging device. Easy-to-use buttons enable users to select from a set of videos that explain each principle.
Twenty-five employers have agreed to share Basics information and materials with employees who take maternity/paternity leave. If you have a contact with a local employer you think could benefit from these materials and information, please contact Megan LeFaivre at meganl@getreadyguilford.org.
Family Voice
The Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) Phase 2 cohort is preparing for a Town Hall meeting Apr 24, 2022. The meeting will prioritize feedback and ways to improve life in Guilford County for families. The process will result in at least one community project/campaign.
Ready Ready staff members, including our new Parent Liaison team members, are identifying opportunities to engage family voices on our board, committees, and all planning/design teams. Engaging family voice is a crucial focus of our family engagement work.
Early childhood workforce
The Child Care WAGE$ program is a nationally recognized compensation strategy for the early care and education workforce. In response to research-based evidence that the quality of care children receive is lowered by high turnover rates and inadequate teacher education, WAGE$ was created as a pilot, and the first checks were issued in 1994 with Smart Start funding. WAGE$ became a statewide opportunity in North Carolina in 1999 as a funding collaboration between participating Smart Start partnerships and the North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education.
These resources can help early childhood workforce members:
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New role: Director of Data and Performance
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Christina Dobson assumes the role of Director of Data and Performance at Ready Ready. In her new role, Christina will support staff and community partners in readiness for the evaluation of our work. She will coordinate with The Duke Endowment and Ready Ready’s evaluation consultants, ensuring that needed data and information are accessible. Christina will connect Ready Ready staff to additional support if necessary to provide information for evaluation and bring an equity lens to the review of data. As Ready Ready moves from a design phase to an implementation plan in many of its workstreams, the Director of Data and Performance will ensure that the initiative and the community can understand the impact of our work and learn more about how to maximize that impact. Christina joined Ready Ready in 2017 as Director of Navigation Services.
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EdNC: A vision 'as breathtaking and groundbreaking as public school' for early childhood
Guilford County was in the spotlight Wednesday at a gathering of early childhood funders, advocates, policymakers, and researchers asking how to create a universal system of care for young children. Read the full story at EdNC.
EdNC: The quality of early learning matters. How should we measure it?
“Recent discussions on pre-K quality center around questions of what we should prioritize in early childhood classrooms — and how we should measure success.” Learn more at EdNC.
NPR: Will the CDC’s new developmental guidelines help lead to early diagnosis for children of color?
“The Centers for Disease Control recently revised the developmental milestones checklist, which all pediatricians use to help identify children with developmental disabilities, such as autism and intellectual disabilities.” Listen to the full story at NPR.
EdNC: Where we are with Leandro ahead of the next hearing
“When Special Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson took over the Leandro case last month, he laid out a timeline for what was to happen. He needed to review Judge David Lee’s order to fund two years of a comprehensive plan aimed at fulfilling the state’s constitutional duty on public education.” Read the full story at EdNC.
What Research Tells Us About Effective Advocacy Might Surprise You
This recent blog post summarizes research by the Collaborative on Media and Messaging for Health and Social Policy. The study found that storytelling may be effective in increasing support or even changing the minds of the general public; however, the same narratives were not effective for state legislators and actually seemed to deepen political divides. The report's authors also shared a Storytelling for Social Change Messaging Guide, which provides more information about how stories can be powerful in shaping how audiences think.
Smart Start Conference 2022
Registration is open for the virtual Smart Start Conference, May 2-5, 2022. Find all the info you need here!
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