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Dear Friends of Ready Ready,
February is Family Support Awareness Month, a time to highlight the critical work of parenting educators and home visiting professionals across the state. These programs help strengthen the relationship between parents and children, increase parenting skills, and build confidence.
 As a backbone organization building a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families, Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) supports these programs. The system of care we are building is designed to ensure children are healthy, safe, and ready to learn. Providing access to home visiting and parenting education to all North Carolina families will improve prenatal health and birth outcomes, and increase child health outcomes.
Parents play the lead role in their children’s healthy development, but all parents are stretched in the earliest months and years of their children’s lives. Parenting education programs can help parents learn skills to mitigate stress, offer support, add social connections, and increase knowledge about child development. Read on in this newsletter for information on this month’s highlighted idea from The Basics Guilford: Maximize Love and Manage Stress.
According to the National Home Visiting Resource Center’s 2020 data, 710,900 North Carolina children five years old and younger could benefit from home visiting, but current programs serve less than 2 percent of the children in our state. Home visiting offers a huge return on investment, with every $1 spent saving North Carolina nearly $6 by preventing expensive social problems like child abuse, unemployment, poverty, and crime. It’s a win for Guilford County and our state’s economy.
Black and indigenous people of color (BIPOC) often face systemic barriers in accessing health care, affordable housing, stable employment, and other needs. It’s especially appropriate to acknowledge this equity problem in February when we are also observing Black History Month.
Guilford County’s leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement, the 1960 Sit-Ins when the North Carolina A&T State University Four protested racial discrimination at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, proves that we know how to come together as a community to demand equity. This historic moment was a critical point in American history, bringing civil rights to national attention.
It is time to stand together again to support Guilford County families and our youngest children. You can find your local legislator and then email or call them to share your own experiences with home visiting and parent education. You can tell them how the expiration of the monthly child tax credit payment has affected your family. You can support Ready Ready and our community partners by writing letters to the editor, sharing social media posts, joining the Guilford Parent Leader Network, or forwarding this newsletter to your friends and family to let them know we need to act together.
Your encouragement means so much. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Charrise Hart
CEO
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Do you know someone who should be reading our newsletter? Please forward this email and encourage them to subscribe!
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This month, we asked our Guilford Parent Leader Network members how our community can better support families. Here are some of their ideas.
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Would you like to join the GPLN? Meetings are held on the third Monday of the month from 7-8:30 p.m. The next meeting is Monday, February 21. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have these meetings via Zoom. When meetings resume in person, we provide child care to alleviate barriers to participation.
For more information, please contact Heather Adams, Director of Engagement and Literacy Initiatives, at (336) 579-2977 ext. 2004 or heathera@getreadyguilford.org.
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Ready Ready featured in Early Learning Nation
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In case you missed it, Ready Ready was featured on the website Early Learning Nation. It’s an independent magazine devoted to early learning, covering challenges and successes in early learning, the science of the developing brain, policy, community building, and more. Here’s an excerpt:
“It’s a resource-rich region,” says Charrise Hart, “but access-poor. Not everyone who lives here has access to the opportunities they deserve and need.” As CEO of Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready), a collaborative effort to build a connected, innovative system of care for the county’s youngest children and their families, she leads a team that identifies and supports programs that have demonstrated success in the community. Read the full story.
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Children's books to celebrate Black History Month
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PBS Kids for parents has compiled this list of books that can help you share stories with your young children.
Scholastic Parents offers 17 must-read picture books to celebrate Black History Month.
Don’t have a book handy? The Miami Children’s Museum offers a special storytime reading of “I Am Perfectly Designed” by Karamo Brown and Jason “Rachel” Brown on YouTube.
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The Basics Guilford: Maximize Love, Manage Stress
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The Basics are bite-sized bits of information based on science that can help parents and caregivers promote healthy development. Infants and toddlers thrive when their world seems loving, safe and predictable. When you express love and respond to their needs, you teach children that they can count on you. Over time, showing and responding to love helps children learn to manage their feelings and behavior. As they grow, feeling secure in their relationships gives them the confidence they need to explore, learn and take on life’s challenges.
Young children are affected by your emotions, both good and bad. So, it is important to find strategies that help you cope with stress. Caring for yourself benefits your child.
Tips for infants:
- Put words to feelings: Pay attention to your child’s sounds, movements, and facial expressions. Put words to their feelings, preferences, and needs. “You were scared when that dog barked” or “You must like these carrots - you took such a big bite” are simple ways to do this.
- Have a routine: Settle into a consistent routine or schedule for daily activities like feeding, naps, bathing, reading and bedtime. Every baby is a little different, so it may take some time to figure out a rhythm that works for your family. Keep in mind that routines change as your baby gets older.
- Plan to avoid stress: What situations tend to be stressful? Think about those situations ahead of time and plan how you can improve or avoid them. For example, try to avoid trips to the store right before your child’s nap time.
Tips for toddlers:
- Guide behavior: Testing limits is a natural part of learning. Help your child start to build self-control by using simple rules consistently. For a younger toddler, put “no” in front of the thing you do not want them to do and redirect them to a different activity. For older toddlers, give them a simple explanation of the rule and what they could do instead. Praise good behavior.
- Go easy on yourself: Life can feel overwhelming and we all make mistakes. Focus on the big picture and be gentle with yourself when things don’t go as planned. Ask for help. All parents need help.
- Manage household stress: Stress is normal, but too much stress is bad for a brain that is still developing. Adults’ stress can trickle down to children, so it is important to have strategies for coping when your life gets stressful. Talk to friends, family or your doctor about ways to deal with stress.
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You can learn some great information about this in 30 seconds by watching this video!
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The Basics are five fun, science-based parenting and caregiving concepts that anyone can do. Learn more about them at www.guilfordbasics.org.
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Would you like to be trained in The Basics Guilford?
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As we share information about the Basics across Guilford County, we need your help. We’re offering virtual training on the Basics for teams of three or more at organizations that interact with young children. Each session lasts 30-45 minutes. To schedule a training session or learn more about Ready Ready and the Basics Guilford, please contact Literacy Coordinator Megan LeFaivre at meganl@getreadyguilford.org.
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Ricky Watson joined the Ready Ready team as Vice President of Public Will-Building on February 1, 2022. As an attorney, Watson brings a unique perspective informed by years of service to children and families who encounter the youth legal system. Before his role at Ready Ready, Watson served as Executive Director of the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN). Learn more about Watson on our website.
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Staff profile: Felicia Evans
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 Felicia Evans is a Community Alignment Specialist at Ready for School, Ready for Life. She serves as the Community Engagement component of the team who oversees partner verifications and onboards new partners with Agency Finder. In her role, she helps provide solutions when possible and brings agencies together that could benefit from collaboration with each other and our organization’s mission.
“I am excited that we clearly state Ready Ready’s values and principles,” Felicia said. “Our equity statement that states we stand against racism in all of its forms is particularly important to me and my work.”
Before joining the Ready for School Ready for Life team in 2020, Felicia was the Director of the Healthy Beginnings Program at the YWCA in Greensboro. In this role, Felicia worked to reduce infant mortality rates and educated moms on available resources. She has also worked with Exceptional Children as a Guilford County Schools kindergarten and fourth-grade teacher and occasionally still substitutes.
“Coming from being a teacher with Guilford County Schools and the home visiting program at the YWCA, I understand how vital resources and interventions are for every family’s success,” Felicia said. “The work we are doing at Ready Ready is so rewarding. When I tell friends and family about my role, they are amazed at the work we are doing and plan to do here in our community.”
Felicia said the position at Ready Ready came along when the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun, and it offered the opportunity to use the skills she developed as a teacher and a program director, as well as her years of experience as a certified nursing assistant, a birth doula, and a lactation educator.
“I’ve always dealt with children and making sure they are on track, that their families get what they need whether I was a teacher or a case manager,” Felicia said.
When she’s not helping new generations of Guilford County children get a great start in life, you can probably find Felicia watching documentaries about dolphins, whales, and orcas. “I find whales and dolphins so fascinating. They are such smart animals, and that we have figured out a way to connect with them despite our different habitats amazes me.”
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Partner Spotlight: High Point Public Library
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The mission of the High Point Public Library is nurturing the joy of reading, sharing the power of knowledge, strengthening the sense of community, and enhancing cultural and economic vitality. It’s a mission that Children’s Services Manager Jim Zola takes to heart.
“We’re very focused on outreach through our bookmobile and other programs,” Zola said. “We’re very involved with voting and early literacy, for example. We’re also working with the schools through our KinderCard program. We want every kindergartener in High Point schools to have a library card.”
The pandemic has naturally affected this outreach. “I do storytimes for one and two-year-olds and miss those in-person events,” Zola said. “We’ve done virtual and recorded storytimes on Facebook, but I miss the interaction with the children and their parents and caregivers. When the weather’s nice, we’ve taken our programs outdoors, so we’ve been able to keep it going. Our take-home kits have been another way to connect with families.”
The library’s bookmobile has been an essential part of this outreach. “Our bookmobile goes to home child care centers in the mornings to bring books and share storytimes,” he said. “In the afternoons, the bookmobile goes out into the community, where we partner with Growdega mobile pantry to visit neighborhoods that have low incomes, transportation needs, and food insecurity. Our bookmobile not only provides resources they need, in book and program form, but it’s also a wi-fi hotspot neighbors can access while we’re there.”
Zola has been looking forward to February when the High Point Library plans to resume in-person programming. The programs will require registration so group sizes can be observed. This month, the library will hold yoga for kids and programs around Valentine’s Day and Black History Month.
Partnering with Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) and Reach Out and Read, Zola and the library staff are working on a program that would connect with local hospitals to provide books for parents of newborns. “We want them to have a little backpack with board books and information about early literacy, including The Basics Guilford, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, and Reach Out and Read. We hope to encourage them to come to the library with their little ones.” (Read more)
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Equity Statement
Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) promotes equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion, which are woven through our mission, values, and principles. We stand against racism in all of its forms. Ready Ready will work with our community to address the structural inequities that drive disparate child and family outcomes and work towards an environment where equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion are core values. When we are working to address these structural inequities, Ready Ready will be bold in our actions.
When Guilford County Black and Indigenous children and families of color (BIPOC) feel welcomed, heard, respected, safe, supported, and valued, all of our community and our society benefit.
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