Dear Ready Ready Supporters,
 As we transition into a new year, I’d like to thank you for your vital support and dedication to our work at Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready.)
Despite the challenges of the coronavirus, we are making strides in our critical system-building work. Nearing the end of our Phase I work, focused on families with children prenatal to age three, we stride forward into Phase II, expanding our efforts to families ages three to five.
We are moving forward in our work despite the pandemic, but we see more and more the effect of broken systems, which have been exacerbated by COVID-19. A sliver of a silver lining is that more and more Americans are seeing these adverse effects and acknowledging that a crisis exists for families.
Thank you for being a champion for children in Guilford County. We’re delighted to be on the same team, working for our youngest residents and their families.
Sincerely,
Charrise Hart
Chief Executive Officer
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Develop navigation system to connect families with effective services
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- In December, four new community Navigators joined Children’s Home Society (CHS). When an additional Navigator is hired shortly, the Navigation staff will increase to 21. CHS is enhancing its onboarding and training process to credential Navigators.
- We have field-tested postnatal Navigation materials with families at Triad Adult & Pediatric Medicine Wendover in Greensboro. We will test materials with families at a High Point practice in January.
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Expand and integrate proven programs to meet community need
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- Family Connects nurses now offer 15-minute in-person in-home visits to all clients, not just those with health-related concerns, to provide health assessments of both the parent and baby. The remainder of the visit is completed remotely.
- Program Integration Implementation Team members have wrapped up a year of this collective work to support our system-building efforts. This includes developing formal agreements between CHS, Ready Ready, Family Connects, HealthySteps, and Nurse-Family Partnership. The team has also created tools that help staff make warm hand-offs between programs for expectant and new parents.
- Community Alignment identified a gap in our community around safe sleep. Surveys and community conversations resulted in a report that we shared with a local funder for a grant to purchase pack’n plays. The funder agreed to provide 120 pack’n plays, and we are working with two partners to distribute them to families.
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Build public will for early childhood priorities.
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- Midtown Magazine featured Ready Ready’s work and The Basics Guilford in an article in its January issue. The publication is a lifestyle magazine based in Raleigh, N.C., which reaches about 140,000 readers per issue. The reporter even created a sidebar to the story that explains the five Basics. You can read it here.
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Build a culture of continuous quality improvement (CQI)
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- In collaboration with UNC, Ready Ready launched “Model for Improvement” with an introductory webinar in December. Program self-assessments followed in late December/early January.
- The second cohort of programs begins CQI training in early 2022.
- A new Director of Continuous Quality Improvement, Lisa Barella, has joined the Ready Ready staff. You can read her bio below.
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Build technology to support data-informed decisions
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- IBM has created data governance policies for the Integrated Data System (IDS).
- Coastal Cloud prepares to release enhancements to the Prenatal touchpoint and go live with the Core Birth section of IDS.
- Ready Ready has hired a new Salesforce Administrator, Praneetha Deva, to aid in this work. Learn more about Preneetha below.
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Conduct rigorous evaluation process and build sustainability for system-building work
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- MDRC and Ready Ready teams initiated a process to document implementation plans for each component of Ready Ready’s work. These efforts will prepare Ready Ready and its partners for the evaluation.
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Equity and Inclusion
Ready Ready’s developing Equity Action Plan focuses on nine key equity choice points. Equity choice points are areas where an equity issue has been identified, and Ready Ready has an opportunity to take action. The plan includes a sequence of tasks and actions to be addressed in 2022-24 and evaluation.
Family Voice
The Guilford Parent Leader Network will review the Equity Action Plan and provide feedback. This feedback will be shared when the Equity Action Plan is shared with the board of directors in February.
Parent Leaders who have completed Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) Phase 1 training are meeting as a Parent Action Team. The team members support each other to address personal, family, and community issues they want to see changed or improved.
The COFI Phase 2 graduate Parent Leaders gather information about community needs that can be addressed and conduct community interviews to gather ideas and data. The next step is to identify a community project to address together.
Ages 3-5
The Ages 3-5 Implementation Planning Team is working to identify the curriculum to pilot the Active Reading strategy. They are gathering additional data about book distribution efforts in Guilford County to better inform the process.
The Basics Guilford
We have created 200 Basics Guilford kits designed to be shared through community organizations. The kits include information about The Basics and some items parents can use with their children to aid their healthy development. We will distribute 175 of them in late January.
Basics family leave brochures have been given to 25 employers who have signed on to share the information 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.
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Meet our new Ready Ready team members
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Lisa A. Barella joined Ready Ready in December 2021 as the Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI.) Lisa works with organization leaders to set the strategic direction for CQI work while also coaching Guilford County early childhood programs to strengthen their capacity to collect, analyze, and use data to provide higher quality services to improve outcomes for families. Learn more about Lisa on our website.
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Praneetha Deva joined Ready Ready in December 2021 as our new Salesforce Administrator. Praneetha holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science Engineer and a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Woodbury University at Burbank, California. Visit our website to learn more about Praneetha.
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We're hiring!
We are still searching for a Senior Information Technology Director and would appreciate you sharing this opening at Ready Ready with your networks.
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Should businesses pay a child care payroll tax?
An opinion piece in Bloomberg CityLab suggests that child care is essential work support, and as such, businesses should be asked to help pay for a better system. Read the story.
Education NC: “In limbo: A longtime child care provider wonders what’s next.”
Reporter Liz Bell chronicles the hard decision a Monroe, N.C. child care provider faced as 2021 became 2022. Read the full story.
NPR: “What the end of the child tax credit means for childhood poverty.”
The advanced child tax credit ended. Families will have to pay for rent, food, and child care without that help from the federal government. The credit, however, was never meant to be temporary. But since Congress chose not to save it after the failure to pass President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act, December was the last month families received that monthly few hundred dollars. Read the full story on NPR’s website.
60 Minutes: “Why are Americans choosing to quit their jobs in record numbers?”
The United States is seeing its highest “quit rate” since the government started keeping track two decades ago. Bill Whitaker speaks with employers who are scrambling to find help and people who left their jobs and aren’t looking back. Watch the 60 Minutes segment on their YouTube channel.
Center for American Progress: Only bold action from Congress will solve the child care crisis.
This video from CAP gives an overview of the issue. Watch it here.
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