We continue to watch budget negotiations in Raleigh between North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and the General Assembly. The House and Senate sent their spending plan to the governor in late September without making it public. With the extra revenue and federal funds related to the COVID-19 pandemic in state coffers, now is the time for N.C. policymakers to focus on early childhood education and development. 

It’s not just at the state level. City and county leaders are receiving American Rescue Plan funds. Guilford County should receive about $104 million, Greensboro $59.4 million, and High Point $23.4 million. The funds can be used to:

• Address negative economic impacts caused by the public health emergency, including economic harms to workers, households, small businesses, impacted industries, and the public sector
• Replace lost public sector revenue
• Provide premium pay for essential workers
• Invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure

As we know from economist James Heckman, every $1 invested in early childhood yields a $4-$16 return. Now is the time for Guilford County, North Carolina, and the United States to make a difference for families and our youngest children. 

Thank you for believing in our mission to build a connected, innovative system of care that addresses structural inequities. Working together, we will create population-level change.

Sincerely,

• The House and Senate have sent a combined budget to Governor Roy Cooper. We are optimistic that this budget continues with an allocation of $1.8 M in funding for the Integrated Data System (IDS) and Early Childhood Workforce (ECW) legislative requests, but the budget was not made public before it was sent to the governor. The Legislative Action Subcommittee continues to be ready to inform lawmakers as needed.
• The Communications Subcommittee is establishing a Speaker’s Bureau to share Ready Ready’s work with civic organizations.

• Five additional OB practices have committed to offering prenatal Navigation to their patients, bringing the total to 14 OB offices in Guilford County. 
• To support prenatal Navigation expansion, Children’s Home Society (CHS) is hiring six Navigators and a third Navigation Supervisor, bringing its Navigation staff to 22.
• The Community Alignment team shared an early version of the Community Portal with a small group of partners. The portal will serve as an interim Agency Finder until the full version is available with a more robust search capacity, additional services listed, and an interface for families to create an account to record the services received.

• Family Connects has one open nurse home visitor position. Nurses continue to offer in-person support on a limited basis to clients with identified health risks who are receptive to in-person contact. 
• Nurse-Family Partnership reports seeing an increase in quality referrals thanks to Navigators’ support to clients in OB practices.
• HealthySteps will soon implement in its 11th practice, Northwest Pediatrics, with training beginning in October. The HS Specialist for that location has been hired.
• September’s Medical Home Advisory Team meeting provided insights into how to support practices in implementing Navigation, HealthySteps, Reach Out and Read, and the Basics Guilford.  Members identified the power of messages from peer practices - practices of similar size that serve a similar patient population.

• We have created a draft of our CQI Theory of Change with MDRC.  
• UNC staff conducted interviews with Evaluation Advisory Board members and members of the Equity Strategies Committee to discuss capacity-building in Guilford County.

• The new Salesforce Org for Navigation and Prenatal Touchpoint is on track to go live in late October. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and preparation for data migration are going smoothly.

• Navigation rebuild is on track. Some enhancements to the Agency Finder are needed to support Duke Study organizations. These changes will also go live in late October.

• MDRC provided an overview of the evaluation design that describes the scope and data collection plans for each evaluation substudy -- implementation, outcomes monitoring, impact, and cost studies.

Family Voice

Congratulations to our recent Guilford Parent Leader Network (GPLN) members who've completed Community Organization and Family Issues (COFI) Phase 2 training. See the story in the Greensboro News & Record.

New COFI Phase 1 training began in mid-September. Fifteen family leaders with children involved in Early Head Start and Head Start through Guilford Child Development will be trained this fall. Plans are underway for families with children at Falkener Elementary to be the next cohort, and a High Point-focused series will be held in spring 2022.

Our Guilford Parent Leader Network is expanding with six new members. The Guilford Parent Leader Network (GPLN) is an integral part of the decision-making structure for Ready for School, Ready for Life. Families who participate are valued consultants, partners, and change agents who work on priorities that are important to their own families and other families in Guilford County.

Nine parent leaders have completed Ready Ready’s first Board/Committee Leadership Academy. Graduates will be provided with opportunities to serve in our governance structure. 
 

Ages 3-5

Ready Ready staff and the UNC National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) team worked through the Hexagon Tool to modify it for the Ages 3-5 design process. Communities and organizations can use the Hexagon Tool to assess the fit and feasibility of a new or existing program or practice. Through this process, three strategies were identified for initial piloting. A commitment to further refine and specify the remaining seven strategies suggested by the Ages 3-5 Design Team was also part of this work.
 

The Basics Guilford

We’re happy to share a flurry of activity with The Basics Guilford. In partnership with HealthySteps, Reach Out and Read, and Navigation, we developed a Medical Home Advisory Team. This group comprises “practice champions” to help expand support and distribution of services at OB and pediatric practices.

Both the Greensboro and High Point Housing Authorities participated in a “Dolly Blitz.” We worked with Parents as Teachers to put 3,000 Basics/Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library door hangers on each resident’s doorknob. We are also looking forward to opening a Basics Guilford-themed resource center at the High Point Housing Authority later this month.

Since June, we have trained 520 people from 11 organizations in the Basics. Organizations have included the Department of Social Services, Head Start and Early Head Start educators from Guilford Child Development, Greensboro Children’s Museum, and Guilford Parent Academy, just to name a few.

Ready Ready’s website continues to be a top referral source to the Basics Guilford website. Visitors to The Basics Guilford site who come from Ready Ready spent an average of five minutes on The Basics’ website. Advertising for The Basics Guilford has also increased the number of quality website referrals. We are seeing an uptick in visitors from The Triad Moms on Main through its newsletter and ads on its website, as well as the weekly Tuesday Tips emails.

The Basics Guilford website has just launched a weekly blog called Every Day Basics. Five local families have committed to write short posts which will go live every Wednesday.

Two new staff members

We’re excited to welcome two new staff members to the Ready Ready team. 

Yuri Alston is our new Family Engagement Coordinator who joined us in mid-September. Yuri has worked in the human services industry field for over a decade. In her previous roles, she has worked alongside parents to foster their children’s educational outcomes. Yuri obtained her BA in Arts from UNC-Greensboro. She is currently attending UNC-Chapel Hill to obtain her Master of Social Work degree and graduate in May 2022.

Diana Peacock is serving as our Interim Senior Information Technology Director while our search is underway. Many of you may be familiar with Diana’s work as the Director of Nonprofit Practice for Coastal Cloud through our Integrated Data System build.
 

We're hiring

Please share our hiring announcements and job descriptions with your networks. We are seeking a Senior Information Technology Director, a Vice President of Strategic Impact, a  Vice President of Public Will Building, a Family Engagement Manager, and a Salesforce Administrator to join our team. Links to all three positions are located on our careers page.

Equity Statement

The creation of this statement was the work of our Equity Strategies Committee of the Board of Directors. They sought the input of many stakeholders, including our parent leaders, staff, equity consultants, and the Board.  We have posted this statement as approved by our Board of Directors on our website. Please read our statement below, and join us in this essential system-building work.

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.

New York Times: When child care costs twice as much as the mortgage
Jason DeParle with the New York Times visited Greensboro for this story about how the child care crisis affects families and centers. Read the article.

The newspaper's podcast "The Daily" also expanded on the same story with Jason DeParle. Listen to the podcast.

Spectrum News: N.C. to spend $800 million on early childhood programs still struggling from pandemic
“North Carolina is opening a new grant program to spend $800 million in federal money on early childhood education, including funding for higher salaries for teachers and improving facilities, the governor announced Thursday.” Learn more at Spectrum News.

New York Times: How other nations pay for child care. The U.S. is an outlier
“Rich countries contribute an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler’s care, compared with $500 in the U.S. The Democrats’ spending bill tries to shrink the gap.” Read the story in the New York Times. 

EducationNC: Reading proficiency has tumbled in the early grades. Here’s the DPI report, with steps to reform instruction
“For the first time in at least 10 school years, a majority of the state’s first, second, and third-grade students did not demonstrate reading proficiency, according to a report of 2020-21 testing from the Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Early Learning. The data were presented Wednesday to the State Board of Education.” Read the story in EducationNC.

How the pandemic has affected food hardship
This article discusses the effects of Pandemic EBT concerning child nutrition. The data shows that food insecurity has decreased from when the program was launched during the 2019-2020 school year. Here's the data: https://brook.gs/3oxr6Sf. 

Washington Post: Fueled by the pandemic, the child-care crisis is keeping moms out of work
This article describes how the struggle of finding quality child care has weighed heavily on mothers who have disproportionately been affected by job losses during the pandemic. Despite a return to some normalcy, a lack of child care is one significant factor lagging economic recovery. Read the story in the Washington Post.