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The Early Learning Nation Collective is thrilled that you have decided to embark on a journey to become or grow an Early Learning Community.

Before you start, we recommend watching this informational video to help guide you as you use the Tool. You may also want to read through some key terms before you begin the Assessment.

Goal 2.1 Sample Action Steps

Level 1

Survey or conduct listening sessions with parents of young children to learn about their needs, how they currently access services or get help for their child, what needs remain unmet, and what would make accessing services easier for them. Take care to hear from parents in underserved neighborhoods and those who are marginalized. Ensure that parents who can’t attend a scheduled event have other opportunities to join the conversation such as through Facebook Live or social media chats and online surveys.
Map the availability of core services (pediatric and family practice clinics, early care and education programs, elementary schools, and family support programs such as home visiting providers, and family resource centers) in neighborhoods throughout the city, numbers of young children in each neighborhood, and public transportation options linking neighborhoods to those where more services are available. Include demographic data, like income, race, and ethnicity to help identify disparities in enrollment and usage and gaps in access.
Identify tools that service providers and government staff can use to assess the level of quality appropriate to a variety of settings to stimulate conversations about quality improvement. Consider elements such as curriculum, professional development, planning time, pay, and developmentally appropriate practices.
Come to an agreement on shared language and common goals for children and families on which all providers can agree. Explore potential frameworks, like the Strengthening Families protective factors, to capture goals that all relevant systems can embrace and connect their work to, and adopt the language of that framework across systems.
Leverage assessments and surveys already conducted within or around your community. For example, many Head Start grantees and hospitals already do community assessments. Check with these entities to see if they have recent results.
Conduct listening sessions with early care and education providers to determine their needs for additional support for themselves or for the families they serve. As with parents, offer multiple avenues for providers to engage in these conversations.

Level 2

Establish incentives for service providers (e.g., early care and education, mental health providers or anything else identified in gap analyses) to locate in areas of greater need or to better reach marginalized families, including supporting existing service providers to expand into additional neighborhoods or expand hours of operation to meet families’ needs.
Establish a cross-sector collaboration of providers in early care and education, health, social services, legal aid, and basic services in areas of most need, so providers may determine standards of quality and align services. Provide incentives or support for deeper collaboration, including cross-referral (with tracking of successful service delivery), data sharing, and tracking of shared output and outcome measures.
Utilize a child-first approach to prioritize policies and programs that fund important services for children and families to thrive. Establish incentives for participatory grantmaking and participatory budget processes.
Reach out to informal (family, friend, and neighbor) child care providers to find out what support they need to provide the highest quality care, and help interested providers move toward licensing.
Promote the importance of medical homes for young children, both by educating parents about the benefits of finding a consistent provider for their children, and by supporting health care providers to provide comprehensive services for the children and families they serve, including connecting families to behavioral health care, legal services, and family support.
Implement a unified application and/or waitlist for early care and education programs so that parents only have to complete one application and get the first available spot that meets their needs.
Support early care and education providers in providing professional development to staff. Host citywide trainings for teachers and joint trainings for pre-k and kindergarten teachers. Consider how trainings can be accessible to in-home providers and centers without staff to cover classrooms during the day. Include trainings on culturally and linguistically responsive approaches that support staff in providing services to diverse families and communities.
Implement high-quality preschool in a way that reaches underserved families and addresses gaps in school readiness.

Level 3

Invest in the development of an easily accessible service hub, anchored around a public entity such as a library with low-cost rental space available for other services such as a health clinic, child care center, legal aid office, or family resource center.
Develop transportation solutions to help community residents access services located outside of their own neighborhoods. For example, consider using online messaging programs to help small cohorts of families develop plans for ridesharing to early learning centers or libraries.
Continue to garner commitment and investment from local representatives, service providers, and funders to support incentives and programs designed to increase families’ access to high-quality services.
Encourage co-location of programs and services to expand the range of services available in underserved neighborhoods.
Implement full service community schools in underserved neighborhoods, including family support and early childhood services.
Measure parent and caregiver satisfaction with various programs or agencies. Improving “customer satisfaction” is an important step toward assessing and improving both access and quality.
Identify trusted community organizations that interact directly with community members from immigrant and multilingual households, and coordinate tailored outreach and enrollment efforts for public services and local resources. At every step of ELC advocacy, fund concurrent efforts that mitigate barriers, provide education, and address immigrant families’ concerns, such as improving language access, ensuring confidentiality of immigration status during the application process, and advocating for policies that either extend eligibility or remove structural barriers to enrollment for families.

Goal 2.1 Examples of Communities in Action

Central Bronx, NY

Project CHEERS is a collaborative initiative led by BronxCare to address health disparities and enhance healthcare access and preventive services for infants, children, youth, and families in the South and Central Bronx. Partnering with organizations like New Settlement Apartments, BronxWorks, Lehman College, and others, the project focuses on screening patients for social determinants of health (SDH) and adverse childhood experiences (ACE), training community partners for better referrals and resource sharing, creating a comprehensive referral network, and integrating SDH and ACE into pediatric residency training. Supported by an HRSA grant, Project CHEERS aims to improve overall community health outcomes.

Rhode Island

PCMH Kids was established in 2013 to create high-quality, family- and patient-centered medical homes. In 2016, it launched a pediatric care transformation project through multiple cohorts. PCMH Kids involves providers, payers, patients, parents, purchasers, and policymakers in its mission to enhance care for children and youth statewide. In 2022, alongside the Care Transformation Collaborative of Rhode Island (CTC-RI), it launched the third Maternal Psychiatry Resource Network (MomsPRN) Cohort to bolster behavioral health interventions and resources. Since its inception, PCMH Kids has engaged 36 practices, serving 105,000 residents and over 80 percent of the state’s pediatric Medicaid population.

Levels

Level 1
Level 1 describes the starting point and is the first thing a community will want to establish on their path to reaching that goal. In many cases, the first level involves assessing the current situation in order to identify strengths and areas of need.

Level 2
Level 2 describes a community that is taking proactive steps and making some progress toward the goal. This may include communities where progress has been made in pockets, but those efforts are not benefiting the whole community yet.

Level 3
Finally, Level 3 indicates that a community has invested time, energy, and resources toward reaching this goal and is integrating its efforts across the early childhood system and with other sectors.

Not Started
If you or your organization have not begun assessing or considering a goal, please mark your level as “Not Started.”