Center for Children's Initiatives

CCI is nationally recognized as a leading voice for meeting the care and development needs of children from birth thru school age. Founded in 1982, CCI champions the right of all children to start life with the best possible foundation of learning, care and health; The backbone of CCIs efforts is: helping families find the best quality early care and learning for their children, partnering with child care and early education professionals to improve and expand their services, and influencing public policy to assure sensible and affordable options. Working with each of these sectors gives CCI the insight to recommend policies that make quality learning environments a reality for all children. CCI is a New York City based organization.

Highlights 2010

Supporting Families

• Over 3,500 families across the City learned to navigate the maze of finding and choosing child care, enroll in Pre-K, and pay for care. CCI maintains a database of over 10,000 regulated programs in all five boroughs including child care, Head Start, Pre-K, out of school time programs and summer day camps to insure parents receive the most up to date support.

• Provided enhanced referral service to 200 low income working families to enable them to find child care and retain employment.

Promoting Excellence

• More than 2,100 center-based programs and family child care providers received consultations on regulations, curriculum and business management to improve quality and increase capacity.

• 500 professionals participated in professional development on all aspects of early development. Creative curriculum, financial and program management, and board development as well as effective programming for after school services. Many of these educational opportunities were offered in English and Spanish.

• Over 400 individuals working with infants and toddlers received training to strengthen their work with babies and toddlers. 25 infant toddler programs received intensive technical assistance resulting in improved classroom practice. 10 program administrators were mentored to increase their capacity to coach and assist classroom staff in meeting the unique needs of babies and toddlers.

• Over 1,000 health consultations were provided on administering medication, health promotion, and effective management of infectious diseases, nutrition education and meeting safety standards.

• 50 family child care providers enrolled in CCI’s multifaceted Entrepreneurial Program improving their skills in marketing and financial management. Family child care providers were able to stabilize their businesses in a year of tremendous economic challenge and to continue to improve the quality of their services to parents and children in communities throughout the city. Over 100 new child care providers received start-up grants.


Driving Effective Policies

• Protected funding for Pre-K and child care for 2010 through the Winning Beginning NY Coalition.

• Served as a community lead agency for the Quality StarsNY field test to design and implement a quality rating and improvement system for early childhood programs in New York State.

• Published “Strengthening the Pre-K Investment: Next Steps to a Winning Beginning for Every Child in New York State.” The paper’s findings were presented to leaders in City and State government to promote the recommendations for better integrating and supporting Pre-K as a cornerstone for an early childhood system serving children from infancy through grade three.