North Carolina Partnership For Children Inc

Programs: Smart start: north carolina's nationally-recognized early childhood initiative, smart start, measurably increases the health and well-being of young children, building the foundation for all future learning by:- improving children's early care and education programs so that they are safe, healthy and provide opportunities for children to learn skills they need for success in school. - ensuring that children are screened for developmental delays. - providing parents with tools that support them in raising happy, healthy successful children. For a strong foundation, children need high quality early care and education programs that are safe and provide opportunities for learning: and strong families and environments that support healthy outcomes. High quality early education yields higher graduation rates, reduced crime, higher earnings, less reliance on social services, and better jobs. Smart start is a network of 75 nonprofit local partnerships that serve all 100 north carolina counties. This network is led by the north carolina partnership for children (ncpc) that ensures fiscal and programmatic accountability, and coordinates the statewide network to create better outcomes for children and families. Ncpc establishes measurable statewide goals and communities determine the best approach to achieving them. Ncpc also ensures that smart start local partnerships fully meet all legislatively mandated requirements and operate to the highest standards of effectiveness, accountability, efficiency and integrity. Since 2000, there have been more than 500 audits, by state auditors and /or independent auditors hired by the state, or ncpc and smart start local partnerships. Ncpc has had no audit findings for the past decade. Research released in 2016 from the duke center for child and family policy found that state investments in smart start and nc pre-k resulted in higher test scores, less grade retention and fewer special education placements through fifth grade. In fact, at average funding levels, smart start was found to reduce special education placements in grades three, four and five by nearly 10 percent, and reduce a child's chance of being retained by fifth grade by 13 percent. Additional accomplishments include:- improving quality and achieving higher stars on nc's rated license through onsite technical assistance, training and support for child care professionals to obtain higher education. Today 74% of children in child care attend high quality programs as compared to 33% in 2001. - improving early literacy by collaborating with state literacy organizations, local partnerships, private child care programs, and pediatricians to promote early literacy across the state through programs like raising a reader and reach out and read. Families participating in reach out and read are 97 percent more likely to be using one or more recommended reading strategies with their children. - helping private child care programs improve the quality of their classrooms so they may participate in nc pre-k and partner with nc pre-k providers to help eligible four-year-olds access the program. In fiscal year 2016-2017 smart start local partnerships administered nc pre-k in 55 counties.

the north carolina partnership for children (ncpc) continued to build upon the capacity and successes of the past several years to further the goals of north carolina's race to the top early learning challenge (rtt-elc) reform agenda. This grant-funded project was completed in december 2016. Leaders collaborative:the leaders collaborative is a performance-driven leadership training and development approach in which leaders focus on building their own, and the early childhood system's capacity to achieve the overall rtt-elc goal to assure every child arrives at kindergarten ready to succeed. Forty-four local smart start leaders have completed the eight-month training series and initiated community planning processes to address identified early childhood needs. Transformation zone:ncpc, working with other participating state and local agencies, provides leadership at the state and local level to create and implement a transformation zone in selected tier 1 counties in the northeastern region of the state. Ncpc provides coaches for county planning processes, builds capacity of transformation zone counties to improve early literacy skills of young children, and funded child care health consultation to improve the health and safety of child care centers. Child care health consultation (cchc):ncpc, in partnership with other participating agencies, strengthened statewide capacity and effectiveness for child care health consultation. Cchc supported early care and education providers to ensure that children in care are in safe and healthy environments. The work of ncpc has supported the development of a performance model for all cchc services and an electronic application to collect data in real-time for more efficient and effective assessment of environments. Assuring better child health and development (abcd):the assuring better child health and development project promotes the use of validated developmental screening tools used during children's well-child visits with their medical home providers. The abcd project has served to strengthen coordination of referral and service delivery between medical professionals, early intervention providers, and families. Since the start of the project in 2013, abcd coordinators worked in all of north carolina's 14 community care regions, serving 246 practices and 1,345 providers. Based on best estimates provided by the medical practices, they serve roughly 85,000 children birth-5 enrolled in medicaid. The project yielded increased rates of developmental screening and referrals across the state. Developmental screening rates improved from 85. 2% at baseline to 93. 9% of children due for screening, receiving a screening during their well-child visit. Autism screening rates increased from 78. 7% to 86. 7%. Data advisory group:ncpc led the assessment and enhancement of data collection and data management capabilities of smart start local partnerships. Ncpc established a group of common outcomes for core smart start services, a set of consistent measures, and a data reporting system for statewide use.

the privately-funded shape nc initiative has expanded the comprehensive and coordinated early childhood obesity prevention and health promotion programming in north carolina with phase 2 of the initiative completed in december 2016. The initiative integrated three core components - child nutrition, physical activity and outdoor learning environments - to improve health and nutrition practices in child care facilities serving children birth to age five. All activities were implemented by 19 smart start local partnerships and in most cases, included community action planning for promotion of healthy weight. These shape nc grantees selected child care centers to receive technical assistance around the core components. They used ongoing assessments, tools and resources to assist child care sites in the creation of action plans to promote healthy weight practices. Each shape nc local partnership had designated model early learning centers and expansion sites, all of whom received technical assistance and training, including access to a webinar series with ceu's from shape nc staff. Sixteen model early learning centers achieved demonstration site status in best practice and standards and served as models of excellence in their communities. There were 213 child care sites participating in the shape nc initiative. In phase 2, shape nc hub specialists collected heights and weights every six months for children ages two to five years in the model early learning centers and in two randomly selected expansion sites. The data was then used to calculate body mass index (bmi) percentiles as well as to determine the number of children who were underweight, normal/healthy weight, overweight and obese. Children that attended shape nc centers for more than six months experienced improvement in bmi over three years with a 6. 9% decrease in bmi of children at model early learning centers and 1. 2% decrease in bmi of children for expansion sites. Outcomes were also collected at the child care facilities to determine the use of best practices related to children's nutrition and physical activity: 63% of best practices were in use at baseline compared to 83% at the end of the project for model early learning centers. 47% of best practices were used initially compared to 60% at the end of the project for expansion sites. Child care staff outcomes were also collected, finding that staff participating in the online training course demonstrated a 30. 9% increase in knowledge of best practices from pre to post-test, which is a statistically significant increase. Three months after the training, 92% of participants indicated they made healthy changes in their professional or personal lives as a result of taking this course.

other programs includes an annual conference for those dedicated to improving early education systems and promoting children's healthy growth and development including education experts, government and business leaders, and not-for-profits, as well as a public awareness and engagement campaign. The conference annually hosts approximately 1,100 attendees from across the country and engages the nation's leading experts in early childhood as speakers and featured panelist. Other programs also includes shape nc phase iii. Ncpc received funding from the corporation for national and community service in addition to continued funding from the blue cross blue shield nc foundation for shape nc. This phase of shape nc is utilizing a delayed treatment design with active and control child care centers to measure outcomes in physical activity, nutrition and body mass index for children enrolled in the study. Shape nc selected four organizations through an objective rfa process, three smart start local partnerships and one community-based organization, to fully implement all three core components of the initiative. These four organizations, called subgrantees, currently manage five active centers and five control centers. At the end of year one, the five active centers (cohort 1) continue to year two and the control centers roll up into active centers (cohort 2), and an additional five control centers are recruited. This process repeats one more year so that by the end of the 3-year study, each subgrantee will be managing 15 active and five control centers. Active centers get the full shape nc model, and control sites only participate in data collection. Subgrantees are responsible for providing training, technical assistance and coaching to their active centers as they implement the three core components in addition to addressing family engagement.