Category: Partner Spotlight

“Our mission is to ignite and mobilize Guilford County through partnerships and unified strategies to eliminate racial disparities and prevent infant deaths,” said Jean Workman, executive director of Every Baby Guilford.

The infant mortality rate in Guilford County is one of the highest in North Carolina. Of the 6,045 babies born in Guilford County in 2019, 56 did not make it to their first birthday.

Every Baby Guilford is a 30-year public-private partnership with the Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services. As part of its 30th anniversary, the organization – formerly the Coalition on Infant Mortality – launched with a new name and a five-year strategic plan.

“When we started this organization in 1991, the disparity gap or the black infant mortality rate was 14.6 per 1,000 births. Today, our most recent 2019 stats show the same figure,” Workman said. “The Black infant mortality rate hasn’t changed substantially in 30 years.”

Workman points out that the organization historically created programs that focused on changing a pregnant person’s health and behavior, such as blood pressure monitoring, nutrition, and access to prenatal care. But the data shows that the Black infant mortality rate hasn’t dropped. A new approach was needed.

“We are still focused on mothers, but now we want to change the systems they encounter, particularly for Black moms,” Workman said. “In many respects, we are aligned so closely with Ready for School, Ready for Life. Together we are working on population-level change.”

Inspired by Ready Ready’s system-building approach, the Every Baby Guilford team, along with community members, health care professionals, policymakers, faith-based organizations, and partner organizations, worked together to relaunch with a collective action framework. The goal is to bring mortality rates down by 50 percent over the next five years.

“We want to eliminate systemic racism that exists in our medical practices through implicit bias, ensure safe and well-equipped areas for exercise, and address food insecurity for families. All these are a system change approach,” Workman said. “Eliminating structural racism will make the system more approachable, more resourceful, and more accessible.”

Every Baby Guilford names four key injustices that have negatively impacted Black mothers and young children through structural or institutional racism. They are unequal access to resources, housing discrimination, breastfeeding, and mistrust of health care institutions.

According to its website, the organization believes that understanding past events will allow Guilford County to better understand the cause of infant disparities and identify solutions that move towards an equitable future.

“We must change the policies, practices, and procedures that occur within the system so that families can more easily navigate those resources,” Workman said. “Having willing partners at the table ready to take part will help us make this transformation.”

Workman kicks off the strategy with a storytelling project she calls “Giving Voice to Mothers.” She said collecting the maternal health narratives, particularly of women of color in our community, will paint the picture of what’s needed in Guilford County for improvement and change.

The Greater High Point Food Alliance (GHPFA) is a grassroots organization formed to address food insecurity. When it started in 2014, the Greensboro-High Point Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was number two in the nation in food hardship. The following year, it moved to number one. Since that time, it has moved to number 14, according to GHPFA’s website.

“We take a collaborative approach and work with four neighborhoods. We asked them how they would solve food insecurity, and then we work alongside them to help them achieve those goals,” said Carl Vierling, the organization’s executive director. “We work behind the scenes at a higher level to connect resources to each of the groups we work with.”

The High Point neighborhoods working with GHPFA are Burns Hill, Washington Street, Highland Mills, and West End. Representatives from each area are board members, along with a wide variety of community leaders. Recently, the organization held a “Walk to the Store” to demonstrate what it would take for a person in the Highland Mills neighborhood without transportation to walk to the closest store, the Walmart on South Main Street. The route has no sidewalks and crosses Business 85.

“Many of the people that we work with are one car repair bill away from walking,” Vierling explained. “When you have to walk to the store, you have a limit on how much food you can carry, so that means multiple trips each week.”

GHPFA built an app with information about food pantries, backpack programs, community gardens, hot meals, and feeding sites at Guilford County Schools. “The app is location-based, so it will not only show you the food pantry closest to you, but the hours that it is open, and what requirements might be needed,” Vierling said. “We also have emergency assistance, financial assistance, and shelters as resources on the app.”

According to Feeding America, before the COVID-19 pandemic began, food insecurity in the United States was at its lowest rate in more than 20 years. When it measured food insecurity in Guilford County, the overall rate was 13.1 percent in 2019. As a result of the pandemic, the organization projects that number has risen to 15.1 percent in 2021.

Vierling said he’s seeing benefits like the earned income tax credit, expanded child tax payments, and pandemic EBT (P-EBT) making a difference for High Point families, along with the work GHPFA is doing. The organization has work teams that take on the food insecurity issue such as food access, education, nutrition, urban agriculture, seniors, and policy.

Like Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready), GHPFA focuses on connecting programs, resources, and community members to break down silos and solve problems. “Our work overlaps with Ready Ready and we’re happy to be partners. We recently had some conversations about the work Ready Ready is doing with pediatric offices. It’s so important to recognize the impact of food insecurity on health,” Vierling said. “One of the things I love about Ready Ready is that it’s trying to wrap these services around people, around young children, and get them ready for school and ready for life.”

Vierling says GHPFA’s approach can be summed up in three words: empower, unify, and sustain. “We give people a voice who’ve never had one. We bring people together and give them the tools they need to solve problems,” he said. “We create sustainability through food education, urban agriculture, and leadership programs.”

Reach Out and Read believes all families should have access to books and the meaningful moments created by shared reading with children. Reach Out and Read is a two-generation intervention unique for its unparalleled access to children through the medical home, supporting families through the trusted voice of their medical provider.

The research-based model has three parts:

• Medical providers prescribe books during well-child visits while teaching and training caregivers about how to share books and why it’s important
• Each child is given a new, culturally and developmentally appropriate book to take home.
• Clinic environments support literacy-rich messaging and resources for families.

“Spending time with a loving adult provides exceptional benefits for young children,” said Pam Bacot, Program Manager with Reach Out and Read North Carolina. “The simple act of reading aloud together helps create a lasting emotional connection, stimulates a child’s cognitive development, and lays the groundwork for a lifelong love of reading and learning.”

Guilford County has been a part of Reach Out and Read since 1998. Originally designed for children 6 months to age five, Bacot shared that Reach Out and Read has committed as an organization to shifting this model to begin at the earliest visit after birth. Across North Carolina, including Guilford County, Reach Out and Read will support parents and caregivers from the very beginning.

“Brains are built over time, from the bottom up. We know that 80 percent of a child’s brain develops by age three,” said Bacot, “Advances in our understanding of early childhood development over the last 25 years have shown us it’s essential that parents engage with their children from birth. While someone with a newborn may not be thinking about kindergarten readiness, this is the time for the foundation to be set.”

This extension adds four additional Reach Out and Read visits – newborn, one-month, two-month, and four-month well visits — for every child.

According to Bacot, Reach Out and Read serves more than 10,000 children in Guilford County in a typical year. During the pandemic in 2020, Reach Out and Read served more than 9700 children at ten participating sites and distributed nearly 16,000 books in our county. “Despite the challenges of the pandemic, we were so pleased to move forward with our mission,” Bacot said.

Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) partners with Reach Out and Read, HealthySteps, Family Connects, and Nurse-Family Partnership through our Navigation system. Navigation ensures every pregnant person and their family has information and support as their family grows. Starting prenatally, dedicated Navigators meet with families to understand their strengths, needs, and goals. Then we work together to make secure connections to services, resources, or support that will make a difference, eliminating gaps and providing a seamless experience.

“We’re also pleased to partner with Ready Ready for The Basics Guilford, offering easy ways for parents and caregivers to enhance their serve-and-return relationships with their youngest children,” Bacot said. “This give and take model helps foster learning. Together, we guide high-quality implementation and integration of these programs in medical home settings, hospital systems, and other community locations serving pregnant persons and families with young children.”

Reach Out and Read is the only national pediatric literacy model endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The organization trains, supports, and engages medical providers. Because they work closely with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families, they have a particular vantage point and understand how social determinants of health like poverty, literacy, housing, food insecurity, and access to parenting resources affect a child’s healthy development.

Reach Out and Read’s research shows that having a strong, loving bond with an adult can even undo some of the harm created by adverse childhood experiences – experiences that include the negative impacts of poverty and racism, abuse, a divorce, or an illness in the family.

“We like to say a book is a powerful tool. In the hands of a child, it can be a portal to a world of imagination. For a parent, it can be the catalyst that brings the family together, creating meaningful moments that forge strong bonds,” said Bacot.

By Stephanie Skordas, Director of Marketing & Communications

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) works to achieve a racially, economically, and socially just society in which all children, youth, and families thrive. Through community partners like Ready for School, Ready for Life, CSSP tests and shares lessons learned about innovative, comprehensive local early childhood systems across the country and advances policies that help parents succeed and young children flourish.

These partners are part of the CSSP’s Early Childhood Learning and Innovation Network (EC-LINC), which brings together communities across the country with the common goal of improving equitable outcomes for young children and developing a system that helps all young children and their families thrive.

“Ready for School, Ready for Life is one of 14 organizations that participate as learning partners. It’s a learning laboratory where system leaders at the community level learn from each other, share innovations, solve problems, and figure out how to make a stronger early childhood system, “said Ngozi Lawal, CSSP’s project director, prenatal-three initiative. Ready Ready joined the EC-LINC in 2018.

In Guilford County, CSSP is helping support Ready Ready to accomplish its prenatal to three agenda. “Guilford County has laid its PN-3 goals really clearly. For instance, the County is working to increase in HealthySteps usage, the pediatric intervention that helps more low-income families get access to parenting education, credible information about child development, and connections to needed resources,” Lawal said. “The foundation of all of this work is advancing racial equity and supporting parent and family engagement.”

“Ready Ready’s approach to universality, the premise that anyone, regardless of who you are, what you look like, what zip code you live in, can receive Navigation support is something that other jurisdictions can learn from because all families can receive support,” Lawal said. “When we take out the notion that only certain families need this support and just look at the humanity of having a baby and how hard that is, making the service available to everyone makes a difference and better supports families.”

Lawal says the prenatal-to-three work CSSP focuses on can be summed up in three areas: early care and education, family support, and health and mental health. On the early care and education front, she is encouraged by the Biden administration’s efforts to invest in better wages for early childhood educators, universal pre-k, and parental support. “Parents need high-quality child care. They need a place that is stimulating for their young children’s brains and teachers who are qualified and well-paid.”

Citing research that finds many early childhood educators in the workforce qualify for public assistance because of the historically low wages in the industry, Lawal added, “It’s a travesty. It’s an embarrassment for our country. The pandemic relief funds are a real opportunity to help raise the early childhood educators’ wages to help keep them in the workforce. It’s not just a good investment; it’s an investment that’s absolutely critical for the economic engine of the country.”

CSSP also helped Ready Ready develop the Guilford Parent Leader Network (GPLN), which was established as a decision-making body for Ready Ready. The group’s goal is to ensure that family voice is brought into every key decision as we work together to build an innovative, connected early childhood system in Guilford County.

“We shouldn’t have services without having had parents come to the table to have input on what the services look like,” Lawal explained. The Parent Leader Network brings together parents from across the country to collaborate, build leadership skills, advance racial equity, and advocate for change in their communities. Guilford County parent representatives were able to join the original group of Parent Leader Network representatives who developed the Manifesto for Race Equity & Parent Leadership in Early Childhood Systems, a document for early childhood agencies written by parents about parent and family leadership in early childhood systems.

Racial equity is a vital thread of CSSP’s work. With the anniversary of the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer, Lawal said she feels a sense of encouragement that the whole country is having a reckoning and that generally speaking, more people are willing to recognize that a problem exists, engage in conversation about it, and most importantly, beginning to develop the confidence to address it.

“You can’t address a problem until you agree there’s a problem,” Lawal said. “People are beginning to ask ‘what can I do at my level to make a difference?’ We are asking ourselves, “How can I educate myself, what can I learn so I can make better decisions, and what biases do I need to challenge?”

 

When the organization that became Ready for School, Ready for Life was a grassroots effort in Guilford County, we were glad to have partners like EQuIPD by our side, even as EQuIPD was starting its important work.

EQuIPD’s mission is to nurture and empower early care and education professionals with sustainability and success tools.

“We’re small but mighty,” said Ashley Allen, EQuIPD’s work environment and compensation coordinator. “We come at the issues from many perspectives and offer coaching, mentoring, and professional development.”

EQuIPD holds community learning events for early childhood educators. At the events, educators learn information they can use immediately. “What makes us unique is that we offer follow-up events where educators can discuss challenges and successes. We connect people to support peer to peer growth and build communities of practice through the process.”

Allen says EQuIPD began in 2014 with support from UNC-Greensboro through its Department of Human Development and Family Studies and The Guilford County Partnership for Children. “So many pieces of what we do really fit with Ready Ready’s strategic plan,” Allen said. “It’s a natural collaboration since we both bring different strengths to the table.“

EQuIPD is committed to lifting early care and education professionals’ voices and experiences to inform and inspire systems change. Current policy efforts include early child care wage increases. “We expect early childhood educators to get degrees and build curriculum but don’t support them with liveable wages or even enough planning time or resources. And during the pandemic, we see even more stress on the system since they are essential workers.”

According to its website, EQuIPD staff members are champions for equity, diversity, and inclusion through personal and professional practice, provisions of services, and engagement with stakeholders and the community.

“We have knowledgeable, talented, passionate educators preparing the next generation of our workforce,” Allen said. “The work EQuIPD and Ready Ready are doing to support them and system-level change will make a difference for Guilford County and North Carolina.”

Partner Spotlight: North Carolina Early Education Coalition

By Stephanie Skordas, Director of Marketing & Communications

The North Carolina Early Education Coalition (NCEEC) works to ensure that all children have access to high-quality early care and learning experiences. Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has partnered with the Coalition on the Think Babies NC Alliance. Together we are focused on N.C.’s youngest children – prenatal to age three. As part of the Leadership Team, Ready Ready joins other public and private early childhood organizations on this statewide initiative.

“Ready Ready’s involvement on our leadership team is a testament to how focused the organization has been on infants and toddlers from the beginning,” said Coalition’s Senior Campaign Director Michele Rivest. “At the Coalition, we’ve always supported a whole child development approach, and infusing that model into other ways of thinking helps us lift up babies and families at the same time as we focus on early childhood.”

Rivest said the increased focus on infants and toddlers, especially in North Carolina, has positively affected partnerships and networks and allowed the Alliance to examine its work and progress through an equity lens.

Formed in 1990, the Coalition is a statewide advocacy group with membership including statewide organizations, regional and local child care agencies, child care providers, and individuals committed to improving the quality of child care and early education in North Carolina. Rivest’s work is focused on policy for the Coalition and Think Babies NC, leading the lobbying team and developing relationships with policymakers.

“I work with our partners and allies to support young children’s healthy development and early learning, particularly from a policy perspective,” said Rivest. “We look at state law, state budget, rules, and regulations, as well as a national policy to advance and support young children and families in North Carolina.”

As with many systems in North Carolina and other states, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the foundational weakness in our child care system, Rivest said. “Parents have primarily financed child care by paying the costs, which is extremely expensive – approximately $10,000 a year. That’s more than a year’s tuition at a public university in North Carolina. That’s beyond the reach of so many families. Then with COVID, families stopped being able to go to work and use child care.”

As research has shown, early learning experiences have a lifelong impact. A stable, secure relationship with a caring adult is a critical factor in young children’s development.

“The key to whether we have a stable and successful early childhood system depends on the early childhood workforce,” Rivest said. “Young children having these supportive environments, building relationships with teachers who are building relationships with their families is sort of a surround-sound approach to getting young children off to a good and healthy start.”

According to the Coalition, many children and families don’t have the resources or opportunities to meet these needs, particularly families of color or families with low incomes. These challenges and risk factors expose babies to stress and trauma that negatively impact their healthy development.

“The opportunity we see from COVID in North Carolina and nationally is that state policymakers are saying child care is essential,” Rivest said. “Despite these devastating circumstances, we are in a position to push for really robust high-quality early care and education. Issues like paid family leave are gaining traction in North Carolina and around the country.”

Describing herself as an “eternal optimist,” Rivest commends the collaborative team approach of state and local organizations as part of the NC Early Education Coalition. “We all come to this work from different roles in the field of early childhood education. But we’re all committed to making sure young children and families get off to a healthy start,“ she said. “We’re starting to see these supports for families and infants and toddlers across North Carolina that give me a lot of hope about how we’re going in the right direction.”

With assistance from the Cemala Foundation, North Carolina A&T State University is focused on literacy for young children in Guilford County. Project LLIFE aims to increase skills and performance in language and literacy for children between the ages of 1-4.

LLIFE stands for Language and Literacy Impacting Families and Educators.

“Our program is focused on children in culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in southeast Greensboro, and our overall goal is to try to close the gap for children of color around language and literacy when they enter kindergarten,” said Dr. Valerie Jarvis McMillan, associate professor of child development early education and family studies at N.C. A&T State University.

She is the principal investigator (PI), working with co-PIs N.C. A&T professors Dr. Deana Lacy McQuitty, associate professor in speech language pathology, Dr. Jeff Drayton Wolfgang, assistant professor in counseling, and Dr. Sharita Williams-Crossen, adjunct faculty in speech language pathology and Project LLIFE Coordinator.

The project encompasses three disciplines: child development, speech language pathology, and counseling. Researchers in each of those areas, along with graduate and undergraduate students from N.C. A&T, have worked to collect data from child care centers, educators, and families from southeast Greensboro.

The goals and objectives include:

• Enhancing language and literacy development of children from diverse populations in southeast Greensboro
• Supporting culturally responsive practices of educators and families in promoting literacy development
• Training students to become facilitators for language and literacy development and learning in children with diverse backgrounds

Working with Ready Ready
Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has partnered with Project LLIFE in active reading training sessions in late 2020. Due to the pandemic, these training sessions switched from in-person to online, as did much of Project LLIFE’s work.

“Working with Ready Ready, we had two very intense active reading training sessions virtually,” Dr. McMillan said. “Our students practiced the active reading approach, and it allowed them to develop labels and terminology for these strategies. They will use this training with the families during collaborative learning sessions with families in February and March.”

“Working with Project LLIFE and N.C. A&T students was so rewarding,” said Heather Adams, Ready Ready’s director of engagement and literacy initiatives. “We’re excited for them to take these strategies into the community.”

During the collaborative learning sessions, student instructional facilitators will enter into a coaching relationship with families and children who are part of Project LLIFE. The active reading strategies will help parents and children discuss what they’re reading by asking open-ended questions, for example.

“It’s about using a daily routine with children centered around reading books,” Dr. McMillan explained. “We want to engage children in conversations around a book they’re reading, getting them to discuss content and characters in the book, and ask questions to gather their understanding of content and how it may relate to activities or experiences in their life.”