Strategic Initiatives

Each year, approximately 6,000 children are born in Guilford County. The first five years of those young lives are once-in-a-lifetime windows of opportunity — a time when 90% of the brain is built, laying the foundation for lifelong learning, emotional resilience, and confidence. Early neural connections shape a child’s ability to read, thrive academically, manage stress, and believe in their own potential. When communities unite to support families with coordinated care from pregnancy onward, we give every child the strongest possible start to succeed in school — and in life.

By leveraging a diverse network of partners and fostering collaborative relationships, Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) aims to build a connected, innovative system of care for families with children prenatally through age eight. Through hundreds of community partners, Ready Ready supports a powerful continuum of essential resources helping children prepare for success in kindergarten.

Because partners are the lifeblood of our work, we have a Partnership framework, which describes the types of partners we work with, how partnerships grow, and how we support them over time. It helps strengthen our network and supports Ready Ready’s goals for lasting impact, strong advocacy, and better outcomes for families and children in Guilford County. To improve their ability to support Guilford County’s youngest children and families, Ready Ready provides various types of technical assistance to partners including a resource library, training opportunities, and access to regular partner convenings.

Routes to Ready isn’t a standalone program. It’s a backbone-led strategy designed to transform how families experience support in Guilford County. It aligns people, data, and decisions across early childhood systems—so that families no longer have to navigate fragmented, confusing services on their own.

Ready Ready serves as the connector: we create the structure behind the scenes so that programs work better, handoffs are warmer, and the whole system feels like one, not many.

The Routes to Ready care network for families links parents and caregivers with trusted community partners to contribute to healthy development for our community’s youngest children.

These integral partners are:
Community Navigation, through Children’s Home Society,
Family Connects through the Guilford County Division of Public Health,
Healthy Steps also a program of Children’s Home Society, and
Nurse-Family Partnership, through GenerationEd

Beginning prenatally and continuing through age 3, Routes to Ready helps children and families access the resources they need. It takes a village to provide well-rounded support to families and Routes to Ready partners are here to help. They supplement the care provided by medical practitioners and add structural support beyond the love and attention of primary caregivers.

For instance, access to mental health support for a caregiver or child, a doula that will help with childbirth, where to find free diapers for a family experiencing financial hardship, or where to find the care of a specialist your child needs.

By participating in this care network, each family helps us understand gaps in services and how to meet those needs by being a part of a shared, integrated data system. Over time, these investments, based on the data we receive, will help more children enter school ready to learn.

A path for parents and caregivers
Not all families come into this system of care at the same point and that is ok. Here are a few examples of how a child or caregiver might access Routes to Ready:

• Through their prenatal appointments at their OBGYN office.
• Through a home visit with a Family Connects nurse.
• When they take their baby or older child to the pediatrician.
• Connecting with a navigator at a community event.
• You can hear about it from a friend and they connect you with their Routes to Ready contact.

Our Community Alignment work supports the Routes to Ready coordinated care system through working with community agencies, systems, and individuals to impact systems-level change. By providing accurate, up-to-date community resource information, we enable partners to make timely, effective referrals. We track agencies, organizations, and community resources to improve our Routes to Ready partners’ ability to connect families with young children to the right services, at the right time, in the right amount. Through feedback loops and our Agency Finder tool, Ready Ready ensures providers have access to current contact and capacity information, identifies service gaps, and collaborates with partners to address emerging community needs.

Our Agency Finder tool is also available to the wider community through our Community Portal. It is an easy way for families to find the resources they need for their children to thrive. Find agencies that provide assistance for a variety of needs such as food, housing, car seats, a range of therapeutic services, breastfeeding support, trauma support, and literacy resources.

Success for Ready Ready will mean families experience a smooth journey through pregnancy and early childhood—seamlessly supported through age 8/third grade. The prenatal to age 3 systems we are co-creating must connect to the supports children and families need through the start of school, learning to read, and success in third grade. Why? Because third grade literacy is a key predictor of life-long success—linked to high school graduation, job access, and long-term health and stability.

When our early systems are aligned, our community can give children a real chance at thriving—not just in school, but in life. That’s what we’re building: a system that doesn’t just support families temporarily, but sets the foundation for generational opportunity.

In the same way that we have worked with key community partners to build the prenatal to age 3 Routes to Ready system of care, we will also be working with Guilford County agencies that support school readiness and school success. This School Readiness work is currently being built. Reach out to us with specific questions.

We believe that collective impact work is most successful when it is parent-informed and community-centered. Parents – and the neighborhoods they call home – are essential co-creators in identifying barriers and solutions. Together, we shape the future of Guilford County. Our place-based, parent-informed work is currently being built. Please reach out with specific questions.