Alignment Rockford

The ready to learn movement is a community initiative organized and coordinated by Alignment Rockford, composed of dozens of organizations, service providers, and institutions in the Rockford area that are working to improve the environment and experience of raising young children in Rockford. The first five years of human development are critical to future academic, health, and lifelong success. Research shows that the experiences a child has from birth to age five directly influences his or her ability to learn and succeed when entering school. Even though the first five years is a critical time in human development, there is a huge social disparity in institutionalized support for families of children in this age group. The ready to learn movement began around this research and started by introducing the early development instrument (edi) to Rockford, in partnership with the erikson institute. This important work for implementing a measurement tool for early childhood wellness brought organizations and institutions to the table around early childhood in a way that had never happened in Rockford before. One proven strategy for improving the outcomes of the youngest children in a community is to focus on supporting the primary caregivers of young children. A childs parent and/or primary caregiver is his/ her first teacher so empowering parents and caregivers and equipping them with practical tools, resources and information enables the positive early learning experiences that every young child needs for healthy development. The work with the edi opened the door for Rockford to develop a ready to learn collaborative movement through Alignment Rockford, designed to fill the gap in services and support for families with young children. This group mobilized around the edi data and was able to secure funding through Illinois action for children and the community foundation of northern Illinois to begin implementing a three-tiered approach to parent support saturation in Rockford. Over the last two years, although we faced the unexpected and extreme obstacles that the covid-19 pandemic brought to what we expected the work of ready to learn to be, we have done a great deal of work laying the groundwork and bringing to fruition many of the important goals of our first two years: tier one: wide reach, light touchwe have successfully shared the early learning parenting mobile app with over 7 thousand families, and counting. We have launched the basics Illinois website and have forged a successful partnership with uw-health swedish american to distribute ready to learn with the basics parent/caregiver kits to over 3,000 mothers per year through the mother-baby unit of uw-health. The mother-baby unit is also where all crusader clinic ob/gyn deliveries are done, so this strategic partnership will reach our most vulnerable new mothers. We created a home- grown ready to learn series of parenting books called ready to learn with the basics that offers tips, advice, and encouragement created by our partners, including rps 205 early childhood department, Rockford public library, spectrum school, harlem school district 122, nami, easterseals, discovery center and more. These books include a qr code to the resources and coordinated intake form on the Alignment Rockford page as well; they will be included in every kit that goes out to babies, toddlers, and preschoolers both in partnership with uw-health and in the ready to learn partners engagement with parents and caregivers throughout the city tier two: parent support parenting classes abriendo puertas/opening doors and the incredible years: we have doubled our participating agencies and have been able to offer high quality parenting classes in more places throughout the community. With covid-19 still affecting agency staffing and bandwidth, our impact in this area is one place we are looking to continue to grow. Classes have been, or are scheduled to be held at childrens home and aid, Rockford rescue mission, discovery center museum, patriots gateway, st. elizabeth community center, and Rockford public school district. We continue to grow this list. Tier three: direct support: the creation of a single point of entry coordinated referral intake for parents and caregivers that connects need to support was the highest goal for the parent support saturation grant work. This has been achieved, just recently, through a partnership with the youth mental health system of care (ymhsoc) work team. Alignment Rockford has published a coordinate intake form on our website that individuals can fill out or agencies can fill out on behalf of their clients that goes directly to a member of the ymhsoc qualified referral team, who, after speaking with the client, makes a warm hand-off referral to agencies that can meet the needs of the client. Every touch that we do throughout the tier one and tier two interactions with the community will include doors into this coordinated intake form and information about the resources section of the Alignment Rockford website. In this partnership with the ymhsoc team, we are also working to assist with the onboarding of a formalized local coordinated referral system: iris. Alignment Rockford is on the roll-out taskforce for this work and the coordinated intake form we have set up is created to seamlessly transition to work with the new system once it is onboarded and active in the community. Edi: in partnership with the Rockford public school district, the harlem school district and ucla we completed a new wave of edi just this year. This year we were able to recruit the harlem school district 122, growing the map and expanding the data to include these neighborhoods. The ready the ready to learn team will be engaging the community around the importance of early childhood in october of this year to help organizations to understand how to use edi, and policymakers and funders to understand the importance of addressing early childhood issues and funding the solutions.

Throughout the second year, our initiative has achieved significant milestones in engaging various community stakeholders through equity- focused planning and execution aimed at enhancing kindergarten readiness. Our efforts have involved a variety of programs, strategic partnerships, and educational campaigns designed to enrich early childhood experiences and provider engagement. This report outlines the accomplishments, changes to the operational plans, and support needed from iafc for continued success. Year 2 achievements community engagement and educational programs: successfully conducted multiple community-focused events including: edi how are the children event no small matter community panel and film viewing the state were in report sharing countdown to kindergarten and week of the young child provider training and outreach: held several provider-focused training sessions and created three new action teams. Implemented the basics insights program and launched an extensive provider kick-off to reinforce the basics framework. Strategic partnerships: established and deepened relationships with key community health systems (uw health systems and mercy health) to distribute over 1,000 ready to learn with the basics take-home kits. Partnered with rosecrance to create a single point of entry (spoe) which has been integrated into the kits. Educational materials distribution: distributed educational materials, including basics activity books and basics insights platforms, reaching over 3,000 families with an engagement hope of 1,000 families through our online platforms. Community resource development: contributed to the creation of a local resources landing page for families with young children, featuring developmental tips and basics information prepared by early childhood experts. Reflections and strategic adjustments given the experiences and outcomes of the past year, the following strategic adjustments are planned for the upcoming year: increase focus on hospital partnerships: strengthening our collaborations with local hospitals to expand the reach of our educational kits. Enhance parental engagement: intensifying efforts to recruit and involve parent co-leads to foster deeper community buy-in and support. Elevate community organization collaboration: amplify the understanding and utilization of edi domains by local organizations to better measure and enhance community impacts. Support needed from iafc for continued success and scaling of our initiatives, we seek the following support from iafc: