North Carolina Partnership for Children

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 supports 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. Ncpc maintains a fiscal accountability system that includes monitoring local partnerships to ensure compliance with state and federal laws, legislative mandates and state policies, and local Partnership financial audits. The smart start network continues to improve the landscape of early care and education in the pandemic's aftermath regardless of these delays in assessments. In the past year, 1,654 child care facilities or 28% of all North Carolina's facilities participated in smart start technical assistance to improve child care quality. 1,102 child care facilities received teacher support in the form of technical assistance, mentoring, and education to increase star ratings.additional accomplishments include:- smart start local partnerships collaborate with nc pre-k providers and serve as co-chairs on local nc pre-k committees. 46 partnerships administer the nc pre-k program in 55 counties through separate contracts with dcdee, providing an additional $8,193,401 in funding for nc pre-k classroom support. This collaboration and funding across the state helps to ensure high quality services and increase access for children.-the smart start network has successfully implemented strategies to improve recruitment, retention, and workforce development for professionals throughout the state. One way smart start increases workforce retention is through supplemental compensation through scholarships and incentives. In 2022-2023, 4,534 child care teachers received an education-based salary supplement. Of these teachers, over 84% remained in their positions throughout the year.- 65 smart start local partnerships provide at least one family support program or service to support Children and their families. Family support programs supported and administered by the smart start network include parents as teachers, kaleidoscope play and learn, positive parenting program (triple p), circle of parents, nurturing parenting program, and nurse-family Partnership among others. These programs may take the form of playgroups, home visiting and parent education, and more.

In an effort to live into the legislative vision of smart start as a public-private Partnership that innovates to strengthen the state's early childhood system, ncpc, in Partnership with state agencies, philanthropic and other early childhood organizations, has played a leading role in other projects and initiatives in fy 2022-23 as described below:ncpc continued developing smart solutions: birth-to-five investments in fy 2022-2023. Smart solutions is a searchable catalog of effective programs, interventions, and strategies that support Children prenatal through-five, their families, and communities. Solutions are focused on enhancing early care and education, family support, literacy, and child and family health outcomes for Children as well as early childhood systems-building and can be used right from the start - in homes, early learning environments, and within each community. Smart start local partnerships and community partners can search smart solutions and select options for implementation based on community need. - ncpc served as the fiduciary agent for the North Carolina home visiting & parenting education (hvpe) system throughout fy 2022-2023. The system is led by a statewide collaborative board with the goal of aligning home visiting and parenting education funds and resources, improving home visiting and parenting education services, and linking parents to other supports. - ncpc is committed to increasing individual, organizational, and community level resilience across the state, serving as the backbone agency of the nc healthy and resilient communities initiative (hrci). Community resilience is the capacity to promote safe, secure, and nurturing environments for all within a community. Several local partnerships serve as resiliency leaders and educate, train, and organize community members to prevent aces.as part of the nc hrci, ncpc and the smart start network leverages its deep roots locally, bringing together more than 50 multi-sector community collaboratives to increase their capacity and best implementation strategies towards achieving resiliency across a person's lifespan. Nc hrci builds the long-term capacity of these coalitions to increase protective factors and positive childhood experiences and enhance resilience skills. - through a multi-year grant from the blue cross blue shield of North Carolina foundation, ncpc is investing in a series of projects to increase the smart start network's capacity for systems leadership, supporting leadership development tools, creating opportunities for networkwide learning, strengthening data systems, and streamlining contracting.in fy 2022-2023, the smart start network focused intentionally on innovation and on building network-wide infrastructure that would better lead to system-level change. In Partnership with state agencies, philanthropy, and other organizations, ncpc collaborated on statewide projects and initiatives to enhance the state's ability to support Children and familiesncpc continues to support the smart start network in developing training and coaching that embeds system change and advocacy strategies in the practice of smart start leaders through a blue cross blue sheild foundation (bcbsncf) grant. This year, the waters center provided workshops focused on a deeper dive into the use of specific system thinking tools. In april, the waters center for system thinking repeated a six day introduction series for local Partnership staff. Additionally, the center provided cohort sessions and targeted system thinking tools workshops focused on the application of their system thinking learning to a specific problem of practice for local Partnership staff. Over 90 smart start network staff members have participated in these system thinking opportunities. These learning opportunities advance leadership competencies, deepen network connections, and ensure staff are better ready to respond to community needs.

Dolly parton's imagination library promotes emergent literacy skills through a Partnership with the dollywood foundation. Local organizations select a geographic area to target enrollment in zip codes with Children ages 0-5. Families are recruited to participate and once Children are enrolled, they receive an age-appropriate book in the mail each month up to their fifth birthday. All local partnerships are receiving funding to administer the program and the program is available in every nc zip code. By june 30, 2023, the smart start network distributed more than 15 million books to North Carolina Children. The percentage of eligible Children enrolled has grown from 8% in 2017 to 50% in 2023.