Thrive Washington

Family engagementincludes: home visiting services account (hvsa)in 2011, Thrive & several stakeholders & community partners worked together to develop a Washington state home visiting plan that articulates high-level goals & prioritized objectives for infrastructure-building & implementation of a home visiting system. The hvsa was established by the state legislature. The department of children, youth, and families oversees hvsa grants and contracts; Thrive supports programs and help communities expand ongoing availability of services, service delivery & access, and quality & accountability. Thrive continues to make great progress in ensuring that Washington's vulnerable families have access to high-quality, evidence-based home visiting services.1. Serving families - the hvsa serves about 2,500 children statewide with a variety of home visiting models that meet the needs of diverse populations.2. Developing the field - funds work to increase the state's capacity to not only serve more families, but also serve them with the highest quality. Thrive hv team helps make sure programs have what they need to deliver on their model's promise to children and families. 3. Centralizing support & empowering communities - the hvsa portfolio approach opens the door to diverse models & programs, so that communities can get what fits best. With hvsa funding comes technical assistance & training that supports improved home visiting implementation to meet outcomes.

Grants & program innovation (formerly fel)includes: stem and early mathin fall 2018, Thrive Washington released the results of two early math research projects.the early math system and resource analysis was produced by Thrive in partnership with the state department of children, youth, and families (dcyf) and Washington stem. Funding for this project was provided by the boeing company. The analysis was designed to identify key people, activities, and resources supporting early math learning for both children and adults in Washington. The analysis had two primary objectives: 1. Increase stakeholder awareness of key strengths and opportunities that exist in the state, and 2. Generate recommendations to the field about how to prioritize efforts in the future. Begun in november 2016 with funding from the boeing company, the early math pilot was a collaboration between Thrive Washington, zeno and child care resources aimed at increasing equitable access to high-quality learning experiences by incorporating zeno math games into kaleidoscope play & learn groups. Organizational research services impact evaluated the pilot.

Community momentumincludes: community momentum and advocacya strong early learning system is built through strong partnerships at the local, regional, tribal and state levels. For the past decade, Thrive has helped fund and support the state's 10 early learning regional coalitions with its community momentum granting strategy. The regions are key to the implementation and sustainability of Washington state's early learning efforts. A strong regional infrastructure helps ensure that statewide and local organizations work together, tap into each other's wisdom, have the capacity to understand the changing demographics and needs of children and families, and set strategy to take action collectively so that all children have a greater opportunity to be successful in school and in life, particularly those furthest from opportunity.in addition to grants, Thrive provides regular individual and group support to help the regions lead their community's early learning work. During the 2019 fiscal year, Thrive provided capacity building assistance to the 10 coalitions, enabling them to expand and diversify membership, influence state-level policy at the department of early learning, and help plan their fifth annual advocacy day in olympia for regional representatives to meet one-on-one with their local legislators. Thrive also provided the coalitions with funds specifically to engage more parents in their advocacy work. Grants helped support local events, trainings and storytelling.during the 2019 fiscal year, the 10 individual coalitions joined together to form Washington communities for children (wcfc) and became a stand-alone organization. This was the last year that Thrive will serve as an intermediary for early learning regional coalition funds. Thrive and wcfc used the fiscal year to transition knowledge.