Hope Street Family Center is a public-private partnership that provides comprehensive child care and preschool education to nearly 2,000 young children in inner-city Los Angeles. Hope Street responds to the varied needs of families with young children through partnerships and agreements to share facilities, staff, and funding with the Los Angeles School District, the County Department of Health Services, the University of California-Los Angeles, and the California Hospital Medical Center. The Ounce of Prevention Fund reaches about 1,200 children daily through its Head Start and Early Head Start programs at 15 ethnically diverse sites around Chicago. The programs include an intense focus on the earliest days, months and years of life, and on fostering social-emotional development and healthy adult-child relationships, given their strong influence on children’s ability to cope, and their level of persistence and self-motivation. www.ounceofprevention.org.

• Child groupings are small enough, and adult-child ratios are low enough, to permit young children (especially babies and toddlers) to have one-on-one time with caregivers.
• Staff turnover is low enough to allow stable, continuing relationships to develop between individual children and adults.
• Staff are culturally sensitive and responsive to the interests and needs of families. Staff encourage active involvement and participation by parents and frequent communication between home and the child care provider. Staff are well-informed, and they share information with parents about practices, schedules, and expectations for the transition to Kindergarten.
• Staff promote connections among parents to help them share child-rearing knowledge and experiences.
• Children interact socially with other children and adults in diverse situations. They learn to take turns, remember and follow directions, and use adults as sources of information, discipline, and enjoyment.

Staff and parents have high, age-appropriate expectations for children's behavior and for their ability to learn and achieve.

	On the basis of lessons from scientific research, clinical practice, and real-world experience, the Ounce of Prevention Fund believes that the quality of training and support offered to staff directly affects the relationships they develop with families and, ultimately, each parent's ability to support their child's healthy development. The Fund provides training and technical assistance through its directly operated Early Head Start and Head Start programs, as well as annual training and face-to-face consultations for hundreds of other Illinois early childhood professionals. Training emphases include staff competencies in the early detection of developmental delays, support for children and families in highly stressed communities, recognition of child abuse and neglect, and language development. www.ounceofprevention.org/index.php?section=programs&action=program&program=3

	Curiosity Corner, a national program operating in multiple locations, gives preschool teachers 38 weekly guides with a detailed learning focus and objectives across developmental domains. Purposeful play and learning activities are supported by theme-related books and materials.

• Engaging children as active learners in solving problems, making predictions, and discussing experiences
• Structuring daily activities and routines
• Providing opportunities for responsive interaction with adults, play time with peers, talk about numbers and books, and opportunities to recall/retell stories
• Providing a literacy-rich environment Child care providers take into consideration the needs of families when selecting hours of operation for child care services.

• Monitor the provision of high-quality child care
• Develop or adopt a certification process to gauge and improve the quality of child care providers and to ensure that poor-quality or dangerous programs are eliminated
• Assure the continuity of care for individual children, and minimize administrative burdens on parents and providers
• Help providers mobilize specialized help for individual children and families, including consultation for child care staff whose clients face special challenges, crises, or chronic difficulties
• Ensure that child care staff (including family child care providers) have access to training, technical assistance, decent wages and benefits, accreditation, and other resources
• Help businesses and child care providers (public and private) form partnerships or networks to improve the quality and affordability of child care
• Create links among services for child care, health care, mental health, substance abuse, developmental assessment, and child protection
• Ensure that all out-of-home caregivers, including parents, "kith and kin" caregivers, family child care providers, and child care professionals receive information, training, supervision, supportive services and technical assistance on caring for infants, toddlers, and young children (especially those with special needs)

The community has the capacity to advocate for:

	The goal of the Allegheny County Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), a program of United Way, is to create high-quality early education services in 80 targeted high-risk neighborhoods in and around Pittsburgh. ECI has attracted more than $36 million in funding since it began in 1996, including a HUD grant of $1 million to establish ECI in public housing. With the guidance of broadly based Neighborhood Coalitions, neighborhoods assess the status of young children, families, and early education resources and propose systems of high-quality early childhood services to replace the existing patchwork of services. Substantial time and energy has been devoted to linking and integrating funding sources and providers and to changing perspectives and practices. Policy work by ECI managers helps to develop cross-system agreements with state and locally funded services providers, including a uniform intake form for early education services. www.nccic.org/ccpartnerships/ profiles/allegheny.htm Despite a recent shortfall in the Illinois state budget, the Ounce of Prevention Fund and advocates from across the state secured a nearly $30 million expansion of the Early Childhood Block Grant, an historic increase that will serve more at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds as well as children younger than 3 and their families.www.ounceofprevention.org

• More child care funding from all sources, to levels and on terms that support high-quality care for all families (especially those whose children are at highest risk)
• Increasing the number and proportion of parents of young children, especially infants and toddlers, who are able to choose between paid parental leave and child care that is nurturing, trustworthy, and affordable
• Efforts by the appropriate state and community governance bodies to collaboratively (and continually) assess child care needs and expand child care capacity, including through infant/toddler centers and family child care settings
• Efforts by the appropriate jurisdictions to establish, monitor, and enforce basic quality standards and to help diverse types of child care providers meet quality standards, gain accreditation, and become licensed
• Coherent, well-coordinated plans for the appropriate governance body to help programs achieve high quality, by strengthening professional development, training, program accreditation, facility licensing, governance, and funding; include opportunities for providers to enhance their management skills.

Local coalitions foster a network of child care environments that all meet high-quality standards but differ in how they:

	The Haitian Health Institute, with support from Boston Medical Center, serves as facilitator and networking point for the Haitian Multi-Service Center of Dorchester, Massachusetts. The center prepares and assists immigrants in their move toward social and economic self-sufficiency. In addition to child care, it provides education; adult and children’s health services; emergency support; immigration services; and HIV/AIDS counseling, case management, and support. www.bmc.org/program/haiti/ hcomfact.html#anchor643617.

• Respond to family beliefs about education and child rearing
• Support cultural and linguistic heritages
• Meet families' work-related needs for care during nights, weekends, summers, and holidays

Local coalitions undertake campaigns to shape community norms in ways that confirm the long-term importance of:

• Making out-of-home care stable, affordable, and high-quality
• The inter-relatedness of social, emotional, and cognitive development

	In Chicago, a high-profile group of representatives from the media, business, direct service agencies, and the government launched a citywide Heart Start public awareness campaign. With matching funds from local foundations and businesses, the group drew attention to the social and emotional characteristics that underlie cognitive achievement. www.zerotothree.org/sch_read.html In Dade County, Florida, community leaders spearheaded a range of efforts, including collaborating with the local PTA, to develop two-day Heart Start awareness training sessions for high school students. A local university joined in the campaign by including content on social and emotional development in its new certification program for teachers of children from birth to age four. www.zerotothree.org/sch_read.html

Local coalitions keep funders and policymakers informed about barriers to effective action that require solutions at the funding, policy, or regulatory level.

	The Birth to Five Project of the Illinois-based Ounce of Prevention Fund brings together early childhood practitioners, government agency staff, health care providers, advocates, researchers and others to identify system gaps and barriers that stand in the way of families' ability to protect, educate, and nurture and support the development of their young children and to develop solutions.

The community enlists child care providers in working with neighborhood-based child welfare services and intensive family support to prevent and respond to abuse and neglect.

Local coalitions promote access to high-quality, out-of-home child care by:

• Maintaining information and referral networks that offer easily accessible, useful information about child care options and supports
• Making knowledge about how to recognize, find, and enroll children in high-quality, stable out-of-home care universally available
• Providing training, technical assistance, facilities support, and quality assessments to child care providers

	Child care providers who participate in a quality assessment program under KIDS NOW (Kentucky) receive free technical assistance and monetary incentives to improve their quality. The Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County, Florida, helps local child care centers enhance their facilities and obtain equipment, training, and other assistance. The program hires staff who represent the cultures of the children enrolled and speak the languages of their parents. All materials are printed in the three languages spoken by participants, and interpreters are provided at all events. World of Difference training is provided to staff through the Miller Early Childhood Initiative. The Program for Infant/Toddler Caregivers, operating in California and other states, provides child care staff with pre- and in-service training that emphasizes children’s developmental and learning needs. The program also offers educational materials, a certification program for infant and toddler caregivers, and an annual conference. Ready to Learn Providence maintains a small grants program to enable child care providers (especially family and home-based providers) to purchase developmentally appropriate educational materials. Child care providers may use the funds to purchase packages developed by Ready to Learn or can propose their own project.. Ready to Learn provides technical assistance to applicants in preparing proposals, which are reviewed and prioritized by community members and childcare professionals. http://www.r2lp.org

• Enable all families to afford high-quality, out-of-home care
• Make subsidies easy for parents to obtain (e.g., through annual eligibility determinations, mail-in applications) · Allow choice of providers
• Retain the child's subsidy on terms that promote continuity of care, even if family circumstances change

States and the federal government fully fund programs that directly provide high-quality child care combined with early education and supportive services, including Head Start and Early Head Start. States support preschool programs, supplement Head Start and Early Head Start, subsidize child care, and provide block grants to localities.

Policymakers and funders ensure that investments in child care are made on terms that support high quality services. Toward this end, they:

• Ensure that child care providers have decent wages, benefits, and other incentives to minimize staff turnover and maximize staff continuity
• Ensure that child care staff receive all income and work support for which they are eligible
• Facilitate continuous child care coverage for families using subsidized child care programs, Head Start, Early Head Start, publicly funded preschool, and pre-Kindergarten programs
• Support quality improvements, including professional development and training, program accreditation and licensing, technical assistance, monitoring, and enforcement of standards
• Ensure that as public subsidies increase, an increasing proportion of funds are set aside for improving the quality of child care
• Make direct operating support available to ensure that programs that meet quality standards can develop and sustain stable, high-quality services
  
  
  

  	The Kansas Early Head Start Expansion provides early, continuous, and intensive child development and family support services to low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers. It uses the state’s TANF Block Grant and federal program funds to enable grantees to offer early, continuous services to three-year-old children who would not otherwise receive Head Start services until age four. The program also delivers services through home visits, center-based child care, and family child care providers. Early Head Start programs make money available to their child care partners for equipment and supplies needed to meet federal standards, and program staff make weekly visits to provide guidance.

  
  
• Provide specialized capital and technical support for the construction and renovation of physical facilities used to provide high-quality child care in low-income communities
• Encourage a full array of supports (e.g., scholarships, career ladders, compensation enhancements), training, and professional development for all child care providers, including home-based caregivers
• Make support available for child care information and referral networks · Provide at least six months of child care subsidies as transition supports when families leave welfare, without additional application or recertification requirements
• Enable parents to retain child care subsidies on terms that promote continuity of care, even if the family's economic circumstances change

	IFF is a community lender that provides low-interest loans and technical assistance to non-profits, including child care providers, for facilities renovation and construction. The Fund pulls together the public- and private-sector resources and expertise necessary to support capital improvements. Partners include the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the City of Chicago, national and local foundations, financial institutions, community development corporations, and child care providers. www.iff.org