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In This Issue
- Register for NDM
- New Resources
- Spotlight: Impact & Practice
- Recent Work With Partners
- Our Impact in 2023
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📣 Registration Closes Soon for NDM 2024! 📣 | | |
Desmond P. Kelly, MD Nurturing Developing Minds Conference & Research Symposium
"Cultivating Lifelong Family Wellbeing"
Part of a 2-day event, in partnership with Furman University’s
Institute for the Advancement of Community Health (IACH), with a generous sponsorship by Prisma Health Children's Hospital and Prisma Health Education and Research Institute.
Speakers include Chanel L. Porchia-Albert CD, CPD, CLC, CHHC, Kortney James, PhD, RN, PNP-C, Dorothy Cilenti DrPH, and David Willis, MD.
March 7-8, 2024
Furman University - Younts Conference Center
Greenville, SC
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Our team has exciting new resources to share! Visit the Resources library on our website for more educational tools and resources covering early childhood topics such as measurement and evaluation, policy, and financing strategies. | |
Early childhood measurement and assessment is central to the work of professionals spanning many sectors, including early learning, pediatric and maternal health, infant and early childhood mental health, family support services, policy/advocacy, and more. Yet choosing the right measure for a given setting or purpose can feel overwhelming. Measures can be difficult to find, understand, or interpret, often leading to incorrect use of the measure or misalignment with a given community’s values or needs. | |
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Our team of early childhood experts at the Institute for Child Success developed the IMPACT Measures Tool® to address these challenges and empower early childhood professionals, programs, and organizations to find the measures and assessments that best fit their unique needs. The IMPACT Framework serves to guide users as they learn about measurement concepts to select the measures that best align with their values and needs using the IMPACT Measures Tool®.
Use the IMPACT Measures Tool® to find measures that meet your community's needs in 4 key areas: cost, usability, cultural relevance, and technical merit.
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Leading for Children Evaluation Brief | |
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Leading for Children (LFC) promotes self-empowerment and equitable partnerships among adults to improve outcomes for children. Through their Humanity First Model, LFC takes a holistic approach to early care and education. LFC’s Mutual Learning Method utilizes facilitation strategies to elevate the diversity, wisdom, and dignity of all adults in the child’s ecosystem.
Since 2022, we have been supporting LFC's work with children and adults. Our team of experts worked with LFC in developing a Theory of Change, and designing a multi-year evaluation approach aligned with program mechanisms and expected short- and long-term outcomes. We designed the 2022-23 evaluation to help LFC better capture their participants' changes in attitudes, skills, and behaviors over time. Our work in 2023-24 focuses on collecting data about even more specific changes in adult behaviors and how these affect the child’s experiences. With this information, LFC will be better positioned to convey the depth and breadth of their impact on the development of children.
ICS is proud to support LFC's work through our measurement & evaluation solutions. We support early childhood programs across the nation through thought partnership, program development & scaling support, measurement & evaluation guidance, and more. Learn about our Measurement & Evaluation services here.
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Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH): Using Measurement Across the Continuum of Care | |
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The term “mental health” may first call to mind the treatment services delivered by licensed mental health professionals. However, IECMH encompasses a much broader range of supports and services including the areas of promotion and prevention in addition to clinical intervention. IECMH involves a wide range of professionals such as pediatricians, nurses, community health workers, social workers, psychologists, teachers, home visitors, and more, that work together in the promotion of mental health, prevention of mental health conditions, and delivery of mental health interventions.
In this resource...
- Understanding IECMH
- The Continuum of Care
- Example Measures
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Population-Level Measurement for
Early Childhood Development Monitoring
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Population-level measurement is used to assess children’s well-being within and across groups, such as early learning communities, states, regions or countries.
To use population-level measures to inform these policies, decision makers must ensure the domains being measured (e.g. social-cognition) apply to all members of the population regardless of context, including cultural, linguistic, geographic, and more. Then, the data from these measures can be used to inform system-level decisions to support young children and families.
In this resource...
- The what, when & how of population measurement
- Equity considerations
- Example population measures
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ICS Team Spotlight: Impact & Practice | |
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ICS offers a variety of services across the early childhood ecosystem. One area of our work is Impact & Practice, which focuses on supporting and building equitable early childhood systems across the nation by leveraging measurement. Here is a snapshot of several projects our team is currently working on:
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Early Childhood Development Health Systems - Evidence to Impact Center (ECDHS EIC): ICS continues to lead the evaluation efforts for the national TA Center. In the coming months, ICS will lead evaluation TA efforts in state level early childhood developmental health systems to individual states and their ECDHS EIC teams.
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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MA DESE): Identification and Approval of Preschool Language and Literacy Assessments. ICS continues to consult on the procurement proposal process for preschool language and literacy assessments for the state of MA. ICS is developing information briefs and webinar to support the launch of these assessments to inform instruction.
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Measures for Early Success Initiative: This initiative is working to better understand how assessments for children aged 3 to 5 are selected, implemented, scaled, and interpreted to create more equitable early childhood systems. As part of this work, which is led by MRDC with support from the Gates Foundation, ICS is conducting interviews/listening sessions with early childhood experts at the state and local level. Analysis of these interviews will be used to understand what the current challenges are in assessment use and to identify potential mechanisms for improving child outcomes through meaningful culturally relevant early childhood assessment.
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The IMPACT Measures Tool: Continuing to add new measurement tools, as well as to review and update existing tools, to our interactive database.
If you are interested in working with our Impact & Practice team, contact Aimée Drouin Duncan at aduncan@instituteforchildsuccess.org.
Have you used the IMPACT Measures Tool to inform your work? We'd love to hear from you! Please complete our brief survey.
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Recent Work With Our Partners | |
MIECHV All-Grantee Meeting 2024 | |
Our Chief Science & Innovation Officer Dr. Tyson Barker presented at the MIECHV All-Grantee Meeting this past month. MIECHV, or Maternal and Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting, is an initiative by the Human Resources & Services Administration to provide home visiting services to pregnant people and parents with young children. This year's theme was "Collaborating on a new era for MIECHV." Dr. Barker presented with Nikki Shearman, Chief of Research and Innovation at Reach Out and Read, and David Willis, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy, on equitable methods to measure early relational health. | Duke Endowment Centennial Celebration | ICS Board Member Dr. Desmond P. Kelly with ICS CEO Jamie Moon, Chief Equity Officer Mary C. Garvey, and Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel Bryan Ford Boroughs. | The ICS team recently attended the The Duke Endowment Centennial Celebration - Celebrating 100 Years of Commitment to the Carolinas. This event focused on commemorating this milestone through the stories of impact of the Duke Endowment's grantees. ICS is grateful for the support of The Duke Endowment. | |
Jacksonville's River City Readers | |
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River City Readers is a literacy challenge for school aged children that will run through 2024, located in Jacksonville, Florida. This challenges aims to achieve at least 20 minutes of reading time each day, for a grand total of over 300,000 minutes through the year, to help improve literacy rates among children.
ICS will partner with Family Learning Partnership to scale the Reach Out and Read Initiative in Jacksonville. ICS and Family Learning Partnership participated in the launch of River City Readers, Mayor Deegan's literacy initiative.
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Palmetto Shared Services Alliance | | |
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Palmetto Shared Services Alliance (PSSA) has announced that membership is free for all licensed and registered childcare programs in South Carolina! The PSSA is a system of online and onsite supports designed to save time, money and improve over-all quality of childcare and after school programs in South Carolina. The Palmetto Shared Services Alliance was founded in 2016 with support and funding from Greenville First Steps. Greenville First Steps continues to support and partner with PSSA. Palmetto Shared Services Alliance is also supported by South Carolina Child Care Resource & Referral Network, The Institute for Child Success, SC Childcare, and The South Carolina Program for Infant and Toddler Care. | |
In Case You Missed It: Our Impact in 2023 | |
Thanks to your support, we've helped improve the lives of millions of young children and their families! Learn more about our wins below: | |
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Our Impact Across The Nation
Our wins:
- Served children in 26 states
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48 initiatives & projects
- Reaching over 26.5 Million children through the IMPACT Measures Tool
- Helping to catalyze over $866 Million for South Carolina children
- Reducing newborn ER visits by more than half in Spartanburg, SC
- Providing continuing education for 210 early childhood professionals
- Creating a Unifying Tool for early childhood systems
Read our full report of 2023 wins here.
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The Impact of IMPACT
IMPACT's 2023 wins:
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26.5 Million young children & families reached
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500,000 children served through early childhood workforce outreach
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40,000 visits to the IMPACT Measures Tool
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1,800 outreach attendees
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405 early childhood measures scored and added to IMPACT
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50 states where IMPACT has been accessed
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26 educational resources on measurement
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24 conference presentations
Read our full report on the Impact of IMPACT in 2023 here.
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Learn more about the IMPACT Measures Tool here. IMPACT is a free, interactive collection of measures to help early childhood professionals select the measures that are the best fit for the communities they serve. ICS created a science-backed scoring system to analyze the strengths of each measure holistically, including its cost, usability, cultural relevance, and technical merit. | |
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Our Impact In South Carolina
ICS helped catalyze.....
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$866 million for SC families since 2010
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$53 Million annually in new statewide preschool expansion
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$33 Million toward quality nurse home visiting
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$8.5 Million for Hello Family Spartanburg
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500,000 working families benefiting from Earned Income Tax Credit
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53,000 children receiving books from Reach Out and Read
Read our full report of ICS's 2023 wins in South Carolina here.
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“The ECCA (Early Childhood Common Agenda) has made me gain confidence in a way I never thought I could. Being a member of the ECCA means I have become a voice for those without one. Being a part of the ECCA means I have become someone I didn’t think I could be. I am a Latina leader working daily to advocate for positive change... I wouldn’t be where I am as an advocate, a leader, or a person without the ECCA and the continuing support and encouragement of everyone involved!”
-Nicole, Community Health Worker
“I think of ICS as being at the forefront of the innovation in social services - there is so much going on in the early childhood world, lots of evidence-based practices that service providers are thinking hard about how to implement and implement well in their community. I think of ICS as a thought leader and as a supporter of those initiatives.”
-Deirdre, Nonprofit Director
"ECCA is a ray of hope, for we are taking our lead from families, parents, and children who are living this experience... it has rejuvenated my spirit and determination to make learning and growing for our youngest children more developmentally appropriate and sustaining."
-Crystal, Executive Director of Dorchester County First Steps & ICS Board Member
“I will use what I learned to develop better ways to serve the preschoolers in my county.”
-Webinar attendee
“The IMPACT Measures Tool’s educational content increased my responsibility for workplace measurement and improved my ability to generate high-quality data at work.”
-IMPACT Measures Tool user
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ICS works on behalf of children from prenatal to age 8.
You can support our work by helping to
fund our research and advocacy.
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