This year Early Head Start turned 25. As we enter a new era, with the excitement and planning that comes with a new administration, it is time to pause, to take stock of the program, and look forward to fulfilling the potential that Early Head Start can bring to all eligible children and families.
Health equity is central to DULCE (Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone), a universal, evidence-based pediatric care approach that addresses the social determinants of health and supports early relational health for families with infants. By strategically expanding in communities that are under-resourced and have been marginalized by inaccessible health care systems, DULCE supports families
Being part of the foster care system is brutifal—both beautiful and brutal. This week we welcomed into our home two more children who are part of child welfare. We agreed to this after making a few commitments to ourselves and to our community. We will advocate relentlessly for their family to reunify.
Our latest product, Moving Beyond the Family Engagement Check Box: An Innovative Partnership to Promote Authentic Family Engagement in Systems Change, by CSSP and Family Voices provides valuable insight about best practices for engaging families as well as how to create and implement a process for engaging families in the national Pediatrics Supporting Parents (PSP) initiative to promote the social and emotional development (SED) of young children.
The coronavirus pandemic has underscored the need for robust, anti-racist early childhood systems that support all young children and their families. At a time when families are juggling needs that have both always existed and also worsened due to the pandemic’s effects, this has never been more clear. During the pandemic, the communities participating in
We join with so many others in our country and around the world in mourning the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg was a hero who leaves a huge void in our quest for a more equitable and just society. She was a brilliant, kind, and fiercely committed woman who dedicated
Positive childhood experiences are closely related to CSSP’s Strengthening Families protective factors framework, as Cailin O’Connor explained in a recent blog post. Parents who have the support they need to be strong in their protective factors can give their children more of the positive experiences we know they need, even in times of stress. See
This is a challenging time for progress on equitable, inclusive, fair housing in our country. If you’re unfamiliar with this term of art, “fair housing”– sometimes known as “equal opportunity housing”–refers to the ability to access housing without experiencing unlawful discrimination. This principle underlies the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which codified many important policy reforms necessary to
Child welfare agencies in Minnesota are using the passage of the federal Family First Prevention Services Act as an opportunity to deploy a racial equity impact assessment — in an effort to help public social services organizations determine the effects of their plans on young people of color. In early March, the Minnesota Association of County Social
Today the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual statistics on income, poverty, and health insurance. The data are from 2019, a time which must feel very distant for many families as they send their children back to virtual school, mourn the loss of loved ones, and struggle to put food on the table as they