Early Childhood Strategies

The North Texas Area United Way is committed to affecting system changes and funding programs that contribute to the following outcomes:

• Children, age birth to five years, enter kindergarten with skills and experience to learn.
• Children have access to high quality early childhood care and education.

Why are we focusing on early childhood development?

• Research has shown that there is a correlation between higher scores on rating scales for the quality of childcare environments and more positive child development outcomes in areas that are considered important for later school success.
• By the age of five, 90% of the brain’s growth has occurred. Healthy, strong development of the brain’s architecture is largely dependent on the quality and reliability of a young child’s relationships with the important people in his or her life, both within and outside the family.
• Research informs us that children from environments that are less nurturing and supportive start school up to 2 years behind their peers.

What are our strategies?

Direct Impact Through Programs

• Offer quality early childhood development programs to children birth to age 5.
• Assess neighborhood vulnerabilities related to Physical Health and Well-Being, Social Competence, Emotional Maturity, Language and Cognitive Development and Communication skills and general knowledge. Information from assessment will guide community level strategies and interventions
• Improve literacy rates for children

United Way is providing the Imagination Library to over 2,300 families. These families receive a book every month for children birth to age 5. Research demonstrates that families enrolled in the imagination library program read more often to their children, a key factor in increasing literacy.

Indirect Impact Through Changing Systems

The United Way is also working with the community to develop a quality improvement system for improving the quality of early childhood education across our entire community. Components include increasing parent education about the benefits of quality early childhood development programs, the availability of these programs in our community, the barriers to increasing quality of care and programs to incentive providers to provide higher quality childcare.

The Importance of the First Five Years

Early education programs do not supplant parents, but support them as their childs first and most important teacher. The sad reality is that many low-income parents grew up in poverty and may not have the tools to support their childs education. Evidence-based programs coach low-income parents on how to best support their childs education at school and at home starting before the child is born. Only by supporting the family can we narrow the achievement gap and break the cycle of poverty. Check out this video and discover how if we change the first five years, we change everything.

>> The Early Development Instrument (EDI)

>> Race for the Stars

>> The Imagination Library

>> Community Impact Council