Children's Institute

Public policy and advocacy for early childhood care and education: ci creates public policy and advocates for public investment in early childhood programs and services. We do this through a coordinated strategy for developing a bold early childhood policy agenda that engages families and providers and cultivates champions across education and health. We convene Oregon's early childhood coalition (ecc), a partnership of more than 65 state and national organizations who advocate at The state legislature to improve outcomes for Oregon's youngest children and families. We work with and alongside community partners to elevate The voices of parents, providers, and educators. In this work, we emphasize racial equity and economic justice in The development and implementation of an early childhood advocacy agenda for Oregon. Ci translates large-scale research and population census data in ways that influence policy and programs. Our research-based policy recommendations are informed by local and national promising practices, lived experiences of families and providers, community leaders and organizations, and national trends. Our team collaborates across sectors and across geographies to develop and advance recommendations for state investments and laws that increase access to and impact of high-quality early childhood programs and services. We value The research to policy continuum for systems change and use a robust communications strategy to advance ci's vision. That strategy employs a range of tools and tactics that allow us to share vital information about The early childhood landscape, define priority issues, shape policy, illuminate advocacy, and strengthen The narrative around The value and importance of early childhood investments we are actively working to expand our reach in rural areas, low-income communities, and to communities of color in both urban and rural settings.

Supporting healthy development: with our partners at Oregon pediatric improvement partnership (opip) and Oregon health authority (oha), we are developing groundbreaking quality measurement and improvement activities to support early childhood health and development. This includes incentive metrics focused on Children's behavioral and social-emotional health, from birth to age 5. This metric requires medicaid coordinating care organizations (ccos) to examine gaps in social-emotional health services, engage communities in mapping assets, and identifying solutions. Ci contracted with The Oregon health and education collaborative (ohec) to assist them in launching their statewide initiative focused on communities establishing child success blueprints to support The first 1000 days of a child's life.

Supporting early years and early grades success: ci launched early school success (ess) to work with educators and create ecosystems of preschool and elementary alignment built around The best practices in child development. Ess is designed to make this alignment possible while transforming The learning experience to yield better outcomes for children, families, and educators. This is a strategy through which ci facilitators coach diverse teams of teachers, school leaders, early learning staff, and community partners by working with them to identify a problem of practice, create change ideas, and implement new strategies. This process is known as human-centered design and ci is a forerunner in employing this strategy in early childhood education. Key to this approach is centering The whole child, play-centered learning, and neuroscience into a quality improvement process. Ess is a district/schoolwide program that spans three to five years, with The goal to increase continuity and establish system change. The early learning academy (ela) is an intensive one-year cohort-based learning experience for educators and leaders working to strengthen early learning in their district. In addition to The ela training, participants receive exclusive access to a change library that collects and shares change ideas that can be enacted in school settings. Both ess and ela target schools with large historically under-served communities including title 1 schools, rural schools, and schools with large percentages of culturally diverse and dual-language learners. Early works (ew) is a long-term school and community-based initiative launched in 2011. It uses a collective impact approach to support families and young children by establishing preschool classrooms co-located with k-5 elementary schools, building community partnerships, implementing research-based strategies, and connecting families to wraparound support and resources, including rent and utility assistance, and community health workers. Ew has demonstrated transformation and alignment of early learning and elementary grades.

Early childhood equity collaborative: in january 2023, svp portland transferred fiscal sponsorship of The early childhood equity collaborative (ecec) to Children's Institute. The ecec is a coalition of community-based organizations providing culturally specific services and programs to children and families. Ci operates as The fiscal sponsor for The ecec in its efforts to increase investment in culturally specific organizations to provide early childhood programs and shift The public narrative to make equity a public priority in Oregon's early education system.