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Project THRIVE

Virtual Policy-Sharing Network

Project THRIVE is designed to help states learn and share information. Our Virtual Policy-Sharing Network (VPSN) engages State Early Childhood Comprehensive System (ECCS) project coordinators and state agency directors involved in system building in collaborative, distance learning.

Upcoming Events

 More coming soon!

Past Webinars

Please note:
You may need to download a free player which is required to watch these calls. You will be asked to log in with your name and email address so that we can keep track of the number of people who listen to the archived calls.

Young Migrant Farmworker Children: An Invisible Population and Systems Reform

  • Monday, May 21, 2007

How much do we really know about this continuously moving, “homeless” population? And how do we best deliver services? How can the State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems grant plans contribute to the well-being of this population?

The presenters addressed those questions and shared their experience as catalysts for system change, and in some instances, using their state early Childhood Comprehensive Systems grant planning and implementation as a vehicle for:

  • Interagency and individual collaboration, and partnership development
  • Access to integrated high quality health and medical homes, early care and education services (Medicaid portability and  designated set-aside child care slots)
  • Measuring children’s well-being through the creation of  benchmarks: Shared Indicators for School Readiness

Presenters:

  • Brenda B. Coakley: National Collaboration Coordinator, Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Collaboration Office
  • Martha Gonzalez-Cortes: Michigan Department of Human Services, Office of Migrant Affairs
  • Deborah C. Nelson: ECCS Grant Coordinator, North Carolina Division of Public Health
  • Loraine Lucinski: ECCS Coordinator, Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services

This web-based archive offers both audio and video.

You may watch and listen to the entire call at the WebEx website. The call is 76 minutes.

 

Growing Healthy Communities: Supporting Development of Community-Level Early Childhood Systems

  • Tuesday, April 24, 2007

In this webinar (based on a half-day pre-conference session at the recent Association for Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) Annual Conference) the speakers presented examples of how early childhood comprehensive systems (ECCS) grantees are supporting community-level systems development; explored tools for community health assessment and development; and reviewed approaches to monitoring process and outcomes.

Speakers included:

  • Sally Fogerty, Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Family and Community Health, Massachusetts Department of Public Health
  • Lorrie Grevstad, Child & Adolescent Health / Kids Matter, Washington Department of Health/MCH
  • Gretchen Hageman, ECCS Director, IA
  • Kay Johnson, Project Director, Project THRIVE
  • Kate Roper, ECCS Director, MA

This web-based conference call provides both audio and video.

You may watch and listen to the entire call at the WebEx website. The call is 78 minutes.

Family Poverty and ECCS

  • Thursday, March 1, 2007

Dr. Nancy Cauthen, the Deputy Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty and nationally recognized expert on family economic security, will speak about the intersection of poverty and early childhood. She will provide a demographic overview of child poverty in the US and review research findings about the effects of poverty on child development. Dr. Cauthen will also discuss various policy responses to child and family poverty, including welfare reform, and what we know about the effectiveness of these policies--especially how they affect young children. Implications for early childhood systems development will be discussed.

This web-based conference call provides both audio and video.

You may watch and listen to the entire call at the WebEx website. The call is 76 minutes. You may also download the file and save it to your computer.

Reducing Disparities & Disparate Risks in Early Childhood

  • Thursday, February 15, 2007

The featured speaker is Dr. Glenn Flores, Professor of Pediatrics, Epidemiology and Health Policy at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Underserved Children, and Director of Community Outcomes in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Dr. Flores will discuss the results of his analyses of the National Survey of Early Childhood Health, particularly the role of parenting and home routines, pediatric providers, and health care coverage. In addition, based on recent analyses by Project THRIVE, Kay Johnson will present a framework for ECCS projects to integrate efforts for reducing disparities into their program and policy work.

The archive of this web-based conference call provides both audio and video.

You may watch and listen to the entire call at the WebEx website. The call is 81 minutes. You also may wish to download the PowerPoint slide presentations used in the call, as well as Dr. Flores' articles.

Advancing Child Care Health Consultation: Policy and Finance Strategies

  • Thursday, November 2, 2006

This Project THRIVE web-based conference call for ECCS Directors provided new information about child care health consultation programs, policy, and finance. We discussed financing strategies and how to garner stakeholder support, with examples from Iowa and Rhode Island. Originally recorded on November 2, 2006, the call speakers were: Blythe Berger: Chief of Early Childhood Policies and Programs, Rhode Island Department of Health; Gretchen Hageman: ECCS Director, Iowa Department of Public Health; Sally Clausen: Healthy Child Care Iowa, Iowa Department of Public Health; and Kim Tichy: Healthy Child Care Iowa, Iowa Department of Public Health. The call was moderated by Patricia Fahey, Director of the Healthy Child Care Consultant Network Support Center (NSC).

You may watch and listen to the entire call at the WebEx website. The call is 90 minutes. You also may wish to download the PowerPoint slide presentations and a PDF handout from Iowa used for the call.

Quality Rating Systems

  • June 15, 2006

This Project THRIVE web-based conference call focuses on Child Care Quality Rating Systems (QRS) and their place in early childhood comprehensive systems (ECCS). Originally recorded on June 15, 2006, speakers for this call were Joan Blough, ECCS Coordinator for Michigan, Lisa Brewer-Walraven, who is responsible for QRS in Michigan, and Judy Collins and Sheri Azer of the National Child Care Information Center. The call was moderated by Lee Kreader, Director of Research Connections at the National Center for Children in Poverty.

You may watch and listen to the entire call at the WebEx website. The call is 88 minutes. You also may wish to download the PowerPoint slide presentations used for the call.

We are pleased to be able to share this information. These calls and Project THRIVE benefit from the support of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration through the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) Grants Initiative.

Past Conferences and Meetings

Strengthening State Systems to Promote Early Childhood Development:
Moving to the Next Level

  • January 18th-19th, 2007, Washington DC: A Joint Meeting Convened by the Federal Head Start, Child Care, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureaus

This meeting was designed to provide 53 state and territorial teams with a variety of learning opportunities, including: plenary presentations, content-focused workshops, peer-to-peer sharing in clusters, and individual state team planning sessions.

Meeting goals:

  1. To strengthen state interagency teams in order to accelerate early childhood systems development.
  2. To enhance collaboration and strengthen partnerships among child care, Head Start, and MCH, as well as education and other partners.
  3. To explore strategies for institutionalizing state-level partnerships, to ensure the sustainability of integrated early childhood systems in a dynamic environment.

Federal Briefing

  • September 18, 2006: Recommendations from the ECCS Policy Roundtable on Reducing Maternal Depression and its Impact on Young Children

Policy-Sharing Roundtable

  • June 22, 2006: Reducing Maternal Depression and its Impact on Infant and Preschool Development: Building a Policy Framework

Past Conference Calls:

ECCS coordinators peer-to-peer learning calls

  • October 4, 2006: Follow-up to the Early Childhood Networking Meeting: Policy Discussion
  • March 23, 2006: Financing to Promote Healthy Mental Development

We welcome your suggestions for future calls. Please contact us at thrive@nccp.org to share your ideas.