2022-2023 A Year in Review: Leveraging the Smart Start Network for Statewide Initiatives
The Smart Start Network works year-round to ensure children and families thrive, creating a brighter future for each child in every community. To celebrate the new year, Smart Start will showcase the impact of the Network with early care and education, family support, early literacy, health and nutrition, and with early childhood system support and building. To learn more about Smart Start, you can read Smart Start’s 2022-2023 Annual Report.
The North Carolian Partnership for Children (NCPC) leverages the Smart Start Network for a variety of statewide initiatives.
NC Healthy & Resilient Communities Initiative (NC HRCI)
One notable example is the NC Healthy & Resilient Communities Initiative (NC HRCI) which works to increase individual, organizational, and community resilience, statewide.
As part of the NC HRCI, NCPC and the Smart Start Network leverages its deep roots locally, bringing together more than 50 multi-sector community collaboratives to increase their capacity and best implementation strategies towards achieving resiliency across a person’s lifespan. NC HRCI builds the long-term capacity of these coalitions to increase protective factors and positive childhood experiences and enhance resilience skills.
NC HRCI highlights include:
- NCPC securing funding for eight community organizations, including three Smart Start Local Partnerships, to develop awareness, skills, and action plans to create community-led strategies to address trauma and resilience goals.
- NC HRCI launching Resilient North Carolina, a website intended for all North Carolinians, with the goal of sharing best practices and connecting individuals and organizations building resilience and reducing trauma statewide.
- NC HRCI launching the NC Healthy & Resilient Data Dashboard to support planning and decision making for county-level investments around resilience.
Local Partnerships have also led resilience initiatives within their own communities. For example:
- Smart Start Local Partnership staff in Bladen, Columbus, and Robeson counties worked together to increase awareness of the four realms of ACEs and resilience as part of the Tri-County Regional Resiliency Workgroup. The three partnerships serve as a backbone organization in each county for moving the needle forward on resilience. The workgroup developed a common agenda and shared measures, participated in the Injury Free NC’s Collaborative Learning Institute, and prioritized 1) coordination of resources and services among community agencies and 2) community support.
Raising Resilience Western NC, a collaborative group of 13 western Smart Start Local Partnerships, aims to strengthen resilience skills throughout individual and organizational levels of early child care communities. The collaborative utilizes strategies like Sesame Street in Communities, Resources for Resilience Reconnect Trainings, and the Center for Trauma Resilient Communities Resilience Academies. Since June 2022, the collaborative has reached over 6000 families through 10 Sesame Street launch events across the region. Over 300 participants have been involved in RRWNC resilience building training strategies!
NCPC also leveraged the Network in:
- Supporting family engagement and leadership coalitions across 14 Local Partnerships to lift up family voice as part of NCPC’s Family Engagement and Leadership Initiative
- Launching Family Connects Pilots in eight rural counties though Preschool Development Grant (PDG) B-5 funding
- Playing a lead role within the Home Visiting and Parenting Education (HVPE) System which works to align funding and resources for HVPE, improve services, and link programs to other supports.
