Each Child. Every Community.

Smart Start helps North Carolina’s youngest children arrive at kindergarten healthy and ready to learn.  Smart Start Local Partnerships
support children and their families through innovation, flexibility, and collaboration, leveraging state support and local resources to support communities.

Each Local Partnership is supported by NCPC, and through the collective power of the Network, each is better equipped to support children, their families, and the professionals and community members that collectively support each child.

Smart Start may focus on a key critical issue to ensure children and families can thrive. NCPC and Local Partnerships will work together to create change across the state–using the collective power of the Network to impact children and families statewide.

Past initiatives include:

• Shape NC: Shape NC: Healthy Starts for Young Children is an initiative of NCPC, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) Foundation, and AmeriCorps, created to increase the number of children starting kindergarten at a healthy weight and ready to learn. For a decade, Shape NC served more than 13,000 children in 27 counties and positively influenced how children approached nutrition, play, and healthy behaviors. Shape NC Technical Assistants and partners trained child care centers on best practices in health and child care centers were also able to design outdoor learning environments (OLEs) for children. NCPC has leveraged knowledge learned from Shape NC to provide additional coaching and TA in a program called Beyond Shape NC: Coaching for Technical Assistants. With Beyond Shape NC, NCPC will collaborate with Child Care Health Consultants (CCHCs) to strengthen health practices, support Local Partnership technical assistance staff, and convene early childhood expertise to support high quality early learning across the state.

 

• Family Connect-Smart Start Pilots: Smart Start and Family Connects International, an evidence-based universal newborn home visiting program, launched a 3-year pilot program in eight counties to serve families of newborns. Participating counties include Watauga, Ashe, Henderson, Polk, Cumberland, Hoke, and Robeson. Funded by the federal Preschool Development Grant, the relationship allowed Smart Start Local Partnerships with the ability to coordinate locally the ability to administer Family Connects. Within the first seven months of launching the Family Connects-Smart Start Pilots, over 1,000 families were served.  Learn more.