Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative Evaluation: Phase II Final Report. Executive Summary
Author: Fischer, Rob
Date: 2005-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Welfare Services,Poverty Programs,Data Analysis,Child Abuse,Caregiver Training,Child Caregivers,Parent Education,Technical Assistance,Special Needs Students,Medical Services,Strategic Planning,Program Improvement,Young Children,Program Effectiveness,Counties,Local Government,Kindergarten,Family Programs,Urban Environment,Program Evaluation,Child Care,At Risk Persons,Disabilities,Preschool Education,Public Policy,Policy Analysis,Agency Cooperation,Childhood Needs,Family Needs,Child Health,Child Welfare,Public Agencies,Private Sector,Early Parenthood,Community Health Services,Social Indicators,Disadvantaged,Capacity Building,Outcome Measures,Home Visits

Since mid-1999, a bold initiative has been underway in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to improve the well-being of the youngest members of the greater Cleveland community. A community-wide initiative targeting children from birth through age five and their families was launched in July 1999, and in the following 5 years demonstrated substantial success in developing a universal and comprehensive approach for supporting families with young children. The Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), renamed Invest in Children in late 2004, provides a powerful case example of how one urban community recognized the needs of its young children and their families and sought to address them in an ongoing, comprehensive, and multifaceted way. This executive summary highlights the core elements of the Initiative and describes the experiences of the collaborators in meeting the needs of young children and their families and improving the outcomes for children. The main findings of the report include: (1) A community-wide network of services for young children and their families has been established, and the apparatus of county government has been altered to directly support and coordinate early childhood services; (2) More children under age six in Cuyahoga County are receiving needed services at earlier ages than ever before; (3) Children and their parents are beginning to show benefits from the services provided through the Initiative; (4) Efforts to deepen and extend the services, tailor them to individual needs, and assure continuing quality should continue; and (5) The public and private partners who established this Initiative have maintained their commitment for half a decade and recently recommitted to it, with a new strategic plan that outlines a continued focus on program improvement based on evaluation. The evaluation identified areas of ongoing challenge and recommendations to address these include: (1) Develop supplemental approaches to home-based strategies, involving individualized services tailored to caregiver characteristics, to engage (1) more at-risk families, and (2) family child care providers; (2) Develop a system to identify and intervene with families with a young child who lacks a consistent source of medical care (i.e., a medical home); (3) Promote quality improvement strategies for family child care and home visiting that include attracting qualified and motivated individuals to deliver services; (5) Continue supports and services for children with special needs; (4) Continue efforts to expand newborn home visiting beyond first time and teen parents; and (5) Advocate for high quality preschool programs and universal pre-kindergarten programs. (Contains 16 footnotes.) [This paper was submitted by the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences of the Case Western Reserve University with the Chapin Hall Center for Children of the University of Chicago and with consultants from Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the full report, &quot;Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative Evaluation: Phase II Final Report,&quot; see ED533517.]