Iowa Administrative Code › Agency 249 - Early Childhood Iowa State Board › Chapter 1 - Early Childhood Iowa Initiative › Rule 249-1.3 - Definitions

Current through Register Vol. 47, No. 3, July 24, 2024
For the purpose of these rules, the following definitions
				apply:
"Alignment"
means state- and community-level
				efforts to integrate early care, health, and education systems and to enhance
				state and community partnerships through innovative approaches.
"Assessment"
means to identify for children
				and their families all formal and informal supports, assets and resources, as
				well as gaps, in an early childhood Iowa area. An assessment includes community
				wide data, statistics, and facts upon which to base decisions to develop a
				community plan and to identify priorities to reach the desired results.
"Citizen representative"
means a member of an
				early childhood Iowa board who is not an elected official or a paid staff
				member of an agency whose services fall under the plan or purview of the area
				board either directly or indirectly.
"Community partners"
means individuals, early
				childhood service providers, and staff of other programs or agencies that
				communicate, coordinate and collaborate with an area board.
"Community plan"
means the local plan adopted
				by the area board following input from the community. The plan elements include
				a comprehensive analysis of needs, gaps, and strengths, and the goals,
				objectives and action steps to implement the plan in the early childhood Iowa
				area. The community plan is also referred to in Iowa Code chapter 2561 as the
				school ready children grant plan.
"Decategorization project"
means the human
				services decategorization of child welfare and juvenile justice funding project
				operated under Iowa Code section 232.188.
"Department"
means the Iowa department of
				management.
"Designation"
means the status awarded by the
				state board to an early childhood Iowa area meeting the criteria established by
				the state board.
"Early childhood Iowa area"
or
"area"
means a geographic area as defined by the local
				community and designated by the state board.
"Early childhood Iowa area board"
or
"area board"
means the governing board for an early childhood
				Iowa area.
"Early childhood Iowa fund"
means a fund
				created in the state treasury from which moneys are distributed to early
				childhood Iowa areas for the purpose of supporting children and their
				families.
"Early childhoodlowa office"
means a state
				unit within the department of management to coordinate the early childhood Iowa
				initiative.
"Early childhood Iowa state board"
or
"state board"
means the state of Iowa's early childhood Iowa
				board as appointed by the governor that meets the membership criteria of
				citizens and state agency directors as voting members and legislators as
				nonvoting members.
"Early childhood stakeholders alliance"
or
"early childhood Iowa stakeholders alliance"
means the early
				childhood stakeholders alliance created in Iowa Code chapter 2561.
"Elected official"
means a member of a board
				or governing body elected through a public election.
"Evidence-based"
means that a program has
				completed a randomized control trial conducted by an independent researcher and
				has demonstrated positive results for children and families. "Evidence-based"
				may also include research conducted by the program that has been published in a
				peer-reviewed journal that also demonstrates positive results for children and
				families. To be evidence-based, the program must include stringent standards
				for program replication including standards for implementation and monitoring
				to ensure that the program is being operated with fidelity to the original
				model.
"Family support programs"
includes group-based
				parent education or home visiting programs that are designed to strengthen
				protective factors, including parenting skills, increasing parental knowledge
				of child development, and increasing family functioning and problem solving
				skills.
"First years first"
means a public-private
				partnership for early childhood in Iowa, which includes an account created in
				the early childhood Iowa fund under the authority of the department of
				management to be used for first years first.
"Fiscal agent,"
as designated by an area
				board, means a public agency as defined in Iowa Code section 28E.2; a community
				action agency as defined in Iowa Code section 216A.91; a nonprofit corporation;
				or an area education agency as defined in Iowa Code chapter 273.
"Funding sources"
means a comprehensive fiscal
				assessment of identified sources and amounts to support children zero through
				five years of age.
"Home visitation"
means a strategy to deliver
				family support or parent education services. A home visit is a face-to-face
				visit with a family in the family's home or other alternate location to
				facilitate meeting the family's goals.
"Indicator"
means a measure that indirectly
				quantifies the achievement of a result.
"Members of the public"
means individuals who
				meet the definition of citizen representative on an area board.
"Parent"
or
"grandparent"
or
"guardian"
means a parent or primary caregiver of a child from
				birth to kindergarten entry, including a grandparent, other relative of the
				child, or foster parent; or a noncustodial parent who has an ongoing
				relationship with, and at times provides physical care for, the child.
"Performance measure"
means a measure that
				assesses a program, activity, or service.
"Result"
means the effect desired for
				Iowans.
"State agency"
means a department of the
				executive branch including, but not limited to, the departments of economic
				development, education, human rights, human services, public health, and
				workforce development.
"Technical assistance"
means an ongoing,
				systematic and interactive process that is designed to achieve results and that
				enables knowledge from research, policy and evidence-based practices to be
				shared in partnerships through a variety of strategies with specific groups,
				agencies, communities and other partners to use within their unique
				contexts.
"Technical assistance team"
means the early
				childhood Iowa office in the department of management and identified personnel
				from the state departments of economic development, education, human rights,
				human services, public health, and workforce development that provide the
				day-to-day operational work of local- and state-level early childhood Iowa and
				support to the state board.