Linking the Child Care and Health Care Systems: A Consideration of Options

Funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this report examines strategies for linking the health and child care systems in an effort to improve poor children's health. Studies show that poor, African American and Latino children have less access to health care and worse health outcomes than middle-class or non-Hispanic white children. With this reality in mind, the authors present five key strategies, identifying for each: the resources necessary for implementation, the strategy's potential to improve children's health, and the primary strengths and disadvantages -- including each strategy's promise for reaching the most vulnerable children. Drawing on interviews with experts in policy, health and child care, the report provides funders and policymakers with a framework for thinking about future interventions

Getting It Right: Strategies for After-School Success

This report synthesizes the last 10 years of findings from P/PV's and other researchers' work to address one of the most demanding challenges facing today's after-school programs -- how to create and manage programs that stand the best chance of producing specific, policy-relevant outcomes. It examines recruitment strategies that attract young people to activities, the qualities that make activities engaging and motivate participants to attend regularly, and the infrastructure -- staffing, management and monitoring -- needed to support such activities. The report's final chapter explores the fiscal realities of after-school programming, considering how administrators might stretch existing dollars to enhance services

Working Together to Build Beacon Centers in San Francisco: Evaluation Findings from 1998-2000

Since 1996, private and public funders in San Francisco have supported a city-wide Beacons Initiative. Eight Beacon Centers, located in public schools, serve 7500 youth and adults each year, providing a rich array of developmental activities in the non-school hours. This report looks at how the centers were created; it describes the centers' operation; and investigates the role of the initiative's "theory of change" in organizing and guiding the effort

Children’s Futures: Lessons From a Second-Generation Community Change Initiative

· This article describes Children’s Futures, a 10-year initiative in Trenton, N.J., that seeks to improve the health and well-being of children from 0 to 3 years old and ensure that they are ready for school. · During the first five years, the initiative was successful in implementing a number of evidence-based practices to improve children’s health, such as providing home visits to pregnant women, measuring and improving the quality of day care centers, and improving the use of information systems to track childhood immunizations. · Efforts to provide services for fathers and improve home-based child care were not successful; these are areas in which there are not any evidence-based practices. · Leveraging public and private money beyond the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s substantial $20 million commitment proved challenging because the foundation’s commitment was so large. The authors recommend obtaining agreements for matching funds prior to finalizing commitments. · A lack of attention to initiative-wide communications hindered integration across programs. · A need for a citywide data system was identified; this is being implemented in the second five-year funding cycle

Using Data in Multi-Agency Collaborations: Guiding Performance to Ensure Accountability and Improve Programs

A growing number of foundation- and government-funded initiatives are bringing together diverse partners within communities -- to create screening and referral systems, to coordinate and deliver services and to advocate for policy changes -- all in the interest of serving clients more effectively. Many of these efforts emphasize the use of evidence-based programs, and there is increasing recognition that to be successful, collaborating agencies must work together to collect relevant data and use it to inform and improve their programming

Challenges and Opportunities in After-School Programs: Lessons for Policymakers and Funders

School-based after-school programs are increasingly becoming the solution policymakers suggest for many youth problems: unsupervised time, poor academic achievement, gang participation, violence and drug use. As federal spending increases, policymakers, funders and the public must balance their optimism about the programs' potential with the realities of what they might ultimately achieve. As this report describes, locating these programs in schools brings many benefits, but as the experience of at least one broad-based initiative is demonstrating, it also brings challenges that should be taken into consideration as programs are planned and funded

Collaboration and Community Change in the Children's Futures Initiative

In 2002, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched Children's Futures (CF), a 10-year community change initiative designed to improve the health and well-being of children from birth to age three throughout Trenton, NJ. CF's strategies included efforts to increase residents' access to prenatal and other health services, provide parenting skills education, improve the quality of available childcare and promote preventive healthcare among medical practices. The Foundation engaged P/PV to evaluate the implementation and outcomes of the initiative and to provide ongoing feedback on its progress.This report, and its forthcoming companion, Early Outcomes in a Community Change Effort to Improve Children's Futures, examine the promise of CF strategies. Collaboration and Community Change in the Children's Futures Initiative focuses on program implementation, participant recruitment and collaborations among Trenton's agencies. The second report examines programmatic improvements and early outcomes for CF families. Major findings from both are compiled in Children's Futures' First Five Years

Rising to the Challenge: The Strategies of Social Service Intermediaries

During the past decade, "intermediary organizations" have proliferated across the nonprofit sector. These organizations are typically positioned between funding entities (e.g., government agencies, foundations and corporations) and direct service providers. Intermediaries play an important roll in connecting organizations that share a common interest--and working to enhance the services these organizations provide, build larger service networks, promote quality standards, and monitor programs on behalf of funders