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Project Description:
In 1993, Governor James B. Hunt Jr. and the North Carolina general assembly passed legislation creating the Smart Start program to ensure that every child should come to school healthy and ready to learn. Smart Start provides high-quality comprehensive early childhood education, family support, and health care. The state invested $57 million in Smart Start in 1995, and the private sector contributed over $14 million in funds and services.
The North Carolina Partnership for Children is a public-private entity created to support and guide the initiative and to build local capacity to sustain investments in young children. The partnership serves as an information clearinghouse and as a provider of technical assistance to Smart Start councils operating in thirty-two counties. Through local Smart Start councils, parents and community, church, and business leaders are creating programs tailored to the needs of local children and families. The Partnership has developed a comprehensive technical assistance plan to strengthen the capacity and sustainability of the local Smart Start councils. It also plans to expand the initiative to twelve more counties beginning in July 1996. Small capacity-building grants will be made to the councils to work on program development and implementation, community mobilization, and financial and organizational development. To strengthen program development at the local level, the partnership will work with communities to expand high-quality early child care and education, preventive health services, and family support programs and to establish well-defined outcome measures for public accountability purposes. To promote the sustainability of Smart Start councils, the partnership will assist in establishing management policies, fundraising plans, and public awareness campaigns at the community level. Electronic networks will be used to facilitate the sharing of information and ideas among the local councils.
Established as a discrete part of the Smart Start initiative to ensure the availability of high-quality day care, the Teacher Education and Compensation Helps project has emerged as a nationally recognized model, using training in child development to improve child care program quality and to reduce the chronic shortage of skilled caregivers. Nearly 2,000 teachers, program directors, and family child care providers have completed the training. Participants in the program receive higher pay and their job turnover rate is far lower than that of most child care workers in the state.
The North Carolina Partnership for Children manages the project and provides matching funds.
Major Program Components:
Contact:
David F. Walker
Executive Director
North Carolina Partnership for Children
1100 Wake Forest Road
Suite 300
Raleigh, NC 27604
Tel: 919/821-7999, ext. 1, Fax: 919/821-8050
E-mail: dwalker@smartstart-nc.org
Web: http://www.smartstart-nc.org
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