Strong Start

Vision: All Maine children receive a healthy start and arrive at kindergarten developmentally prepared to succeed in school and life.

What young children need to thrive has been researched and well documented for decades, but MaineCF learned there are critical gaps between established best practices and the opportunities available to children and families in Maine. Our research showed that early childhood leaders and organizations lack a shared blueprint on how to help children and families thrive. The public and some policymakers did not understand how supporting early childhood benefits everyone. Service providers within communities did not always collaborate in supporting children and families, or connecting them to resources.

We saw opportunities to help communities connect and improve services while promoting the importance of early childhood education to policymakers.

What MaineCF did

MaineCF uses a range of strategies to support the goal of a strong start for all Maine children. Our guiding approach was to partner with and support the people, communities, and organizations working to improve the lives of young children and families. Our strategies included supporting community-level work, advocating for policy change, and promoting awareness of early-childhood issues.

The Early Childhood Community Grants program was designed to support communities in creating their own change. We selected six communities to invest in as grant sites for three years of funding. Planning grants in the first year helped each community create a community profile that identified the early childhood population, resources and barriers. That profile informed an action plan to coordinate existing resources and develop a strategy to overcome selected barriers. In the second and third years, communities received funding to implement those plans.

The Aroostook County Action Program discovered that transportation was the biggest need for young families in the Presque Isle region. With partners, they instituted a popular new bus route providing thousands of rides each year. When COVID made a public bus an unsafe option, they were able to use that foundation and knowledge to adapt quickly with safe transportation alternatives.
Healthy Peninsula found that communities in their service area of the Blue Hill Peninsula and Stonington-Deer Isle felt disconnected, so they began compiling a family resource center and guide and created a peer network for child care providers to help share ideas and navigate the COIVD pandemic safely.
Concerned about disparities in access to child care in Portland, Starting Strong developed an advocacy kit and communications materials to engage the local community and build relationships across cultural barriers. This early work identified the limited availability of child care as a priority and led to collaborations with adult education programs to expand workforce training.
United Way of Eastern Maine discovered that the Piscataquis region has little access to state resources and stigma that prevent families from seeking needed supports. UWEM found ways to reduce barriers, such as providing resources through established and trusted community organizations, creating a smartphone app to identify local resources, and partnering with a local hospital to provide childbirth and child development education, classes and playgroups.
Concerns about school readiness inspired United Way of York County to organize multi-sector community discussions around quality measures for child care and linkages between the child care and public school systems. Through this network they were able to offer support and assistance to help child care meet statewide standards and qualify for additional financial support.
Wabanaki Health & Wellness wanted to support family members who were seeking connection to culture and community. They developed a food and literacy program for tribal families statewide that was flexible enough to continuing providing critical support during the pandemic.

“We're nine different towns with nine different leaderships and eight different elementary schools. And they're all tiny and we all kind of really operate on our own and yet we're all one larger community. So I think this [grant program] really helps kind of bring that collaborative work to the table where communication has started happening a little bit more seamlessly. And we were able to look at those silos and how we can break those down.” –Early Childhood Community Grant participant

In addition to community level work, MaineCF participated in, partnered with and supported several important statewide initiatives and organizations to address pressing early childhood issues. They include:

Right from the Start, a broad coalition that promotes a common vision and effective policies and resources to support young children and families in Maine through coordinated legislative and regulatory advocacy
Invest in Tomorrow, a coalition of groups and individuals working on policies and programs with a goal to reduce Maine’s childhood poverty rate in half.
Maine Early Childhood Funders Group, a forum for shared learning among funders that support investments in early childhood.
Maine Association for the Education of Young Children, to support a project in collaboration with the Maine Department of Education to improve the transition from child care to the public school systems for children and families.
Maine Resilience Building Network works to bring about awareness and change that addresses the systematic inequities and root causes of poor public health and health-related outcomes related to Adverse Childhood Experiences.
CEI’s Child Care Business Lab, to help increase the number and quality of child care centers in Maine through an entrepreneurial training program with a curriculum focused on licensing, business plan development, and other essential tools to open or expand a for-profit or non-profit child care center.
Educate Maine, to engage business leaders as advocates for support of early childhood education and development, linking such support to Maine’s ability to have a robust, healthy, current, and future workforce.

More information

MaineCF’s 2017 Invest in Maine Summit, “Building the Foundation for Maine’s Future,” drew more than 400 people. The program explored early childhood development and its connection to the Maine economy. You can watch a special video here and read about our work in the fall 2017 Maine Ties newsletter.

CEI’s Child Care Business Lab was highlighted in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: Investing in Child Care Entrepreneurs.

Right From the Start advocated for a bill to expand access to quality, affordable child care in Maine. The new law seeks to replicate a successful program in Somerset County modeled after the successful Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership. Under the law, Maine could create up to five additional programs across the state, which would be sponsored by coalitions of stakeholders, providers and other community members within the communities that the projects serve.

A teacher trained through a grant with Maine Association for the Education of Young Children shared her story with local and national news.