United Way of Central Florida Success By 6 Initiatives
The Carol Jenkins Barnett United Way Children's Resource Center is a collaboration of organizations committed to strengthening families and our community by increasing access and awareness to resources and services. This Success By 6 parent resource center is a warm, welcoming place where parents and other family members come to access information, support services, and the tools they need to be the best parents they can be. Parents come for one service or class and return for others. The Children's Resource Center offers many ideas and activities to promote brain development and family relationships children need to enter school ready to succeed. Recurring activities for parents and children include groups that encourage appropriate parent/child interaction, daily School Readiness activities in the model classroom, and Creative Movement. Some of the current classes are childbirth preparation, computer classes, support groups and parenting classes. Family Fundamentals also has a parent resource room, children’s library, playroom, and adult classrooms/meeting rooms. Partners provide evaluations, counseling, casework and many other services. Born Learning - Everyday life is a learning experience for children! Born Learning is a public engagement campaign that helps parents, grandparents and caregivers explore ways to turn everyday moments into fun learning opportunities. Through national public service advertising, parent materials and community mobilization activities, Born Learning provides action steps that are fun, easy – and can be taken in everyday moments – to prepare young children for school. Born Learning information has been placed in newsletters, in Publix Super Markets, websites, in the Lakeland Magazine, at the movies, on billboards, and in The Ledger and Highlands Today. Partners such as Heartland for Children provide funding for materials that home-visitors like Healthy Families then use with parents. Seven years later, we have seen over 1.5 million pieces of Born Learning material being shared with parents! Visit bornlearning.org for more information and parenting tips. Parent Lending Libraries - Through the generosity of grants and sponsorships, libraries are being placed at childcare centers to allow parents to conveniently borrow books to read with their child every day. This encourages the early literacy skills that prepare children to enter school ready to succeed. The first Parent Lending Library was placed in 2004. There are now 120 Parent Lending Libraries in Polk and Hardee counties. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provides children with a free new book every month from birth to the month of their 5th birthday. Dolly Parton started Imagination Library in 1995, to fight illiteracy in her eastern Tennessee community. Research shows that disadvantaged children come to school years behind their peers in pre-reading skills, and rarely catch up — and that the children still struggling to read in 3rd grade are the ones who eventually drop out. Evaluations indicate that Imagination Library is getting kids more interested in reading – and getting their parents more comfortable reading to their children. Children are mailed an age appropriate book directly to their homes to build their own private library. Each child receives one book per month up to their fifth birthday. Master Teachers - master teachers provide supervised internships in childcare centers and family childcare homes. Pre/post testing on the Florida State Assessment (99 quality indicators) and Reddy On-Task Measurement in Time demonstrated that scores in 2011 improved from 6-76% at 32 childcare sites with an average improvement of 33%. 96% of the centers improved by 15% or more. 494 children benefited from this increase in quality. 75 trained teachers will continue to provide more appropriate care for years to come. The Imagination Library, Parent Lending Libraries, Born Learning materials, Parent Resource Guides and parent education nights are all also coordinated within each Master Teacher Initiative site. Vocabulary scores for children have improved an average of 2.6 months for every one month of exposure to a newly trained teacher!
