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Strengthening Families
Strengthening Families Through Early Care and Education Initiative
State Pilot Project 
With funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) has embarked upon a national prevention initiative that emphasizes strong working relationships between State Child Protective Services and Early Care and Education Programs. Based on an exhaustive literature search, the CSSP determined that early care and education programs that incorporate five protective factors within their core operations provide highly successful child abuse and neglect prevention services. These five protective factors are fostered through
- enhancing parent resilience,
- providing an array of social connections,
- facilitating parent knowledge and skills regarding parenting and child development,
- providing resources and referrals in times of stress; and
- providing classrooms that facilitate healthy social and emotional development in young children.
The CSSP identified 21 model early care and education programs that provide a wide array of services that meet the criteria of successfully building programs that use the strategies listed above to deliver services that prevent child abuse and neglect. After studying these programs, CSSP determined that the next step in the initiative was to support State pilot projects that will connect Child Protective Services and early care and education programs. The goal of this connection is to develop policies and programs that work together to build Statewide capacity for early care and education programs to provide the array of services identified through the model programs that prevent child abuse and neglect.
New Hampshire was selected as one of seven States to be one of the Pilot States for this initiative. NHCTF’s Executive Director and Dr. Ellen Wheatley from DCYF traveled to Albuquerque in December of 2004 to successfully make the case for NH! Pilot States received 23 days of Technical Assistance to implement their State Plans in the areas of policy and program development. New Hampshire’s plan has six goals:
- develop ten exemplar sites,
- coordinate statewide trainings for early care and education programs,
- incorporate the Strengthening Families strategies into early childhood education courses in the State institutions of higher education,
- develop Memoranda of Agreement between and among State agencies and nonprofit family services agencies,
- develop coordinated technical assistance to early care and education programs, and
- develop models of data collection and analyses that can be adopted or adapted by early care and education programs.
Ten early care and education sites were chosen in New Hampshire for the pilot project. These programs were chosen because they provide:
- High quality care and education for children
- Social connections for families
- Parenting education opportunities
- Resources and referrals in the community
The Exemplar Sites are:
- Children’s World Learning Center, Manchester
- Dover Children’s Center, Dover
- Early Childhood Adventures Program, Nashua
- Gorham Community Learning Center, Gorham
- Lily Garden Learning Center, Westmoreland
- Live and Learn Early Learning Center, Lee
- Marguerite’s Place Day Care, Nashua
- New Hampton Child Care Center, New Hampton
- White Birch Community Center, Henniker
- Wolfeboro Area Children’s Center, Wolfeboro
The NH Children’s Trust Fund competed in 2007 for funding from the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds and was one of nine states to receive seed grants of $50,000 over two years. NH’s project’s goals are:
- to embed the protective factors in grant making for early care and education sites,
- to create a seamless system of family support, connecting existing family support programs with early care exemplar programs and
- to create parent advocacy training, through Families Are PRIMARY.