These Commission Summaries are intended to provide highlights of the First 5 LA Board of Commissioners’ actions to advance the outcome
areas of First 5 LA’s 2015-2020 Strategic Plan.
At the March 9 Commission meeting, highlights include approval of an extension of a Strategic
Partnership with the ECE Registry and an update on Home Visiting collaboration with Los Angeles County.
The Board of Commissioners meets on the second Thursday of each month at 1:30 p.m. unless otherwise indicated at the First 5 LA offices. All meetings are open
to the public and agendas are posted on our website at least 72 hours in advance. Please check our
Commission Calendar for all updated meeting information and click here for
Commission meeting packets, agendas, summaries and meeting notes.
Extension of Strategic Partnership with ECE Registry
The Board voted to extend its strategic partnership with the Child Care Alliance
of Los Angeles and continue to support the California Early Care and Education Workforce Registry Coalition,
illustrating First 5 LA’s commitment to continuously improving how California recruits, retains, supports
and compensates quality teachers and caregivers of our youngest children.
The
action allocates up to $2 million for up to 3 years, which will be leveraged with funding from the San Francisco Office
of Early Care and Education (SF OECE) and First 5 Santa Clara County to support Registry operations, data systems
development and system alignment.
Registries improve the quality
of early care and education services by promoting the professional development of the workforce, creating a mechanism for
collaboration between various early childhood systems (e.g., the department of education, licensing officials and resources
and referral agencies), and providing data and information to inform early education policy change.
More than 40 U.S. states have similar registries, many of which are
administered as part of licensing or Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) through state departments of education
or early learning. Currently, California does not have a statewide early care and education registry, but several counties,
including Los Angeles, are working in partnership on this shared registry effort.
Read more here.
Update on Home Visiting Strategy and County Collaborations
“It could be a very large vision. The vision could be every parent and every
child has access to home visitation.” – Sheila Kuehl
Vice President of Programs Christina Altmayer and Director of Family Supports Barbara Andrade
DuBransky presented the Board with a framework on the work by First 5 LA and countywide partners to build an integrated system
of home visitation in Los Angeles County.
This effort
was recently given “rocket fuel” in December when the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed
a motion by Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Janice Hahn to direct the Department of Public Health, in partnership
with several county departments, the Los Angeles County Perinatal and Early Childhood Home Visiting Consortium,
the Office of Child Protection and First 5 LA to develop a plan to coordinate, enhance, expand and advocate for
high quality home visiting programs to serve more expectant and parenting families so that children are healthy,
safe and ready to learn.
In her
presentation, DuBransky pointed out that
while there are multiple home visiting models in concurrent operation in the county, the same vision for home visiting in L.A.
County has been adopted by First 5 LA and supported by the Home Visiting Consortium: “a universal system of voluntary,
evidence-based family strengthening home visiting services for all Los Angeles families with children prenatal through age 5
to optimize child development, build parenting skills, and prevent the risk of adverse childhood experiences.”
In an analogy, DuBransky likened home visiting to a house, with its structural components
represented by systems building (walls), program optimization (a door), a learning agenda (windows) and policy and advocacy
(roof). In each of these areas, DuBranksy discussed various issues First 5 LA, the Consortium and various county partners are
examining together, including: intake and referral; when families can enroll; communication; program accessibility, fidelity,
quality and cost; and workforce quality.
Additionally, DuBranksy said that
First 5 LA is working with its home visiting partners to support the upcoming Office of Child Protection Prevention Plan;
strengthen the Consortium; strengthen evaluation capacities and common data; advocate for reauthorization of federal home
visiting funding and potential expansion and effectively utilize and maximize countywide resources invested in home visiting.
Future updates on this important work will be made at the Program and Planning Committee meetings in May and June.
