👋Welcome to Starting Early. Every other week, we spotlight new reports, useful news, and engaging interviews with people doing important work in the field, and interesting takes on issues that matter.
Through our work over the past four years, we at the Burke Foundation have learned about and researched how some of society’s greatest challenges — including addiction, homelessness, and poor mental health — have their roots in the earliest years of a person’s life.
This knowledge inspires our grantmaking. In this edition of Starting Early, we highlight several of Burke’s grantee partners and their far-reaching impacts on children and families in New Jersey and across the country. These changemakers are stepping up to improve lives by expanding community doula services, transforming pediatric care, addressing the impact of childhood trauma, supporting new early childhood leaders, and so much more.
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Read on and click through the links to go deeper.
1. Working with community in Trenton ❤️
Burke Foundation staff are excited to begin working out of the Smith Family Foundation Incubation Center in Trenton, New Jersey’s capital city.
We celebrated the news by gathering 30 of our nonprofit partners in Trenton for informal conversation, lunch, and music with the Smith Family Foundation and Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora.
- The Incubation Center is not only a “brick-and-mortar” location providing organizations with affordable space in Trenton, but also a place where small nonprofits and grassroots organizations build leadership, community engagement, and organizational capacity with trainings, workshops, and community meetings.
- The Burke Foundation will launch our first participatory grantmaking initiative with community members out of the space in the fall.
Guests also participated in some lively Trenton-focused trivia.
Here’s a question from the event: Which American singer and actress from Trenton first appeared on the music scene as a member of Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles?
Keep reading for the answer below. ⬇️
2. Advancing equitable, community-based, peer-to-peer support for new mothers
Using the HealthConnect One model, AMAR provides prenatal and postnatal doula services to about 65 under resourced Hispanic women annually and facilitates connections to community resources for up to one year postpartum.
Why it matters: Community doulas are trusted, trained community workers who provide physical, emotional, and social support to pregnant women. They are a critical part of strategy for improving maternal health.
- Operating for almost two years, the AMAR program has shown a 66% reduction in preterm births and a 62% reduction in low-risk C-sections, along with exclusive breastfeeding rates that exceed state and national targets. 👏
What’s next: Community-based doula services and training is expanding into northern New Jersey with several organizations and funding partners. Additionally, the New Jersey Department of Health is launching the first-in-the-nation statewide Doula Learning Collaborative with training, professional development, and billing support for community doulas throughout the state.
Go deeper: How AMAR remained a lifeline during the pandemic.
3. The next chapter: Promoting healthy parent-child relationships in the clinic 📚
Reach Out and Read gives young children a strong foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care. At each visit, a pediatrician provides families with a book that promotes positive, language-rich interactions. This proven model touches 4.5 million children and their families a year across the country.
Why it matters: Research shows that a child’s early experiences, and the environment in which they are raised, dramatically affect how the brains develop.
What to watch: In collaboration with Dr. David Willis at the Center for the Study of Social Policy and the Einhorn Collaborative, Reach Out and Read New Jersey is developing a new training to support even stronger parent-child relationships — equipping pediatric and family medicine providers with skills to observe, evaluate, and promote early relational health during well-child visits beginning in infancy.
4. Building trust through team-based pediatric care
ZERO TO THREE’s HealthySteps program is an evidence-based model that promotes the health, well-being, and school readiness of infants and toddlers by integrating a child-development expert – HealthySteps Specialist – into the pediatric primary care team with a two-generation lens.
The evidence: HealthySteps has demonstrated positive outcomes for children, families, practices, and providers. For example:
- Children were 8 times more likely to receive a developmental assessment and were 2.4 times more likely to receive timely well visits.
- Mothers were significantly more likely to discuss their depressive symptoms and reported significantly fewer symptoms after receiving HealthySteps.
- Physicians reported high satisfaction with HealthySteps and felt emotionally supported by HealthySteps Specialists.
What to watch: In 2020, many primary care practices closed, but the adoption of HealthySteps continued. HealthySteps launched 18 sites in 2020 and now reaches more than 300,000 families annually. In 2021, New Jersey kicked off its first HealthySteps pilot at three Hackensack Meridian Health practices, and stakeholders are exploring opportunities to expand elsewhere in the state.
“I’ve been meeting all of our 9-month-old babies. They were born into this pandemic. It is amazing to meet with the babies and say, ‘the world changed when you came into it.’ I tell parents, ‘You are not alone. And I love being able to help you.’” – Danika Danker, BS, BA, HealthySteps Specialist
Go deeper: Read the HealthySteps Annual Report 2020 here.
5. Piloting universal nurse home-visiting in Mercer County
Family Connects offers 1-3 nurse home visits and connections to community resources to all newborns and their families 3 weeks after delivery.
Better health: Results show that Family Connects reduced emergency room visits and hospital overnight stays by 50% in the first year of life, mothers were 28% less likely to report possible postpartum clinical anxiety, home environments improved, and community connections increased by 15%, among other positive results.
What to watch: Trenton Health Team is partnering with the Central Jersey Family Health Consortium to provide free at-home visits for parents who live in Mercer County and give birth at Capital Health Medical Center (approximately 2,000 births a year). Services will begin later in 2021, and the team is recruiting for several nurse home visitor positions.
- The universal home visiting pilot, co-funded with the NJ Department of Children and Families, is the first of its kind in New Jersey. It builds on Trenton Health Team’s ongoing efforts to improve maternal and child health and strengthen systems of care and support for new mothers and babies.
- The NJ Legislature recently passed a bill that would provide a free voluntary home visit from a nurse to parents of newborns, including adoptive parents and those who experience a stillbirth.
6. Promoting the emotional health of infants and children is essential to bright futures
Between 9% and 14% of children under 5 years old experience mental health disorders and many more are exposed daily to violence, fear, and stress.
Montclair State University’s relationship-based infant and early childhood mental health consultation (IECMH-C) program partners qualified mental health professionals with early-childhood educators and center directors to infuse activities and interactions that promote healthy social and emotional development and reduce challenging behaviors in the classroom.
The results: Early childhood educators and center directors become better able to support and promote children’s optimal relational, emotional, social, and cognitive development — preventing costlier mental health issues in the future.
What to watch: The Burke Foundation is funding the first evaluation of evidence-based infant and early childhood mental health consultation services in New Jersey.
- The project is supported by the NJ Department of Human Services.
- Complimentary efforts are underway to expand the training and professional development services. Montclair State’s signature infant mental health curriculum, Keeping Babies and Children in Mind, has been offered to 10,000 multidisciplinary staff throughout New Jersey since 2013.
“The evaluation will be the foundation we stand on as we build a statewide system for training the multidisciplinary early childhood workforce on relational and emotional wellness.” – Dr. Kaitlin Mulcahy, Montclair State University
7. Wildflowers grow in New Jersey
Wildflower Schools help seed and support Montessori “micro-schools” led by teachers working in and with their own communities. Each school serves 25-30 children.
Why it matters: The Wildflower model provides teacher-leaders with a pathway to a living wage as an early childhood educator. Wildflower raises money for startup grants and provides low-interest loans to teacher-leaders as they start new schools.
What to watch: Wildflower Schools is taking steps to expand in New Jersey, with the opening of its first Montessori micro-schools in Monmouth County in this fall and two new startup schools planned for Newark and Maplewood by 2022.
- The startup schools include Dahlia Montessori, a bilingual Spanish immersion preschool.
- They are working toward a goal of offering a 9-month intensive training for prospective teacher-leaders in 2022, placing those who complete the training as assistants in Wildflower schools to gain hands-on experience before opening their own schools.
8. Reaching educators and police officers with #Actions4ACEs
New Jersey’s Actions 4 ACEs campaign was developed to help spark dialogue across our state about how to support youth who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). This is especially important after a challenging year living through a pandemic and using distance learning. To learn more, visit www.Actions4ACEs.com.
Trenton trivia answer:
Sarah Dash, a Trenton native, was a founding member of Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles. She will be inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame this fall. 🎵
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Happy summer! 🏖️