ParentChild+ Inc.

Our country's children continue to fall behind. 40% enter kindergarten unprepared to be there. Under-resourced parents often lack the critical tools to prepare their children for school; the knowledge, the financial means, the necessary resources (such as books and educational materials), and the support to encourage and teach their children.

PCHP envisions a world where every child enters school ready to succeed because every parent has the knowledge and resources to build school readiness where it starts: the home. Our nationwide network of program sites works one-on-one with parents in underserved communities to provide the necessary tools to help their children thrive in school and in life. PCHP targets families with children ages 2-4 who are facing significant life challenges including limited income, language and literacy barriers, isolation and/or homelessness. Through two cycles of twice-a-week visits by highly trained community-based early literacy specialists, PCHP provides families the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to engage with and prepare their children for school success.

Our proven program builds early parent-child verbal interaction and learning in the home. Over 40 years of research shows that PCHP effectively increases school readiness, decreases the need for special education services by 50%, and increases participants' high school graduation rates by over 30% - to the same level as their middle income peers. PCHP's nationwide network of sites currently reaches over 7,000 families per year and, over the next 3-5 years we seek to expand to reach 10,000 families annually (500 in year 1, 1,000 in year 2, 1,500 in year 3) by expanding existing community-based program sites and identifying and partnering with new school districts and community based-organizations in underserved communities across the United States. Together, we will close the achievement gap.

To ensure that low-income children are engaged at home before school, enter school prepared to be successful students, progress through school as successfully as their counterparts from higher income households, and graduate from high school, PCHP: 1) identifies communities and families that would benefit from the Program; 2) visits families intensively and consistently, twice a week for two cycles over a two-year period; and 3) educates families during those visits on building positive parent-child interaction and embracing language, literacy and reading in their home environments. Each week, early literacy specialists bring a book or educational toy that remains with the families permanently. These are often the first books or learning materials in the home. Using the book/toy, the early learning specialists' model reading, conversation, and play activities that stimulate parent-child interaction, develop language and literacy skills, and build school readiness – consistently resulting in children who enter school ready to learn, and go on to be successful students, with increased high-school graduation rates.

The PCHP national center, established in 1979, is focused on expanding the proven Program to reach more families by expanding in new communites and by supporting local staff to expand and continue to provide high-quality services. The national center currently supports over 110 program sites by (1) providing guidance on start-up and implementation, staff hiring, training, and supervision, and funding; (2) providing comprehensive training and technical assistance; (3) establishing proven and effective standards and norms and monitoring for quality assurance ; (4) assisting local staff to acquire and utilize high quality, inexpensive, culturally appropriate curricular materials for the families; and (5) providing a national Management Information System to track participant data and Program outcomes across the country. This strategy has helped bring effective programming to over 70,000 families over the past 48 years.
Currently the national center staff and the Board of Directors' Program Expansion Committee are developing strategies to identify underserved communities and strong partners in those communities to expand PCHP's reach to more under-resourced families. PCHP is also focused on increasing awareness of the important role that programs like PCHP, which increase positive parent-child interaction and at-home learning before school, play in our national efforts to decrease the number of children who enter school unprepared to be there and to increase high-school graduation rates. Through improved communications we hope to increase public and private funding to support interested organizations in implementing PCHP with families in their communities.

With almost 50 years of experience and research proving the effectiveness of PCHP with diverse populations, combined with recent national attention on the importance of early childhood education resulting from President Obama's Early Learning Plan, PCHP is poised for significant expansion in the next three years.
The 21-member Board of Directors' includes a diverse array of skills and expertise and has particular depth on financial and strategic planning. The Board, therefore, is well positioned to support the organization's future growth. The national center staff has a combined 80 years of experience in the early childhood policy, programming, and research and evaluation fields, and their work is further strengthened by the input from local Program sites that have been serving families for over 40 years. PCHP also continues to add Board members and staff in regions in which the Program has or is planning to grow significantly. Dedicated NY and MA regional coordinators will be joined by a WA coordinator this year, and over the next two years, two to three additional regional coordinators.
PCHP currently receives state funding in five states, receives county, city, and school district funding in communities in 11 states, and works closely with the United Ways in many communities. PCHP staff are also active in early childhood and home visitation coalitions in states where we have a substantial presence. Using these strong networks, PCHP staff continue to expand access to public funding. The Program was recently included in a NYS Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) RFP and NY PCHP sites were awarded over $320,000 to expand.
PCHP also has a dedicated and growing private funding network. Over 25 foundation and corporate partners support the National Center, and hundreds of others fund the network of sites. PCHP has experienced year-over-year funding growth of 10-15% and expects this will continue as the national conversation surrounding the importance of early childhood education intensifies.
PCHP has recently launched a Seed Fund to fund expansion of existing sites and start-up of new sites. A portion of a $1,000,000 challenge grant from the Estate of Marian Naumburg, and additional funds are being used both for the Seed Fund and to expand the Program's capacity to provide enhanced training, quality assurance, and evaluation. The development of the Seed Fund has necessitated intensive collaboration around due diligence procedures to identify the best possible partner organizations to deliver high-quality services.
PCHP has also been expanding its research and evaluation reach, working with independent evaluators to ensure the Program's research base is up-to-date and covers the diverse populations the Program is now serving. NYU is in the process of completing the first phase of a new randomized control trial on the Program's outcomes with the goal of following children as they move through school.

In addition to successfully changing the educational outcomes for more than 7,000 under-resourced families annually, PCHP is progressing toward the 10,000 family goal. During the 2013-2014 Program year, PCHP is on track to achieve our goal of reaching approximately 500 new families through expansion of existing sites and new sites opening in Colorado, California, Georgia, Florida, and Wisconsin.

As with any expansion, PCHP national center staff and Board members are keenly aware of the risk of diluting program outcomes. As such, PCHP has put policies in place to ensure that this does not happen. As national center staff work with potential program sites, they carefully evaluate the local staff and organizational structure to ensure the ability and capacity to successfully reach families most in-need of services and effectively implement the model. Furthermore, with the development of the Seed Fund application, PCHP has established specific guidelines based on best practices developed over the past 10 years to ensure that the “seeded' sites have a sustainability plan and the community contacts needed to survive and thrive. These same best practices are shared with all sites, both existing and potential and national center staff continues to build tools and materials that will help sites access a diverse-range of funding streams and build the critical partnerships that will sustain the program site.

Changes in public funding streams have always been an obstacle for the expansion of PCHP. Over the past decade, PCHP has had extensive experience with both rapid expansion of public funding streams and severe funding cuts, as well as with the rise and fall of availability of private funding streams. The Program has developed expertise in working at the state and local level to help communities build diversified funding plans that are not overly reliant on a particular source of funding. Through expansion of the national center's development office, hiring of regional coordinators who are prepared to assist with grant-writing and outreach for public funds, and careful evaluation of the development capabilities of potential program sites, PCHP has developed an approach that focuses on minimizing reliance on a single source of funding and focusing early on a broad and creative array of funding partners.