COLLABORATION FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION
Strong Start, Bright Future.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
In 2002, Oak Park's 6 public jurisdictions -- School Districts 97 and 200, the Village of Oak Park, Oak Park Township, the Oak Park Public Library, and the Park District of Oak Park -- joined together to address the uneven quality, fragmentation, and shortage of quality early childhood programs that hamper school readiness for our most at-risk kindergarteners and contributes to a system-wide achievement gap for minority, low-income and other at-risk students.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Early Learning
The Collaboration for Early Childhood's Early Learning program service area refers to the Collaboration’s work to influence the success of the preschool classroom experience in areas of teacher quality, classroom experience and teacher training with an equity lens.
This includes providing professional development opportunities for early childhood professionals like our annual symposium and educator workshops that take place throughout the program year. The Collaboration also cultivates opportunities for leadership in the early childhood field through a series of Roundtable Meetings for Family Child Care Providers as well as Early Childhood Center Directors.
The Early Learning program service area also focuses on smoothing the transition from preschool to kindergarten for our community’s children.
Family Engagement
The Collaboration for Early Childhood's Family Engagement program service area refers to the work that the Collaboration does to empower families to be effective leaders and decision-makers in the education of their children. The Collaboration believes that parents are their child's first and most important teacher.
The Collaboration's family engagement work includes fatherhood support, parent skills training, parent leadership development and the coordination of community opportunities through the Parenting Resource Program. The Collaboration provides many parent resources through events such as the Early Childhood Resource Fair and the Child Care Meet and Greet. Parents and caregivers can also find a wide variety of parenting resources by visiting the Collaboration's website and searching the Online Early Childhood Resource Directory or by reading the publication, "Watch and Help Me Grow" that outlines developmental milestones for children birth - five years old. The Collaboration also convenes the Home Visiting Task Force to support all home visiting programs in the area.
Health and Development
The Collaboration for Early Childhood's Health and Development program service area refers to the efforts of the Collaboration to view child success as influenced by indicators of good health and the extent to which a child is supported by the health services community.
The Health and Development arm of the Collaboration works to ensure that all children birth to five receive periodic developmental screenings and that all children who need assessment and services access them. The Collaboration also provides free hearing and vision screenings to participating early childhood centers and convenes a Physicians' Network to build connections between healthcare providers and early childhood resources and referral processes to support our children's healthy development. The Collaboration also provides early childhood mental health support.
The Collaboration's home visiting coordinated intake supports maternal health and gives families the extra support they need to maintain their health and the healthy development of their child.
Community Engagement
The Collaboration for Early Childhood's Community Engagement program service area refers to the Collaboration’s efforts to engage the entire community in the success of our children, leveraging our partners and other agencies to support children and families on their journeys to Kindergarten. The Community Engagement arm of the Collaboration includes public events and awareness building efforts as well as coordinated intake for home visiting services and publicly funded preschool.
For parents who need a little extra support, the Collaboration, connects families to home visiting services in the community. In addition, the Collaboration contracts with Easterseals Partnering with Parents Program to provide one of the home visiting services in the area. The Collaboration also coordinates with the preschools in Oak Park and River Forest that receive public funding to screen families for eligibility and streamline enrollment in the free preschool slots available.
To help parents support their child's healthy development, the Collaboration publishes and distributes two free publications for parents, an Early Childhood Resource Directory and “Watch and Help Me Grow: Developmental Milestones Birth to Five Years”. Our website features extensive information on child development, early childhood resources, and local child-centered activities.
Where we work
External reviews
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Our Sustainable Development Goals
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Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The aim of the Collaboration is to develop a fully integrated, coordinated, and comprehensive, community-wide system of high-quality early childhood programs and services that nurtures the physical, cognitive and social-emotional development of our youngest children during the critical first five years of life. Our goals are to ensure that:
•Every child has access to high-quality early care and education,
•All parents have the information and support they need as their child's first and most important teacher, and
•The most at-risk children and their families receive the services they need to ensure healthy development and school readiness.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
•Early Detection Screening. We promote the administration of developmental and social-emotional screening to area pediatricians, family practitioners, and early childhood providers. We provide hearing and vision screening for over 1,400 children at 37 center-based programs and developmental and social-emotional screening for over 1,700 children at 17 childcare centers and preschools, 8 family childcare providers, 1 social service agency, 3 community-based programs, and 3 medical practices. We work closely with the providers to ensure that children identified as needing further assessment and services receive them. We publish a Developmental Referral and Services Directory for physicians and programs participating in the screening program.
•Parent Information and Support. Through a partnership with Easterseals, we offer Home Visiting and organized group activities for high-risk pregnant women and parents of at-risk children from birth to age 3 to help them grow as their child's first teacher, connect to other parents, and access health care and social services. We publish and distribute two free publications for parents, an Early Childhood Resource Directory and “Watch and Help Me Grow: Developmental Milestones Birth to Five Years". Our website features extensive information on child development, early childhood resources, and local child-centered activities. We organize workshops and guided playgroups for area parents.
•Professional Development. We work to improve the quality of child care and preschool education by encouraging and assisting early childhood providers to build the capacity of their staff by participating in professional development activities, college-level classes, and statewide quality enhancement initiatives. We support the professional development of early childhood providers by sponsoring an Annual Symposium, bi-monthly roundtables for Directors and for Family Child Care Providers, semi-annual Physicians' Breakfast Meetings, and intervention-specific training on special topics.
•Coordination of Public Preschool. We identify at-risk children, encourage low-income parents to enroll their children in free, high-quality public preschool, and screen program applicants. We also provide technical support, professional training, and mentoring for all publicly funded preschool programs in Oak Park to ensure that our most vulnerable children receive a quality educational experience.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The Collaboration has been coordinating early childhood services and education in the Village of Oak Park for 15 years. Ours is a much-lauded and oft-replicated model of community-wide service integration and cooperation. In fact, we provide consultation to other communities on how to replicate our unique model of public-private collaboration.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
•Attendance at our Annual Symposium has grown from 140 attendees in 2003 to 384 in 2017.
•The reach of our professional development curriculum development workshops and coaching expanded from an average of 6-8 centers a year to 31 childcare centers and 24 childcare homes in 2017
•The number of childcare centers and preschools participating in Illinois' ExceleRate Quality Rating System doubled from 9 in 2014 to 20 in 2017
•The percentage of early childhood professionals who have an early childhood credential or professional licensure increased from 68% in 2015 to 92% in 2017.
•After more than a decade, we have made contact with 42 previously unknown, license-exempt providers (family, friend and neighbor care) and engaged them in the State Quality Rating system and supported their online coursework to meet training requirements through the Gateways system.
EARLY DETECTION SCREENING
•The number of sites participating in the developmental screening program increased from 20 sites in 2014 to 30 in 2017
•The number of children who receive a developmental screen increased from 1,021 children in 2015 to 1,806 in 2017.
•The number of sites participating in hearing and vision screening increased from 26 in 2013 to 38 in 2017
•The number of children who receive a hearing and/or vision screen increased from 1,100 in 2013 to 1,411 in 2017
•30 medical and social service professionals attended a Physicians Network breakfast meeting on sensory processing and 33 attended a second breakfast on gender identity.
PARENT INFORMATION AND SUPPORT
•We distributed 12,000 copies of our Early Childhood Resource Directory and 600 copies of “Watch and Help Me Grow: Developmental Milestones Birth to Five Years" in FY 2017 (both publications are also available on our website).
•We contracted with Easterseals to provide home visiting services for at-risk families
•We increased our capacity to provide home visiting services by adapting the research-based, evidence-informed Parents as Teachers program.
•The number of families receiving home visiting services increased in FY 2017 from 30 to 86 families.
•The number of parents reached through the new Parent Resource Program tripled from 6,041 in 2014 to 19,148 in FY 2017.
PUBLIC PRESCHOOL COORDINATION
•We promoted a coordinated intake process for the three public preschool programs through the development of uniform eligibility criteria, scoring systems, and developmental screening tools.
•We fostered the adaption and effective use of the Creative Curriculum and Teaching Strategies GOLD, a teacher observation assessment tool, through workshops and coaching.
•We worked with the public preschool sites to develop parent workshops and information on the impact of attendance and tardiness on establishing positive family-school routines.
•The number of children taking the Kindergarten Readiness Test, an important gauge of school readiness for incoming kindergarteners, increased from 70 in 2014 to 104 in 20
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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COLLABORATION FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION
Board of directorsas of 04/19/2023
Ms. Rebecca Streit
Mr. Bob Tucker
Gordon Hellwig
Community Bank of Oak Park River Forest
Louise Gates
Rupa Datta
National Opinion Research Center
Lisa Ginet
Erikson Institute
John Mayes
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Illinois
Elizabeth Lippitt
Advocate Health Care Children's Hospital
Gina Lowell
Rush Medical College Department of Pediatrics
Mark Smylie
University of Illinois at Chicago and Vanderbilt University
Julie Stevens
One Lake Brewing, William Blair
Becki Streit
Charisse Burns
Concordia University Chicago
Dana Garner
IFF Chicago
Marion Ivey
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
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