Essentials for Childhood

Policy Implications

Providing supportive and positive conditions for early childhood development is more effective and less costly than attempting to address the consequences of early adversity later.
Policies and programs that identify and support families, and communities who are most at risk for experiencing trauma and disparities as early as possible will reduce or avoid the need for more costly and less effective remediation later on.

• Banyan Communications 
• GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students
• Georgia Center for Child Advocacy
• Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities
• Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning
• Georgia Department of Education
• Georgia Department of Public Health – Home Visiting Program

• Georgia Department of Public Health – Injury Prevention Program
• Georgia Division of Family and Children Services – Prevention and Community Support Section
• Georgia Family Connection Partnership
• Prevent Child Abuse Georgia
• Strengthening Families Georgia
• Voices for Georgia’s Children

• Banyan Communications
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Community Advanced Practice Nurses, Inc.
• Emory University School of Medicine
• Emory University School of Nursing
• GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students
• Georgia Center for Child Advocacy
• Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics

• Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities
• Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning
• Georgia Department of Public Health
• Georgia Division of Family and Children Services – Prevention and Community Support Section
• Georgia Family Connection Partnership
• Get Georgia Reading
• Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia

• National SafeCare Training and Research Center
• Prevent Child Abuse Georgia
• Resilient Georgia
• Strengthening Families Georgia
• The Center for Family and Community Wellness, Inc
• United Way of Central Georgia
• United Way of Greater Atlanta
• University of Georgia – Center for Family Research
• Voices for Georgia’s Children

This Collective Impact strategy focuses on deep cross-sector collaboration to:

• coordinate and manage existing and new partnerships with other child serving organizations and non-traditional partners;
• work with partners to identify strategies across sectors;
• identify, coordinate, monitor and report on the strategies implemented by multi-sector partners;
• coordinate improvement processes (e.g., continuous quality improvement) for multi-sector partners to refine strategies; and
• document state-level impact of these efforts.

What makes Essentials different?

• Focuses on the broader social, economic and political environment and the forces at play that create undo stress on families- eroding their ability to provide nurturing relationships.
• Emphasizes policy-level impacts as core to the strategy and addresses a holistic array of factors leading to child maltreatment, versus a specific cause or single factor.
• Takes an “all in” approach where every entity can play an instrumental role, and invites nontraditional partners to be part of the solution.
• Presents a multifaceted approach to a complex set of conditions and assumes that all sectors and constituents must act and interact differently- with a common vision of what is possible.

Georgia Goals

1: Georgia has created the context for healthy children and families through policies.

• Objective 1.1 Increase policy development and implementation that positively impacts the lives of children and families in Georgia.

2: Georgia is committed to creating safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments and preventing
child maltreatment.

• Objective 2.1 Increase the use of strategic communications and collective action to create safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments.

3: Create the context for healthy children and families through programs.

• Objective 3.1 Increase the consistent use of AIRS Taxonomy terms among I&R providers.
  Objective 3.2 Increase the availability of information about evidence-based programs for consumers.
  Objective 3.3 Increase the availability of evidence based, research informed and promising practice-based parenting skills programs to Georgia families.

4: Georgia has created the context for healthy children and families through norms change.

• Objective 4.1 Increase public perceptions that we all share responsibility for the well-being of children.
  Objective 4.2 Increase public perceptions that all parents and caregivers need help at times

5: Georgia uses data to inform solutions.

• Objective 5.1: Increase the use of the BRFSS ACEs data in creating safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments.
  Objective 5.2: Increase the use of other data sets for planning and evaluation purposes.