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School Readiness and Success Resources

NCCP Promotes School Readiness, Success for Low-Income Children
The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) recently released several resources that focus on helping policymakers, agencies, advocates, communities, and families better address barriers to school readiness and school success for vulnerable children living in low-income families.

• Spending Smarter: A Funding Guide for Policymakers and Advocates to Promote Social and Emotional Health and School Readiness discusses how to maximize the impact of existing funding streams to support positive social and emotional development, early intervention, and treatment strategies that can improve school readiness. The Spending Smarter Checklist is a guided set of questions to strengthen early childhood mental health and early intervention capacity. The Spending Smarter Technical Appendix lists federal funding programs and how to use them.

  Executive Summary http://www.nccp.org/media/ss05_sum.pdf
  Full report http://www.nccp.org/media/ss05_text.pdf
  Spending Smarter Checklist http://www.nccp.org/media/ssf05-cklist.pdf
  Spending Smarter Table of Strategic Financing http://www.nccp.org/media/ssf05-appA.pdf

• Resources to Promote Social and Emotional Health and School Readiness in Young Children and Families-A Community Guide describes community-based, targeted strategies for vulnerable young children that families, child care providers, teachers, and others who come into contact with young children every day can use to help youth develop the social and emotional skills they need to succeed in school. Some resources and strategies focus on babies and toddlers, preschoolers, and young children facing especially harsh early circumstances. All have been used in low-income communities and work best if they are embedded in a larger community effort to promote resilience and build on the strengths that exist in families and communities.

  Executive Summary http://www.nccp.org/media/tcl05_sum.pdf
  Full report http://www.nccp.org/media/tcl05_text.pdf

• Pathways to Early School Success: Helping the Most Vulnerable Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families highlights 10 program and community strategies that can help the most vulnerable families and promote early school success even in the face of multiple demographic, economic, and parental barriers like depression and trauma. It is based on a meeting that brought together policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and advocates to explore the challenges and opportunities for focusing more attention on these families while working to expand access to supportive programs for all families with very young children.

  Executive Summary http://www.nccp.org/media/pew06e_sum.pdf
  Full report http://www.nccp.org/media/pew06e_text.pdf

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