ParentChild+

A child born today has only 1,800 days to prepare for kindergarten. School readiness has a critical impact on long-term personal and academic success, yet in too many communities it is under-developed and under-resourced. 

ParentChild+’s strength-based approach emphasizes supporting and empowering parents to enhance their engagement in their children’s early learning, building children’s foundational competencies and social-emotional skills to set them on the path to educational success. Across the country, their practice of cultural and linguistic alignment and hiring from the communities in which they work supports both native-born and immigrant populations in building a foundation of school readiness, family engagement, and lifelong learning.

With 50% of 3- and 4-year-olds in Maryland not enrolled in any educational program (Maryland Family Network) and GreenLight’s conversations with community members during the selection process, the need for expanded services and resources to help families prepare young children for success in school was elevated as a priority need. 

Through their One-on-One and Home-Based Child Care models, ParentChild+ facilitates bi-weekly home visits from trained Early Learning Specialists (ELS) who share a community connection with families. ELS’s support parents in preparing their children for academic success by providing parental coaching, books and educational toys to enhance the child’s early literacy and cognitive development.

With the support of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director, ParentChild+ will identify local replication partners that are already embedded in the community to implement ParentChild+’s evidence-based models. ParentChild+ works with 150 local partner agencies across 17 states and in five other countries. Their implementation model is designed to be highly replicable, successful, and scalable across diverse communities and cultural contexts and in multiple languages. ParentChild+ local replication partners include schools, housing authorities, community-based organizations, social service agencies, immigrant, and refugee aid organizations, and home-based child care networks. Within the City of Baltimore, they will partner with early learning centers and other child development institutions to execute their model. They have established an inaugural partnership with New Song Learning Center in the Sandtown-Winchester Community and plan to scale their partnerships across Baltimore.