Early Childhood Colorado Partnership Secures New Funding

By Jodi Hardin, Civic Canopy

There is a growing body of research highlighting the importance of the earliest years on a child’s lifelong health, education and well-being outcomes. The research highlights the concept of toxic stress, the brain’s natural response to strong, frequent and/or prolonged adversity. Toxic stress can trigger the release of toxic chemicals that can alter brain and physical development, influencing cognitive, socio-emotional and physical health throughout a lifetime.

Armed with this knowledge, the Early Childhood Colorado Partnership (the Partnership)—a network of statewide public and private partners across health, mental health, family support and early learning—is committed to diminishing the impact of toxic stress on Colorado’s kids, assuring all young children are healthy, valued and thriving.

In an exciting development, the Partnership has successfully secured a three-year federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration to help assure the reduction of toxic stress and trauma in infancy and early childhood. The following are the vision and goals of the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems – Building Health through Integration grant:

• Outreach and engagement. Intentional engagement of all sectors and partners that have a role and expertise in the mitigation of toxic stress and trauma in infancy and early childhood.
• Shared understanding. Build a shared understanding of adverse childhood experiences and the mitigation of toxic stress to achieve optimal child development trajectories. Support partners across the early childhood system to understand their role and embed prevention-focused, protective factor frameworks into their work.
• Collective action. Facilitate a unified and simultaneous response among all partners to address the complexities of preventing and buffering the impact of adverse childhood experiences.
• Enhance state and local systems. Build stronger connections and feedback loops between state and community systems.
• Inform policy. Document the need and promote the coordination and expansion of quality supports and services for infants and toddlers across a prevention, intervention and treatment framework.

The Partnership will use a Collective Impact approach to achieve project objectives and has secured The Civic Canopy to provide the backbone infrastructure, coordination and facilitation needed to assure success. For more information, please contact [email protected].