Part III: What Works?

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A lot of factors influence outcomes for kids - are there any universal rules? -

Decades of science are telling us what our grandmothers have always known — young children need love, protection, and stimulation to thrive. Specifically, research has coalesced around these three fundamental principles to support children and families in ECD:

  1. Support responsive relationships for children and adults: For children, responsive relationships with adults both promote healthy brain development and act as a protective buffer against toxic stress. For adults, these relationships provide emotional support and boost well-being, hope, and confidence

  2. Strengthen core life skills: To navigate life successfully, adults and kids alike need a set of essential self-regulation and executive function skills that enable us to focus, plan for and achieve goals, adapt to changing situations, and resist impulses. No one is born with these skills; we develop them over time through practice, beginning in childhood and continuing into our adult years.

  3. Reduce sources of stress in the lives of kids and families: While some stress can be healthy, the unrelenting, severe stress associated with poverty, violence, mental illness, and other hardships can have far-reaching consequences for children and the adults who care for them. Reducing the cumulative burden of these stressors protects children both directly (by triggering their stress response less frequently and powerfully) and indirectly (by increasing adults’ ability to protect and support them, thereby preventing lasting harm).

How do we put these principles into practice? +

One strength of these principles is that they are simple and universal — they apply to all kinds of settings (e.g., homes, child care centers, preschools) and individuals (parents, caregivers, early care and education providers, and children themselves).

Here are a few ways these principles have been effectively put into practice:

  • High-quality early care and education: high-quality child care has been shown to boost children’s cognitive, language, and preacademic skills (particularly when begun in infancy!) and increase mothers’ workforce participation.

  • Home visiting: evidence-based home visiting models have demonstrated positive long-term effects on a wide range of outcomes, including maternal and child health, family economic self-sufficiency, school readiness, and reduced child maltreatment.

  • Preschool: rigorous research confirms that high-quality preschool education is a profitable investment that benefits diverse children well into adulthood.

  • Pediatrics-based programs: studies highlight the ability of pediatrics-based interventions to promote positive parenting practices, reduce developmental delays, and optimize child health and development.

Al these programs are strong, evidence based interventions. While each is necessary, individually they are insufficient to the scope of the challenges in early childhood. As we know, children exist in an ecosystem (remember this diagram from section 1!). It is vital that we look beyond one program, one issue, one policy. In order to create lasting change and improve outcomes for all children, we need to scale and spread impactful solutions that strengthen the entire early childhood ecosystem.

Ok, we need to scale and spread impact - how? +

Achieving breakthrough impacts on the early childhood ecosystem will require innovation in several key ways:

  1. Increasing and refocusing our resources and capital by attracting, supporting and connecting funders to promising solutions.
  2. Establishing policies and public systems that guarantee equitable access to effective approaches.
  3. Encourage more social entrepreneurship from within and outside the field.
  4. Leveraging developmental science and emerging technologies to create new models altogether
  5. Using the "active ingredients" approach in program and product development to:-identify which components have the greatest impact and are essential to successful scaling-Identify why and for whom certain ingredients are working

In the words of Harvard’s Dr. Jack Shonkoff, “the marching orders are clear—we must embrace a spirit of constructive dissatisfaction with [current] best practices…and settle for nothing less than breakthrough impacts on important outcomes.”

I’m inspired! What breakthrough innovations are happening in the field right now?+

A swell of innovative ventures is heeding Dr. Shonkoff’s call to action as we speak. These ventures—both non- and for-profit, new to ECD and long-term players—are leveraging existing and emerging knowledge from science, practice, policy, community and business to increase the impact and scale of interventions in ECD. They’re tackling all kinds of critical challenges, including:

  • Helping parents and caregivers engage children in everyday brain-building activities to boost early literacy, math, and social-emotional development (Bright by Text, Parents Together, Ready4K)
  • Disrupting intergenerational poverty and adversity by boosting the mental health and core life skills of parents, caregivers, and other adults in children’s lives (EMPath, LIFT, MOMS Partnership, New Moms)
  • Ensuring that child care is accessible, affordable, and high-quality, and that child care providers are adequately supported, trained, and compensated (All Our Kin, MyVillage, Opportunities Exchange, Wildflower Schools, Wonderschool)
  • Expanding access to early screening for developmental delays and other special needs, and connecting families to the appropriate resources and social services (Brainchild Technologies, ChatterBaby, Cognitive Toybox, Huckleberry)
  • Making early learning curricula available to all, regardless of income or geography (Khan Academy Kids, Waterford UPSTART)

Check out Promises's ECD Venture Index to learn more about innovative ventures in this space!