Smart2Start Coordinated Childcare Enrollment — United Way of Roanoke Valley
Eighty-five percent of brain development happens before a child reaches age five. Recognizing this, in 2020 United Way of Roanoke Valley in Virginia created the Smart2Start program to help families find affordable childcare. Before this, the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation began the Smart Beginnings initiative with United Way of Roanoke Valley’s help to improve early childhood and development systems. This stemmed from Virginia’s 2018 preschool development grant, with a goal of improving the state’s early childhood development system.
Rooted in this early partnership, United Way of Roanoke Valley became the perfect candidate to spearhead the Smart2Start program.
“We partner with public schools, nonprofits, and faith-based organizations to ensure every child enters kindergarten with the skills needed to succeed in school and life.” — Vivien McMahan, Vice President, Community Impact, United Way of Roanoke Valley
Smart2Start helps families find affordable childcare and preschools that are just the right fit. By coordinating with public schools, nonprofits, and faith-based organizations, United Way ensures that every child enters kindergarten with the skills needed to succeed in school and in life. Coordinated childcare enrollment means that parents can complete just a single application to find affordable childcare and discover if their family is eligible for publicly funded programs that may provide free or reduced cost options.
Partnerships and community engagement are core factors that set Smart2Start up for success. For many years, United Way had been the convener of their community’s early childhood network and would bring partners together through the work of improving the early childhood system, whether it related to parent engagement, professional development, or access for early childhood systems change in general. United Way was able to pull Smart2Start partners together quickly, partially because they had already established those partnerships and relationships.
Parents are at the heart of Smart2Start’s design, playing an active role on the initiative’s steering committee. Engaging parents aligns with the state’s early childhood strategic plan and the preschool development grant. The state’s priorities call for building relationships, increased family access to quality childcare, improved quality of childcare and preschool settings, and stronger parent engagement, all through the lens of inclusiveness and equity.
To ensure inclusivity and equity, Smart2Start applications are available online as well as a paper hardcopy in English and Spanish. A helpline is available to families who need help interpreting applications and connects them to partners, including the Department of Social Services. Navigators who receive the application make sure that parent choice is factored into the decision on where their child goes.
Head Start’s strict requirements serve as the basis for deciding eligibility throughout the Smart2Start program. In addition to matching families to childcare options, navigators use motivational interviewing techniques, a family needs assessment, and information from the application to assess families’ needs and strengths. This helps navigators connect families to other wraparound resources that might be helpful for them. Smart2Start and 211 are using the Unite Us system to make referrals for families and connect them to other resources that will help improve their lives.
The goal of Smart2Start is to create an initiative that will be more affordable in the long run and that can communicate with other systems, support partners like Head Start, and avoid duplicative effort for people who are already working as hard as they can. There is already action taking place to develop a state-wide, but regionally led coordinated enrollment system, based on the efforts of the United Way of Roanoke Valley Smart2Start pilot. As this work progresses, families continue to be involved.
“United Way serves as the conveners and the facilitators. We don’t have to be the decision-makers and we don’t have to have all of the answers. But we can be that convener and facilitator to bring our partners together so they can really design the program and so they have a strong voice and feel they are well represented. This includes the publicly and privately funded providers, our Department of Social Services, early intervention, and parent voice.” — Vivien McMahan, Vice President, Community Impact, United Way of Roanoke Valley
Ultimately, the partnership wants families to achieve that goal of self-sufficiency and recognizes that that can’t happen if they continue to work in silos. Collaboration has resulted in the ability for Smart2Start to supply wraparound services to families more holistically.
