State Models

Healthy Start
State of California

Kentucky Family Resource and Youth Services Centers
Frankfurt, Kentucky

Federation of Community Schools
State of Oregon

Oregon Commission on Family and Children
State of Oregon

Readiness-to-Learn Initiative
State of Washington

Healthy Start

State of California

Healthy Start was established in 1991 through Senate Bill 620, the Healthy Start Support Services for Children Act, to improve student learning and support families. Healthy Start enhances efforts to close the achievement gap by helping children and their family members gain access to an array of learning supports. While each local Healthy Start is unique, all are designed to do the following:

Ensure that each child receives the physical, emotional, and intellectual support that he or she needs — in school, at home, and in the community — to learn well.
Build the capacity of students and parents to be participants, leaders, and decision-makers in their communities.
Help schools and other child and family-serving agencies to recognize, streamline, and integrate their programs to provide more effective support to children and their families.

The California Department of Education (CDE) administers Healthy Start and awards two-year planning, five-year operational, and seven -year combined planning and operational grants to local education agencies (LEAs). The charts below show the number of planning, operational, and combined grants that have been awarded to date. In many cases, grants were awarded to multiple school sites in an LEA, as the charts indicate. Currently there is no new funding for Healthy Start grants.

Each local Healthy Start provides comprehensive school-integrated services and activities to meet the unique needs and desired results identified for children, youth, and families.

Kentucky Family Resource and Youth Services Centers

Frankfurt, Kentucky

The Kentucky General Assembly created Family Resource and Youth Services Centers as an integral part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) (http://www.wku.edu/Library/kera/keralaw.html) of 1990, KRS 156.497 as amended and KRS 156.4977 as amended. For a school to be eligible to apply for a FRYSC grant, at least twenty- (20) % or more of the enrolled students in a school(s) must be eligible to receive free and reduced school meals. The students eligible for reduced lunch are not calculated in the formula to determine a center's funding. This signifies the strong support the Kentucky General Assembly has maintained for FRYSCs for a decade. This legislation provided for an unprecedented state-level partnership between the Kentucky Department of Education and the Cabinet for Families and Children. These partners share the responsibility of implementing and sustaining the centers across the state. The legislation created the Interagency Task Force on FRYSCs comprised of a vast array of stakeholders. This Task Force developed a five-year plan to establish a statewide network of FRYSCs. The Kentucky Department of Education has continued to provide technical assistance and support of the public education mandate.

The primary goal of these centers is to remove nonacademic barriers to learning as a means to enhance student academic success. Each center offers a unique blend of programs and services determined by the needs of the population being served, available resources, location and other local characteristics. At the local level, information, awareness, collaboration and partnerships are commonly developed with the following: parents, students, school personnel, PTA/PTO, school district personnel, local school board, city and county officials, human service organizations/councils, churches, civic organizations, local businesses, hospitals, universities and colleges to name several.

Federation of Community Schools

State of Illinois

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Oregon Commission on Family and Children

State of Oregon

The Oregon Commission on Children and Families (OCCF) is the largest umbrella advocacy group for children and families in Oregon. OCCF provides progressive public and private leadership that works collaboratively to support and strengthen communities to improve the lives of children, youth and families. Created by legislation in 1993, and further defined by SB555 in 1999, OCCF promotes positive outcomes for children and families through a process driven by local decision-making. State Commission members are appointed by the Governor to four-year terms.

The Commission provides no direct services, but is responsible for statewide planning, standards setting and policy development, and provides communities with research-based best practices on which to base local programs for children and families. All 36 Oregon counties have a local Commission on Children and Families, which is responsible for a local coordinated comprehensive plan; community mobilization; and coordination among community groups, government agencies, private providers and other parties, of programs and initiatives for children 0-18 years of age and their families.

Readiness-to-Learn Initiative

State of Washington

In 1990, a governor's task force on reforming education observed that not all children across the state entered school on equal footing. In 1993, the state's Education Reform Act authorized a Readiness to Learn initiative (http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/16/e3/59.pdf), and $8 million in state funding was appropriated to fund 21-month grant proposals from local, community-based consortia to ensure that children come to school on their first day and every day thereafter ready to learn. Localities were expected to use Readiness to Learn funding as seed money to promote collaboration among public and private providers and the creation of new delivery systems to better meet the needs of children and their families.

Twenty-two communities were initially selected for funding by the Family Policy Council, a collaborative effort of five state agencies committed to integrated family services -- the departments of education, social services, health, labor and economic development. The Department of Public Instruction administers the grants. Local collaboratives are free to pursue a wide range of strategies as long as they lead to activities that are family-oriented, culturally relevant, coordinated, locally planned, outcome-based, creative, preventive, and customer service-oriented.

Currently more than 31 consortia have developed linkages with both public- and private-sector agencies, including colleges, universities and the business community, and reach 7,500 children and families each year. At each site, family workers provide assessment and ongoing support to students and families and work closely with interagency teams to help them meet academic, employment and socio-emotional goals.