2024 Insights & Impact
A MESSAGE FROM START EARLY CONSULTING
As we begin a new year, we are excited to share the positive impact Start Early Consulting and our partners have achieved in strengthening early childhood policy and systems in 2024. From helping to increase funding for early childhood services to engaging 700+ families, providers and government leaders to creating a state strategic plan, we are proud to support leaders in advancing meaningful and equitable policy and systems change. We invite you to join us in celebrating the successes of our state and community partners, reflecting on policy insights from across projects, and seeing a preview of what’s ahead for Start Early Consulting in 2025.
2024 Impact & Reach
Since Start Early Consulting launched in 2021, we have supported our clients — public sector leaders and advocates — through 90+ engagements across 25 states and 20 communities to design, implement and advocate for moreequitable early childhood systems. Engagements range from a few months to multiple years, designed to meet the unique policy goals and systems needs of our partners. As a result of 22 engagements this year, we supported leaders in shaping policy and systems reaching nearly 3.5 million children.
Our Vision for Systems
Start Early envisions a future in which our nation prioritizes the needs of children prenatal through age five and their families, ensuring they have equitable access to effective and inclusive services. We work to build systems shaped by the voices of families and providers, aligned across sectors and sustained by sufficient public funding. We seek specific policy change in child care, mixed delivery public pre-K, home visiting, Early / Head Start and supports for young children with disabilities and developmental delays across systems. This vision for impact drives every engagement with Start Early Consulting. Our partnerships in Colorado, Virginia, and California provide a glimpse into this impact that systems leaders achieved in 2024.
“Having support to discuss possibilities and possible barriers was a great support. The consulting team’s knowledge of efforts taking place in other states and their encouragement helped me gain confidence in my perspective and offered additional examples of how to achieve the work.”
Start Early partnered with the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) to develop a statewide early childhood birthto-five strategic plan, including sectors and programs such as child care, pre-K, Early/Head Start, home visiting, Early Intervention, Early Childhood Special Education, family preservation and child welfare services. Together, we centered family and provider voices by engaging 700+ families and professionals across the state and convening a 30+ member working group and the Family Voice Council. As a result, Colorado leaders launched a comprehensive strategic plan that reflects the diverse priorities, strengths and opportunities of children, families and workforce in the state and that will shape early childhood programming over the next five years. The CDEC is using an innovative collective action implementation approach to enable constituents at every level of the system to contribute toward the strategic vision.
– SYSTEM LEADER, COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
COLORADO
For the past three years, Start Early supported leaders at the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation as it launched and implemented a new regional birth-to-five early childhood system. This network of “Ready Regions” is an innovative model focused on shared governance with families to design systems that work for families. We supported leaders in building capacity and understanding of policy and systems and how families can inform and influence those systems. We co-created guidance, self-assessment tools and trainings. Our team now provides ongoing technical assistance to support regional leaders in implementing these changes. The Ready Regions have built significant capacity and are shifting mindsets: all nine Ready Regions have now launched a Family Council that aims to meaningfully engage families in systems design and improvement. As a result, leaders are moving closer to their bold vision for an early childhood system that promotes family voice and choice in every community in Virginia.
Many states and communities across the country are focused on strengthening home visiting policies, practices and resources and addressing the workforce crisis. In 2024 we partnered with First 5 Region 3 (F5R3) to create a pipeline of home visitors across its 10-county region to promote workforce health and well-being. We conducted a comprehensive landscape of the region’s home visiting system focused on recruitment and retention and provided recommendations that helped leaders shift mindsets on what it takes to move children, families and workforce toward thriving conditions, rather than only those that aid survival. As a result, F5R3 is developing plans to increase mental health benefits for home visitors and supervisors and to launch an awareness campaign to address pervasive stigma and promote mental health and home visiting.
CALIFORNIA
VIRGINIA
Feedback From Our Partners
Feedback from each of our partners is critical to how we understand our success and impact. Indeed, Start Early Consulting is a mission-driven team, made up of staff who have direct experience in the roles our clients hold and the programs they administer. We are former policy analysts, government leaders, early educators, advocates, social workers and more. Over the past year, our team grew from 8 to 12 staff, located in 7 states. This growth deepened our expertise, diversified our lived experience and demographics, and increased our ability to provide a national perspective and serve more states and communities.
Last year, 93% of our clients reported that they were satisfied or highly satisfied with their engagement with Start Early Consulting. A significant majority of our clients reported they are highly likely to recommend us to others, resulting in a Net Promoter Score of 84.1 These are consulting industry leading scores, and we are immensely proud. They reflect the strong relationships for change we build, our commitment to understand and deliver on our partners’ specific needs, and our highly collaborative approach to advancing systems change.
2024 Insights & Reflections
Disability Policy Improvement & Advocacy Are Growing
There is an increasing demand across the country to better serve a growing population of children with disabilities and developmental delays and their families. Last year we engaged with advocacy organizations in six states — Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas — to secure big policy wins and increased investments in core services like Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education. We kicked off a new, multistate effort in partnership with the Office of Child Care at the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, to support state leaders in creating more-inclusive child care systems. And we are sharing what we’re learning with the field through national webinars, publications and blogs. We aim to grow our supports for this important work in the years to come.
Start Early Consulting partnered with the Kentucky Early Intervention Providers Association, a newly formed advocacy group, to protect and strengthen investments and supports for children with disabilities. As a result, advocates secured a 16% increase in the reimbursement rate for Early Intervention for infants and toddlers and prevented the termination of critical telehealth services for children with disabilities.
“We knew our discipline and how to work with kids, but we didn’t know how to advocate at the state level. [Working with Start Early] has helped immensely.”
KENTUCKY
ADVOCATE, KENTUCKY EARLY INTERVENTION PROVIDERS ASSOCIATION
Centering Family and Provider Voices Works
Start Early believes that shifting power to families, providers and communities in policymaking, advocacy and governance leads to more-equitable systems and better outcomes. This value shapes who we are and how we operate. Although many across the early childhood field have embraced the value of centering family and provider voices, some states and communities are eager for practical supports to operationalize it. This drives us to support our partners in centering families and providers in every engagement. This year, we engaged 400+ family members/caregivers, 1,000+ providers and 450+ community members to ensure they have a say in the policy and systems that directly impact them.
“[Start Early is] intentional with how they center the voices and perspectives of families of color. They created a space where [they] felt comfortable to share their experiences and recommendations.”
– ADVOCATE, PARENTS LEADING FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUITY
Since 2021, we have partnered with Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE), a newly formed parent-led advocacy organization in Rhode Island that partnered with Rhode Island KIDS COUNT and the Right From the Start Campaign to advocate for early childhood IDEA services. By collaborating with families of color to identify early intervention services policy priorities, Start Early supported PLEE in integrating identified priorities into Right From the Start’s policy agenda. By centering families, PLEE shifted the Campaign’s power dynamics and contributed to impressive policy and budget wins, including funding increases for Early Intervention in 2024.
RHODE ISLAND
Community Systems Mapping Drives Decision-Making
As local leaders work to build resilient community systems that meet the needs of children and families, they must navigate a complex landscape. This can include multiple program models funded by various local, state and federal agencies, a wide range of providers operating in varied settings, or siloed government entities administering service delivery. Across all instances, there is a lack of data and shared understanding of the full landscape of the early childhood system. In 2024, we are proud to have developed a tech-enabled systems mapping service to help solve this problem so communities can better understand their early childhood programs, policies and participant data. We began piloting systems mapping with five communities in California, New York, Tennessee and Washington to create an online, visual report that provides a holistic picture of each of their unique early childhood systems. We are refining the systems mapping tool based on the feedback from our clients and aim to significantly expand this work in partnership with many more communities in the coming year.
2024 Clients & Partners
We are immensely grateful to the public sector leaders, advocates and national partners we worked with in 2024 — each of whom is leading early childhood systems change in communities and states across the country.
CLIENTS
Ascension Early Childhood Ready Start Network, Louisiana
Association of Infant Mental Health in Tennessee
Chattanooga 2.0, Tennessee
City of Akron, Ohio
City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii
Colorado Department of Early Childhood
Colorado Head Start Association and the Head Start Collaboration Office
Early Childhood Investment Corporation, Michigan
Excel by Eight, Arkansas
First 5 Region 3, California
First 8 Memphis, Tennessee
Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning
Kentucky Early Intervention Providers Association
New York State Head Start Collaboration Office & New York Head Start Association
Oklahoma Department of Health
Oregon Department of Early Learning and Care
Parents for Educational Equity and Rhode Island Kids Count
Roc the Future, New York
Santa Clara County Office of Education, California
Smart Start of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
Snohomish County Early Learning Coalition, Washington
Texans Care for Children
The Children’s Agenda, New York
Together for Kids, Massachusetts
United Way Quad Cities, Iowa & Illinois
Virginia Early Childhood Foundation
Whatcom Childcare Coalition, Washington
Wisconsin Early Childhood Association
NATIONAL PARTNERS
American Public Human Services Association
Early Learning Nation Collective
Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
MAYA Consulting
Prenatal-to-Three Capacity Building Hub
The BUILD Initiative
Urban Institute
Zero to Three
Start Early Consulting is tremendously grateful for the support of its philanthropic partners: the Bezos Family Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners and the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation.
Looking Ahead in 2025
As we forge ahead in the new year, Start Early Consulting’s mission, vision and commitment to building high-quality, equitable early childhood systems remain steadfast. We are eager to support our public sector and advocate partners to continue this important systems-building work and to deepen our impact in key areas, including to:
l Support state and community systems leaders as they navigate potentially transformational shifts in the federal policy landscape.
l Seek philanthropic partners to expand our Impact Initiative to support more states and communities to boost systems-building work, at no cost to local partners.
l Share our knowledge, experiences and policy insights with the field through accessible resources like blogs, briefs and webinars.
We remain hopeful for what the future brings, and we are grounded in our vision for a world that better supports our little ones, families and caregivers, early educators and providers.
We invite you to partner with us and can’t wait to hear from you.