Opportunity creates possibility.
For students with an education, the possibilities are endless. But for students whose opportunities are limited by lack of access to food, safe housing, or enrichments in music, art, and sports – so too is their chance to realize their potential.
Many families struggle to help their students access vital resources, relationships, and opportunities. In today’s world, how can a new parent or someone new to the city, state, or country connect to the opportunities around them?
When City Connects was founded, it sought to connect the right child to the right resource at the right time and, in so doing, test out what researchers believed about how children developed: that with the right support, every child could thrive.
Opportunities Matter
A new study affirms the importance of access to opportunities over time, showing that most children from high-income families encounter six or more “opportunities” from birth to high school, while nearly two-thirds of children from low-income households experience none or just one. This opportunity gap is a stronger predictor of future educational achievement and earnings than childhood poverty.
Closing this gap is vitally important to helping children thrive, especially in the early childhood years.
“The early years of life are a time of unparalleled growth deeply influenced by children’s environments and experiences. For healthy development and learning, all children need safe, affirming, and positive early experiences within their families and outside of their homes,” write Joan Wasser Gish of the Center for Thriving Children, Rachel Chazan Cohen of the University of Connecticut Applied Research on Children Lab, and Tassy Warren of the Harvard Center on the Developing Child.
This developmental period lays the foundation for healthy development and learning for a lifetime. When early childhood education is done well, it creates opportunities to build motor skills, social skills, and language development, all of which build brain architecture that provides a sturdy foundation for learning as they grow older.
“Many early childhood programs are doing wonderful work to support the whole child and to provide comprehensive supports and opportunities to young children and their families,” Wasser Gish said. “We are learning that using best practices to be intentional in organizing and executing that work can significantly improve outcomes.”
City Connects in Early Childhood
Applying City Connects’ best practices for integrated student support, grounded in the sciences of child development and learning, to the early childhood years provides a way to close the opportunity gap early in life and give children their best chance to thrive.
While City Connects was initiated in elementary schools, it has been adapted across the age continuum, including a process that began in 2009 to adapt the model for early childhood settings. This adaptation of City Connects was implemented in 18 early childhood locations between 2010 and 2012.
Today, about 30 percent of City Connects sites include early childhood. These sites include public, Catholic, and charter schools and community-based programs. Most of these sites are within elementary schools or public school districts, but City Connects is also increasingly being implemented in free-standing early childhood centers serving children ages 0-5.
“The field of early childhood is increasingly recognizing how important it is to intentionally enrich the developmental contexts within which children are growing and learning, in the classroom and also in the community and in partnership with families. Evidence-based approaches like City Connects can help ensure that the right resources and opportunities get to the right children and families at the right time,” explained Wasser Gish.
Expanding in Salem
For six years, City Connects has been the way that Salem Public Schools provides student support to all of its students in public pre-k through Grade 8. Now, the Salem Public Schools has received the Massachusetts Commonwealth Preschool Partnership Initiative (CPPI) Expansion Grant. The grant will enable the Salem Public Schools to extend City Connects from all public pre-k through Grade 8 settings to nine classrooms across a range of community-based early childhood providers, including center-based, Head Start, and family child care settings.
Across these programs, each child and family will receive a customized plan of support – like food, diapers, and clothing – and opportunities – like chances to visit a museum, join a playgroup, or pursue job training.
The importance of access to both basic needs services and opportunities for learning and growth is one of the foundational principles undergirding the City Connects practice. It reflects just one way that the model brings the sciences of how children develop and learn to lifw. This grounding in the developmental sciences, and continuous learning from practitioners, allows City Connects to adapt its core elements to innovative settings.
As we celebrate 25 years of City Connects, we are proud of our work to support children and their families, and how we have contributed to understanding effective practices for integrated student support for children from birth through adulthood. We are excited to continue supporting the whole child, learning from our practitioners, sharing new insights, and working with researchers to understand the impacts of integrated student support for years to come. Join us!
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