Community Transformation Grant: Start Healthy. Start Now.
Start Health. Start Now. (SHSN) was an effort to promote public health activities to reduce chronic disease, promote healthier lifestyles, reduce health disparities, and control health care spending in Spokane, Stevens, Pend Oreille, Ferry, Whitman and Adams counties. The initiative focused on more than 50,000 children, families, licensed childcare staff and early childhood educators and the families of childcare staff and early childhood educators. C.teach developed and led childcare specific trauma-informed care trainings that provided attendees with the tools for trauma sensitive interventions and offered opportunities to practice and apply lessons learned.
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Safe Start
The Safe Start Evaluation Project goal was to implement a universal response strategy for children exposed to violence by integrating social emotional learning and response to trauma as complementary service strategies in publicly funded early learning programs. WSU partnered with Spokane Head Start to implement Fostering Resiliency in Early Learning Environments (FREE) training for staff. The program’s goal was to demonstrate professional development strategies that enhance early learning system capacity to address the needs of trauma exposed children and their families in a sustainable and replicable model of development.
Project Partners
Weaving Bright Futures
In partnership with local elementary schools and the Spokane Regional Health District, this project aimed to work with families to identify the root causes of their stress and to facilitate access to the community services needed as well as consultation and support to staff. The Stress and Early Brain Growth (PDF) resource was developed by partners in this work to help explain how toxic stress impacts early brain growth and development.