Birth to Five Illinois Begins Rolling Out Action Plan

Original coverage in CNHI LLC.

Birth to Five Illinois Region 3, which includes Effingham County, is beginning to roll out its plan to make early childhood care and education programs in the area more inclusive and accessible for all residents.

In 2022, Birth to Five Illinois established regional offices throughout the state, and each of them formed an action council and family council tasked with making recommendations for how early childhood care and education programs could be made more equitable in the area. The action council is composed of community members, and the family council is composed of parents and caregivers.

Amy Robinson is the regional council manager for Birth to Five Illinois Region 3 which includes Bond, Christian, Effingham, Fayette, and Montgomery counties. She said that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state began to realize just how inequitable early childhood programs were in Illinois.

“Some kids were being completely taken care of, and some kids were getting nothing,” Robinson said. “The councils were created in order to make sure that we were having the community voice front and center of what we were doing.”

Robinson explained that the primary goal of the action plan is to address these inequities, and the first part of the planning process was creating a regional needs assessment. The assessment took about a year to put together and included early childhood data, feedback from families and feedback from community stakeholders.

“From there, we have strengths, needs and recommendations,” Robinson said.

One of the members of the action council for Region 3, Crisis Nursery of Effingham Executive Director Meghan Rewers, described the regional needs assessment as a “comprehensive snapshot of the region,” and she said the implementation of the action plan will include more than 10 area organizations.

“And then from there, our council tries to sort of summarize the needs that we can identify for our region,” Rewers said.

Crisis Nursery of Effingham provides 24-hour emergency services for families with children from birth to 6 years old. Rewers noted that while Crisis Nursery of Effingham is based in Effingham County, it serves all of Region 3.

According to Robinson, the action plan for Region 3 is meant to be “all encompassing.”

“We have two main recommendations,” Robinson said.

One of them is to better train early childhood care and education staff in mental health and trauma-informed care. According to the action plan, the number of children in Region 3 experiencing abuse and living in alternative care is double that of the state average.

“We’re seeing a huge mental health decline across all ages right now,” Robinson said. “Our workforce isn’t prepared for these children.”

Additionally, Robinson said that working with children that are experiencing mental health related issues can also have a toll on staff members.
“We need real, deep training on how to deal with children who are having mental health breakdowns, who are going through a crisis, and their families,” she said.

Dealing with children who have experienced trauma is not uncommon for Crisis Nursery of Effingham, and the organization has already taken steps to implement the portion of the action plan addressing mental health training.

“I have started conversations with our assistant director on some of the different training aspects that we may be able to provide to our staff here,” Rewers said.

Through this training, Rewers hopes her staff will be better equipped to get children experiencing mental health crises the help they need.
“We’re not seeing any sort of direct roll out quite yet, but it’s definitely having an impact,” Rewers said regarding the action plan. “It’s starting conversations and doing a lot of what it’s meant to do.”

The other main recommendation made by the council is meant to ensure that as many families as possible have access to services for their children, including families living in rural areas, CCAP recipients, the families of children with physical or developmental disabilities, and the families of children with parents who work second-shift hours.

“There’s just always something that seems to be a hitch in a family’s plan in order to provide what they need for their children,” Robinson said.
Rewers noted that Crisis Nursery of Effingham is well aware of the need rural families have for better transportation and access to services for their children.

“I do think we see that isolation as a pretty particular barrier for families,” Rewers said. “We can identify resources all day, but how do we get families connected with them?”

“It’ll continue to be a constant conversation that we’ll have to have in this region.”

The action plan also identified a recent rise in the number of children in Region 3 that speak English as a second language, and in Effingham County, Crisis Nursery of Effingham is already working to address the recent influx, particularly in the number of children who primarily speak Spanish.

“We are currently in the process of rolling out a service of support through our agency to be able to work better and communicate with families that speak Spanish or other languages using a translating service,” Rewers said. “Right now, we do not have anybody that can speak Spanish fluently, so we’ve been working with an outside company to provide 24/7 support.”

The process of implementing the action plan has already begun, but efforts have slowed for the time being as Region 3 prepares to appoint new council members for the plan’s next phase. New council members will take over in October.

“It takes a lot of energy recruiting council members,” Robinson said.

In October workgroups from each county in the region will begin identifying their specific needs, and these workgroups will meet once a month to develop a plan to best address these needs.

One of Effingham County’s needs that has been identified by organizations throughout the area is its needs for housing. Robinson said she also recently heard that the county’s child mortality rate has been on the rise.

“We want to make sure we know what’s causing these issues and then what we can do to help fix it and close that gap so that we’re protecting those children,” she said.

Additionally, Robinson said that CEFS Economic Opportunity Corporation is already working to provide more slots for children from birth-3 years old that are in classrooms rather than continuing home visits.

“We’re seeing that home visiting is harder to do because parents have jobs, so they’re really trying hard to close those gaps and provide that,” she said.

One of the major hurdles that Birth to Five Illinois has had to deal with in the implementation of the action plan in Region 3 is a lack of staffing.
“You can find these programs, and you can get these grants. But if you don’t have the staff for them, then it shuts everything down,” Robinson said.

Robinson noted that Birth to Five Illinois will begin holding mobile office hours in each of the counties in Region 3 on a monthly basis, and she encourages anyone looking for more information on Birth to Five Illinois to attend them. The next mobile office hours for Effingham County will be held at the Effingham Public Library on Sept. 24 from 9:30-11:30 a.m.