1. What is Project Great Start?

Governor Jennifer Granholm launched Project Great Start in her first State of the State address in February 2003. The governor described this new initiative as a movement that challenges us all to recognize that education begins at birth, not when a child enters school. Project Great Start (PGS) seeks to coordinate both public and private efforts to achieve common objectives and measurable results for Michigan’s youngest children. PGS encompasses both immediate action and creating a blueprint, or strategic plan, for Michigan’s early childhood system of programs, services, and supports for all children from birth to age five.

There are many existing early childhood initiatives and programs that accomplish the day-to-day work in promoting early childhood development. These initiatives may wish to identify themselves with Project Great Start by accepting the challenges of systems building, collaboration, and common objectives.

2. What is the Children’s Action Network?

The Children’s Action Network—sometimes known by the acronym CAN—is a network of state agencies convened by Governor Granholm to work collaboratively to better support and serve Michigan’s children. The CAN brings together every state agency that in some way touches the lives of Michigan’s children—including the Department of Education, the Family Independence Agency, the Department of Corrections, and the Department of Community Health—to work across state department boundaries to uplift children. The CAN also promotes cooperative efforts with non-governmental organizations committed to improving the lives of our children.

The Children’s Action Network is currently mobilizing support for two initiatives: (1) Project Great Start and (2) participation of state agencies in an effort led by the Family Independence Agency to improve human service delivery through school-based family resource centers.

3. What is the Great Parents, Great Start Program?

The new 2003–2004 Great Parents, Great Start Program Grants are supported through Section 32(j) of the State School Aid Act. There is $3.3 million available to be distributed to intermediate school districts for collaborative community efforts to develop parent involvement and education programs. The programs must be designed for the families of children from birth to age five. Four components are required:

• Information on development of children from birth to age five
• Methods to enhance parent/child interaction, including reading for 30 minutes each day
• Examples of learning opportunities to promote intellectual, physical, and social growth of children from birth to five years of age
• Promotion of access to needed community services through a community-school-home partnership
  

The program has been designed to build on the experience gained through the All Students Achieve Program - Parent Involvement and Education (ASAP-PIE) grants.

4. How does the Great Parents, Great Start Program relate to Project Great Start?

“Great Parents, Great Start” is the first new program to be identified with Project Great Start. The program has been designed to promote collaboration, common objectives, and systems building at the community level, all of which are aims of Project Great Start at the state level.

5. How does Project Great Start relate to local early childhood efforts?

Governor Granholm believes Project Great Start should create a movement that reaches every county in Michigan at the local level. To that end, she has asked Michigan’s 57 intermediate school districts (ISDs) to convene local partnerships to achieve Project Great Start’s goals of promoting reading to children beginning at birth and giving parents the tools they need to be their children’s first and most important teachers. Working with the local multi-purpose collaborative body, the ISDs will enlist diverse stakeholders including business, labor, faith-based, and philanthropic organizations, to develop specific local strategies reaching out to the more than 130,000 families who welcome newborns into the world each year in Michigan.

6. What is the Great Start Strategic Action and Planning Project?

Michigan received funding from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the federal Department of Health and Human Services to develop a plan for a system of supports and services to families with children from birth to age five that integrates currently separate systems and categorical programs. The plan must include, at a minimum, the following components:

• Assuring a medical home for each child
• Assuring availability of services to address mental health needs
• Assuring early care and education services are available
• Inclusion of parent education
• Inclusion of family support services that address stressors impairing the ability of families to nurture and support the healthy development of their children
  

To engage Michigan citizens in the dialogue about an early childhood system and provide materials and information a web site has been developed at www.michigan.gov/greatstart. Materials include a “Blueprint for Action” that outlines expected products, such as:

• The vision
• The mission
• Outcomes and indicators to be affected and measured
• Description of a comprehensive early childhood system, including programs, services, and supports

The website also provides guidelines for holding “community conversations” that will be used to guide the plan’s development.

7. How do the Project Great Start sessions convened by intermediate school districts relate to the Great Start Strategic Action and Planning Project?

At the same time that work gets under way on the Great Start blueprint for an early childhood system, intermediate school districts are also working with their local multi-purpose collaborative bodies to convene communities for immediate action, including:

• Getting the READY kits in the hands of new parents in a way that involves supportive contact with another person,e.g., a health care professional, human services worker, educator, or another parent;
• Working with medical professionals and institutions to reinforce the learning and development message in their contact with expectant and new parents so the message is communicated repeatedly, before and after a child’s birth; and
• Following up in the home, as requested and as appropriate, through existing or new contact by health care and human services professionals and trained volunteers (e.g., faith-based, labor, business, education, etc.).
  

As the ISDs and MPCBs work with their agency partners to invite the community to talk about immediate action, they can use these opportunities to have community conversations about the blueprint for Michigan’s early childhood system. Combining these two agenda items in community conversations can promote immediate action as well as move Michigan toward a comprehensive system for early childhood services and supports. It should also reduce the perception that the intermediate school districts and their partners are promoting piecemeal discussions on early childhood.

Community conversations on Michigan’s blueprint will be promoted at key points up to April 2005. There is a timeline for designing the blueprint that also highlights when community conversations will be encouraged. Click here for a Community Conversation Guideline tool for informing people at the state level of the results of the community conversations.

8. What is the Early Childhood Core Team?

The Early Childhood Core Team (ECCT) helps guide planning activities statewide, such as community conversations that engage the public in talking about creating Michigan’s comprehensive early childhood system. ECCT is made up of representatives who have major responsibility for programs administered by state government for children from birth to age five and their families. Members are appointed by human service state department directors. In addition to the state agency members, 13 individuals directly represent the views of parents and community leaders to assure that planning activities engage the voices of families and citizens. The ECCT provides guidelines to make it easy for the leadership of organizations and associations to promote broad participation in community conversations.

9. How does Project Great Start relate to the Michigan Ready to Succeed Partnership?

The Michigan Ready to Succeed Partnership (RTS) brings together leaders in business, education, faith, government, health, labor, media, politics, and philanthropy to promote the vision of every Michigan child ready to succeed in school and in life. The partnership’s white paper, State Government Leadership, Policy, and Services for Children, contributed to Governor Granholm’s early childhood initiative, Project Great Start. RTS, one of many Project Great Start partners, advances a broad, cultural change agenda to increase the public’s awareness of the importance of the first years of life. Project Great Start provides an organized point of state government contact with RTS so that messages to the public about early childhood are mutually reinforcing.

RTS engages a wide range of Michigan opinion leaders in the movement to improve the experiences of preschoolers.

10. How does Project Great Start relate to the public awareness campaign, Be their Hero from age Zero?

Project Great Start is designing and delivering early childhood messages in coordination with the Ready to Succeed Partnership’s continuing Be their Hero from age Zero public awareness campaign. Guidelines for the use of the Project Great Start logo in conjunction with the Hero message and other taglines are available on www.greatstartforkids.org. The Hero campaign provides an early childhood message as well as print and broadcast tools for use by organizations working in partnership with, and as approved by, Project Great Start and RTS.