Health & Development

  • Healthy Birthweight: Babies’ birthweight and other birth outcomes affect their health, development and learning during the early years, which impacts third grade…
  • Social-Emotional Health: Social-emotional health in young children means successfully developing the capacity to:Form secure relationships Experience and regulate emotions Explore and…
  • Physical Health: Children’s overall development during the first eight years of life is strongly affected by their health. Experiences during this time…
  • Early Intervention Policy: Children who receive early and regular developmental screenings and access to high quality early intervention services to address developmental delays…

Families & Communities

  • Parent-Child Interactions: Starting at birth, responsive back and forth interactions with parents and caregivers build babies’ brains and promote attachment and a…
  • Reading with Children: Reading regularly with a parent or caregiver improves young children’s language development, early reading skills, and school readiness. Hearing the…
  • Supports for Families: Formal and informal services and supports help families promote their children’s good health, on-track development and school success. Formal Supports…
  • Safe at Home: Children’s brains are built from the bottom up, starting at birth, and strong, nurturing connections with the adults in their…

Education

  • High Quality Early Care and Education: Young children’s learning happens in a variety of settings. For the purposes of this webpage, early care and education refers…
  • Regular School Attendance: Consistent school attendance in the early grades improves children’s learning and achievement. Chronic absenteeism is an early predictor of student…
  • Promotion to Next Grade: Grade retention is requiring that a student re-enroll in the same grade for a second year. As of January 2018,…
  • Summer Learning: We know children work hard in school and they learn a lot. Every summer we need to ensure our students…

Policy

  • Local Policy and Practice: At the local level, policies that affect young children and families happen through the implementation of federal and state laws.…
  • National Research and Policy: Federal early childhood laws, policies and regulations impact state and local actions in North Carolina. National research and innovation can…
  • State Policy and Practice: State-level policies and practices directly impact the lives of young children and their families in North Carolina. State rules and…

Programs