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Growing the Early Childhood Ecosystem
Young children deserve the best possible start in life, including access to the resources they need when they need them. Kansas boasts a proud history of supportive early childhood services and maintains excellent programs serving children and families throughout the state. However, distinct early childhood programs, disconnected from each other, create barriers to addressing a child’s multiple and unique needs, resulting in gaps, delays, and confusion for many families.
To address these concerns, Kansas early childhood leaders secured and allocated funding from the competitive Preschool Development Grant Birth through 5 (PDG) program to strengthen and align our early childhood system. State agencies, local/regional organizations, and individuals from across the state came together to develop a common understanding of what young children and their families need, determine the infrastructure necessary for improved outcomes, and plan for next steps. Seven years later, the work has been transformative. The Kansas Early Childhood Ecosystem is better positioned to respond with flexibility to both longstanding and emerging needs of young children, their families, and the professionals who care for them.
Read more below about ways PDG funding has supported alignment and initiatives across the early childhood ecosystem.
Centering the needs and desires of families
All In For Kansas Kids works to understand the changing needs of families and to support seamless navigation of programs and services for families to access resources, care, and education. Examples include:
- Comprehensive, routine needs assessment reports highlight the areas of greatest need for the early childhood ecosystem, workforce, and the children and families served.
- Our Tomorrows is a story-based research tool used to capture the everyday experiences of Kansans and learn more about the needs of children and families through community sensemaking sessions.
- The Kansas Children’s Service League provides helpful resources and free, confidential support for finding early childhood services. Browse by zip code or connect with a real person by calling 1-800-CHILDREN.
- Help Me Grow focuses on four priority areas for improving child health and well-being: family and community outreach, centralized access point, provider outreach, and data collection/analysis.
Enabling and learning from local innovation
All In For Kansas Kids supports communities as they test new ideas for better serving children and families. We disseminate findings and lessons learned so that more communities can adapt and implement promising ideas. Examples include:
- Quality Subgrants provided funding to communities for child care access, rural child care, connecting families to services, improving quality of care, and building kindergarten readiness.
- IRIS is an online platform that helps organizations monitor referrals, capacity, and performance. The IRIS system offers real-time notifications of referrals across community partners and helps organizations assess capacity and close referral loops.
- The Child Care Zones pilot program invests in communities to help local leaders and members of the child care sector address barriers, grow awareness of needs and challenges, recover from shortages and setbacks, and make sustainable system improvements.
Supporting the early childhood workforce
All In For Kansas Kids recognizes that recruiting and retaining early childhood professionals are critical needs in Kansas and must be addressed through multiple private and public strategies and innovations. We have boosted and aligned several system-level improvements and scaled local solutions, including:
- The Cape workforce registry unifies and empowers the early childhood workforce by connecting them to professional development opportunities.
- The Career Pathway provides guidance for child care professionals and those interested in pursuing a career in child care.
- The Kansas Core Competencies set quality standards for child care and early learning professionals. They guide professional development and training efforts across the state.
- Customized Early Education works to strengthen the early childhood workforce through substitute support, ensuring centers stay open and families retain access to child care even during staffing shortages.
- Baby Steps is a program developed and run by Child Care Aware of Kansas that helped increase infant slots across the state through a targeted stipend to child care providers.
- For a limited time, Thrive Allen County offered child care professionals help paying state health insurance premiums.
Facilitating effective collaboration and governance
All In For Kansas Kids supports collaboration and alignment among multiple agencies and organizations across the early childhood ecosystem because well-functioning systems don’t just happen. They require intentional design, systems-level data and analysis, and ongoing adaptation and maintenance to ensure effectiveness, impact, and sustainability. Examples include:
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- Development of the All In For Kansas Kids Strategic Plan and routine progress monitoring dashboard.
- Establishment of cross-sector communication channels such as this All In For Kansas Kids website and weekly All In For Kansas Kids e-newsletter.
- Creation of the Kansas Early Childhood Data Trust reflecting the commitment of five state agencies to share early childhood data and information to improve the availability, quality, and efficacy of programs that serve Kansas children and families. The Data Trust oversees authorized projects (AP), including AP 2 which guides the creation and maintenance of the Distinct Count Dashboard.
- Launch of the ASQ Online system representing a collaborative commitment from state agencies and all Kansas early childhood providers and elementary schools to advance kindergarten readiness. Any Kansas community partner serving children ages zero to five can help families in accessing screening tools to better meet their children’s developmental needs.
- Passage of House Bill 2045 by the Kansas Legislature in spring of 2025 with bipartisan support to unify early childhood services. The bill creates the Office of Early Childhood, streamlining access to high-quality early childhood care and education.
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