Summer is here in Southern Oregon and we hope you are enjoying all that our region has to offer!

In this newsletter, we will be highlighting the collaborative work that is making a difference for our children, families, and child care programs. We have much to celebrate.

• Over $1 Million dollars raised in support of child care in Jackson and Josephine counties
• Exciting new equipment for children at the Growing Together Family Community Center.
• $25,000 in funding to expand the family community center model we have created with Growing Together into rural communities
• We honored the hardworking, dedicated Kaleidoscope Play and Learn facilitators for the wonderful work they do every week with our children and families.
• Preschool Promise enrollment is now underway for families seeking publicly funded preschool services in our region.
• Our Josephine County Parent Advisory Council is looking for parents/ guardians who would like to join!
• Save the date for the next Strengthening Families and the Protective Factors Framework trainings.
• And more!

Thank you for your continued engagement and partnership with the Early Learning Hub and our other system partners!

If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

African Proverb

With Gratitude,

René Brandon

Director

Southern Oregon Early Learning Hub

In the last newsletter, we shared the data and efforts underway to address the child care crisis and the four major areas of need, outlined in the graphic below. We are now pleased to share with you the impressive outpouring of support from our community leaders to help support our children, families, and child care programs.

The graphic highlights the many community partners who have come together to make the following needs a reality:

• To address the lack of child care in rural communities, $53,400 has been raised to support new family child care providers in Jackson County with startup costs and wraparound supports.
• To address the workforce shortage, $27,300 has been raised to support 16 job seekers in paid internship experience at a high quality child care program and will be offered employment upon completion of the internship, if it is mutually considered a good fit. Training and navigation is provided by Child Care Resource Network and WorkSource Rogue Valley.
• To address the need for more subsidized child care, $207,000 has been raised to contract with high quality child care programs. Contracts are currently being drafted and opportunities for families on the Preschool Promise waitlist will be available soon.
• To address the increasing need for behavior supports in child care classrooms, $100,000 has been raised to offer a cohort of 10 educators the training and support to become Qualified Mental Health Associates who can offer skills training to children who would benefit from some one on one support.

We are in the first year of this expansion campaign and are so pleased with the support from leaders in the region. If your or your organization would like to join us as a Champion for Child Care, please visit our webpage to see how you can donate to one of the areas of need.

Additionally, the region is very grateful to Jackson Care Connect for investing $600,000 in child care slots directly to child care programs in Jackson County and to the City of Ashland for Investing $100,000 in child care slots within two child care programs in Ashland.

Preschool Promise enrollment is underway! Families needing publicly funded preschool can visit Southern Oregon Early Learning Hub’s website to learn more about Preschool Promise opportunities in Jackson and Josephine County. Lotteries have begun for the upcoming preschool year and will continue throughout the summer. Please reach out to Southern Oregon Early Learning Services for more information!

Email enrollment@soesd.k12.or.us or call (541) 776-8590, ext. 1145.

Para asistencia en español, llame (541) 776-8590, extensión 1190.

We are looking for parents and guardians to join our Josephine County Parent Advisory Council! If you know a family who would be interested in gaining leadership skills, working with other parents to identify needs in our community and work on projects to help address those needs!

Please encourage interested individuals to scan the QR code below or complete the interest form here.

The Growing Together Center continues to provide free, inclusive programs for families with young children, and finding new ways to engage with families. Drop by for a playgroup, or stop by to grab some diapers and take a peek some of the fun new equipment we are adding to the center- we are excited to share it with you!

We have seen a significant increase in the demand for diapers. Regularly changed diapers are a necessity for the health of children and are also very expensive for families with young children.

We welcome any community support, financial donations, and diaper donations so we can continue to provide this service. No donation is too small.

Donations can be dropped off at our SOELS Medford office between 8 am and 4 pm at 918 Chevy Way, or at the Growing Together Center between 9 am and 4 pm M-F at 310 SW H Street in Grants Pass.

This month we honored our wonderful KPL facilitators with an appreciation lunch at the park. They brought their families and spent the afternoon sharing life stories and enjoying the company of one another.

Kaleidoscope Play and Learn groups are an amazing opportunity to meet new people and build supportive relationships within the community; and for the facilitators, this is no different. They are a community amongst themselves, they support one another, learn from each other and laugh a lot! I have had the privilege to walk alongside these facilitators as they grow within their profession, watch as they gain confidence and enhance the lives of their families, just by being present. They show up every week for their families as they celebrate their successes and learn from their struggles. Side by side they play silly games, sing fun songs and little bit by little bit a family within the families is forged.

So, this month, we honor our facilitators, for creating a fun, trusting, and safe place for us to learn, laugh and launch into friendships we didn’t know we needed!

Scan the QR code to find a Kaleidoscope Play and Learn group near you.

Below is a picture of one of our Kaleidoscope Play and Learn Facilitators bringing the camping experience indoors for her families!

Strengthening Families™ is a research-informed approach to increase family strengths, enhance child development and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. It is based on engaging families, programs and communities in building five key protective factors: parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, concrete support in times of need, and social and emotional competence of children.

Southern Oregon Early Learning Hub regularly hosts free, all-day Strengthening Families trainings, taught by Felicity Elworthy. Attendees spend time learning about the Protective Factors Framework and how it can be used in their work to support families. If you would like to attend future sessions, or have any questions, please contact Sydney Wing at sydney_wing@soesd.k12.or.us, breakfast and lunch are provided, space is limited!

NEXT PRESCHOOL/K12 ALIGNMENT SUMMIT COMING UP ON AUGUST 20

Southern Oregon Success, SOELS and Child Care Resource Network (CCRN) invite all early childhood educators and administrators, all K12 educators and administrators and all interested community members to our next Preschool/K12 Alignment Summit, to be held via Zoom on August 20th from 5:30 pm to 7 pm.

The main focus for the Summit will again be on a coordinated response to the behavioral challenges in early childhood and K12. SOELS, CCRN and multiple community partners are working to scale up the nationally recognized Pyramid Model in order to develop trainings and supports for early childhood that are aligned with similar multi-tiered systems of support in our K12 school districts.

In addition, the Family Nurturing Center is taking lead for our region in the area of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC--the top part of the Pyramid) to address children with the highest level of challenges.

The Summit will provide an overview of how the Pyramid Model and the IECMHC are being put in place here, along with information of opportunities for early childhood and K12 educators to regularly connect through Professional Learning Teams in 2024-25.

A guest Keynote speaker will be announced soon.

SOELS is providing a $50 gift certificate to participants who attend the Summit as an activity that is outside of their full time job.

For more information and to register, please go to this link.

SOUTHERN OREGON REGIONAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM IN DEVELOPMENT

Over 100 participants engaged in a virtual Navigation Summit last month, hosted by Southern Oregon Success and Southern Oregon Early Learnings Services (SOELS), our region's Early Learning Hub, with the goal of working together over the coming months to map out just who is helping families navigate services in education, health care, human services and public safety in Jackson and Josephine counties.

The project began through the efforts of Jordan Rogers of SOELS with a first draft of a document listing the various agencies and organizations that provide navigation services. Participants in the Navigation Summit added more names and contact information to the point where over 70 organizations are now listed as part of a growing Navigation System.

If you would like to add your own organization's info to the document, please do, or please feel free to email your information to peter_buckley@southernoregonsuccess.org

The next steps are to continue to refine the collected information, to develop a user-friendly contact list so people know who to connect with for navigation assistance in different areas, to come up with a list of foundational trainings that all navigators in our region should have access to and to schedule a convening of all the different navigators in the fall to further align efforts.