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United Way of King County, WA to Expand Parent-Child Home Program
About six and a half years ago, a coalition of business leaders, determined to find a way to insure that Seattle would have a strong, sustainable, skilled workforce in the future, created the Business Partnership for Early Learning (BPEL) and began researching the most effective way to achieve their goal. After much investigation, they decided that investing in young children at risk of school failure before they entered school would yield the greatest results and they funded two local agencies to provide the Parent-Child Home Program’s intensive school readiness, early literacy, parenting education services to children at high risk of entering school not prepared to be in a classroom, particularly immigrant children from non-native English-speaking households. They funded a five-year pilot project that brought The Parent-Child Home Program to approximately 400 children, and yielded results that clearly demonstrated that this investment brings high returns interms of children’s achievement. Convinced by this pilot that the Program is a significant tool for changing the future for the County’s poorest families, the United Way of King County is now taking over administration of the Program from BPEL, and plans to expand it to reach 1,200 families per year.
In order to achieve this expansion the United Way of King County has launched at $25 million fund raising effort. The original BPEL was funded (at about $4million over five years) by prominent Seattle businesses like Boeing, Safeco, Group Health Cooperative, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Seattle Foundation. The new campaign, a United Way undertaking,will be led by Chair Janet Levinger; Honorary Co-Chairs John Stanton, Bob Watt,and Phyllis Campbell; and United Way Campaign Chairs Brad Smith, General Counsel and Senior Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft, and Kathy Surace-Smith, Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, SonoSite Inc. The Campaign recently announced a $1 million dollar lead gift from Microsoft. “United Way of King County believes everychild has tremendous potential and a successful community can realize it. Our vision is that, supported by their families and their communities, all children will have the social, emotional, physical and cognitive skills they need to thrive in kindergarten and beyond,” said United Way of King County CEO Jon Fine.
“By bringing a highly effective and targeted home visiting program to these families, we will reduce the school readiness gap. Young children and their vulnerable families need more support, earlier, so that all children in our communities will have an equal chance for success.”
Click here to watch the United Way Parent-Child Home Program video
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