Investment supports learning and development of young children in Southern Indiana

Louisville, Ky. (Dec. 11, 2024) – Lilly Endowment Inc. has awarded Metro United Way a $3.647,500, four-year grant to build an integrated system of care and support for young children, meeting the diverse needs of families in Clark, Floyd, and Harrison counties in Indiana.

Indiana is currently 24th in the country for child well-being and 38% of children are not kindergarten ready while 67% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading. When children start out behind in school, they tend to stay behind, so early intervention is key to ensure children are on track to succeed in school and beyond.

This grant will strengthen families through parental education, support the early detection of developmental delays or disabilities by increasing the number of children birth to age three who are screened through Metro United Way’s Ages & Stages (ASQ) Developmental Screening Hub, and connect families to the needed resources and services to ensure they can thrive.

“Parents and caregivers are a child’s first teachers and they must be knowledgeable about child development to ensure children are ready to learn when they begin kindergarten,” said Adria Johnson, president and CEO of Metro United Way. “Developmental screenings are educational tools that help parents understand their child’s development and also promote family engagement and positive family connections, which have been linked to greater academic motivation, grade promotion, and social-emotional skills for all young children.”

With this grant, Metro United Way will expand its ASQ developmental screening and enhance local service provision by:

(1) Partnering with local service providers, including child care providers, home visiting programs, public libraries, health departments, health care providers, among others, to increase their capacity to enroll families in the ASQ Hub and/or conduct developmental screening.

(2) Partnering with service providers focused on specific populations to engage in authentic outreach to increase enrollment in the ASQ Hub.

(3) Providing professional development opportunities on developmental screening and other early learning topics for providers serving children birth to age three (e.g. age-appropriate social emotional interventions to incorporate into their programming that will help early childhood educators address developmental delays).

(4) Increasing staffing capacity to provide high-touch support to families with children ages birth to age three through the ASQ Hub, including ASQ screening scoring, one-on-one care coordination, service navigation and access, and retention of families.

(5) Convening partners across sectors to build awareness and understanding of available community resources and ensure alignment and coordination amongst providers regarding developmental screening and supportive services.

(6) Provide direct financial assistance (as needed) to families to access supportive services.

(7) Provide community family engagement events as an opportunity to enroll families in the ASQ Hub and provide two generation learning to families and caregivers.

Metro United Way’s ASQ Hub was launched in 2012 and previous third-party evaluations of ASQ have found:

For every service contact made because of a Metro United Way referral, children were:

• • 93% more likely (or nearly twice the odds) to progress on the Ages & Stages Questionnaire: Social Emotional scale, than they were to regress or maintain their initial score.
  • Nearly 4x as likely to progress on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Social Emotional Scale.

Developmental screening and kindergarten readiness:

• • The odds of being ready for kindergarten for those completing four or more Ages and Stages Questionnaires: Social Emotional scale was almost 6x that of children who completed only one questionnaire.

“Being a first-time parent, I didn’t know exactly what milestones should be met at certain ages. The Ages and Stages Questionnaire through Metro United Way’s Developmental Screening Hub was an answer to this! A friend recommended your program, and it became an integral guide in letting me know what strengths and weaknesses my child had. Flash forward to now ten years later, I am a mother of three children who each have their own personalities and have met milestones at different paces. Two of our three struggled with eating and growth challenges and we were able to connect to some professionals to get them the extra help they needed. I am happy to report they are all healthy and thriving now.” – ASQ parent.