Early Comprehensive Childhood Systems Impact (ECCS Impact)

The summary for the Early Comprehensive Childhood Systems Impact (ECCS Impact) grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Health Resources and Services Administration, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Early Comprehensive Childhood Systems Impact (ECCS Impact): The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) is accepting applications for fiscal year (FY) 2016 Early Comprehensive Childhood Systems Impact (ECCS Impact).  The purpose of this program is to enhance early childhood (EC) systems building and demonstrate improved outcomes in population-based children’s developmental health and family well-being indicators using a Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network (CoIIN) approach.  An additional goal of the ECCS Impact grants is the development of collective impact expertise, implementation and sustainability of efforts at the state, county and community levels. 

Up to 15 recipients of the ECCS Impact program will identify one to five (1-5) place-based communities within their state/territory to participate in the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network (ECCS CoIIN).  At least one of the identified communities should be a community receiving state and/or tribal Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) services.  Applicants will receive priority points (See Section V. Application Review Information. 2. Review and Selection Process. Funding Priorities) if one of the communities selected to participate is a Promise Zone and/or Rural IMPACT community as defined in Appendix A – Glossary of Terms. 

The ECCS CoIIN will be coordinated by the ECCS CoIIN Technical Assistance Center (ECCS CoIIN TAC), which will be established through a cooperative agreement, HRSA 16-179 Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network.  See Appendix B for a visual model of the working relationship between the ECCS Impact grantees and the ECCS CoIIN TAC.  The ECCS CoIIN TAC will provide intensive, targeted technical assistance to the ECCS Impact recipients and their identified place-based communities on CoIIN processes.  The ECCS CoIIN TAC will facilitate three successive 18-month CoIIN cohorts consisting of place-based communities of ECCS Impact recipients utilizing collective impact principles to accelerate or improve results for families.  (Section V. Application Review Information. 2. Review and Selection Process. Funding Priorities) see Appendix A – Glossary of Terms)

The overall aim of the ECCS Impact and the ECCS CoIIN TAC is that within 60 months, participating communities will show a 25percent increase from baseline in age appropriate developmental skills among their community’s three (3) year old children.

The secondary aims of the ECCS Impact and ECCS CoIIN TAC are to: 

strengthen leadership and expertise in continuous quality improvement (CQI) and support innovation among a cohort of recipients representing states/territories and their identified place-based communities.  At least one community should be a community receiving state and/or tribal MIECHV services.  Applicants will also receive priority points (See Section V. Application Review Information. 2. Review and Selection Process. Funding Priorities)  if one of the communities selected is a Promise Zone and/or Rural IMPACT community

achieve greater collective impact in early childhood systems at the state, county, and community level, with common aims, shared metrics and measurement systems, coordinated strategies, continuous communication, and a backbone organization at the state, county, and community levels;

develop primarily two-generation approaches to drive integration of early childhood services vertically (i.e., within a sector such as health care) and horizontally (i.e., across sectors such as between early care and education and health care);

develop and adopt core sets of indicators to measure Early Childhood (EC) system processes and outcome indicators that measure population impact around children’s developmental health and family well-being; and

test innovative EC systems change ideas, develop spread strategies and adopt new EC policies for sustaining the systems developed during this project that improve children’s healthy development and family well-being.

An early childhood comprehensive system is defined as an organized, purposeful partnership of interrelated and interdependent agencies/organizations representing health, mental health, social services, families and caregivers, and early childhood education to develop seamless systems of care for children from birth to kindergarten entry.  These systems help children grow up healthy and ready to learn by addressing their physical, emotional and social health in a broad-based and coordinated way. 

A Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network, or CoIIN, is defined as a group of self-motivated people (or organizations) with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work.  The CoIIN model provides a platform for collaborative learning and quality improvement toward common goals and benchmarks using rapid cycles of change. Key features include collaborative learning, common benchmarks, coordinated strategies, rapid tests of change, and real-time data to drive real-time improvement.

Requirements of the ECCS Impact recipients include the following:

The recipient should have an early childhood comprehensive system[1] in place with state/territory agency, and stakeholder leadership participation. Note: Only one entity per state/territory will be chosen for this program. 

The recipient must partner with a state/territory Advisory Team that provides leadership in implementing the policies and practices necessary to carry out systems work in their respective state/territory organizations and recommends state/territorial-wide system change as a result of the ECCS CoIIN results. Key leaders represented on the state/territory Advisory Team should include:

The Governor’s Office;

Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program;

Early Childhood Advisory Council/System;

Title V leadership;

Family engagement leadership (examples might be Family Voices; Strengthening families, etc.);

Public and private primary health care (examples might include the state/territory’s Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance program or the person responsible for Medicaid Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Program; the state/territory ’s primary health care, medical home, and safety net provider organizations such as American Academy of Pediatrics; American Academy of Family Physicians, Pediatric nurse practitioners;  HRSA-funded health centers, Part C, state/territory Children with Special Health Needs Division);

Mental health service providers (examples might be the state/territory’s Division of Mental Health; Project Launch grantee);

Early childhood education representatives (examples might include state/territory Department of Early Learning; Child Care Administrator; state/territory early childhood educators association (Head Start/Association for the Education of Young Children; Family Child Care Association); School Pre-K organization; and

Designated leader(s) from each selected place-based community.

Other desirable state/territory partners strongly recommended but not required include: trauma informed care[2] networks, The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), housing, public-private early childhood partnerships, and businesses that support children’s developmental health and family well-being.

The recipient must select at least one (1) and up to five (5) place-based communities that are willing and available for participation in ECCS CoIIN cohorts[3] (See Appendix A – Glossary of Terms).

At least one of the identified communities should be a community receiving state and/or tribal Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) services.  Applicants will also receive priority points if one of the communities selected is a Promise Zone and/or a Rural IMPACT community.  The  priority points for Promise Zone and Rural IMPACT communities are to encourage the leveraging and further the impact with other federal initiatives supporting place-based work. (See definitions in Appendix A – Glossary of Terms).

It is up to the applicant to decide the number of place-based communities and their CoIIN teams that it can effectively and efficiently oversee for successful implementation of the CoIIN activities and desired outcomes as outlined. Note: The flexibility of one to five communities is to allow for need identified and readiness of communities to implement CoIIN activities.  

The recipient must develop teams within its place-based communities to participate in the CoIIN activities described below.  Each community team should include:

The ECCS Impact Project Director or his/her designee, and the following representatives from the place-based community:

Mayor’s office; City Council office or other official governing body for the place-based community;

Family engagement leadership (e.g., local parent organization; Family Voices; Strengthening Families, etc.);

Public and private primary health care (e.g., pediatricians, family practice, local American Academy of Pediatrics chapter, local health centers, early intervention, etc.);

Mental health representatives (e.g., infant/child mental health consultants; Project Launch grantee); and

Early childhood education representatives (e.g., Head Start/Child Care/Family Home Providers; school Pre-K).

NOTE: Other representatives from the recipient organization and/or the place-based communities also may be included on the team at the discretion of the recipient.

The recipient must, during the course of the project:

identify, implement and, if necessary, build a state/territory EC data system for collection and reporting of EC core process and outcome indicators that will be developed or integrated within an existing early childhood data system during the CoIIN process (please note:  it is highly encouraged that the system to collect and report indicators for this project be compatible with or incorporated within an existing early childhood data system currently operating in a state-wide/territory-wide capacity);

develop state-level ECCS leadership and capacity to facilitate CoIIN implementation and spread;

participate in all CoIIN virtual sessions facilitated by the ECCS CoIIN TAC and at least one on site, in person, learning collaborative facilitated by the ECCS CoIIN TAC in person and ensure the community teams attend at least one on site, in person, learning collaborative facilitated by the ECCS CoIIN TAC in person;

attend at least one ECCS Impact recipient annual meeting in person; and

develop and implement a programmatic and financial sustainability plan to continue activities beyond the duration of the ECCS Impact project period and to engage additional place-based communities within the state/territory to replicate ECCS CoIIN activities for improvement in children’s developmental health and family well-being.

Community CoIIN Teams will be required during the course of the award to:

become knowledgeable with the science of continuous quality improvement(CQI)[4] and CoIIN[5] processes;

participate in a CoIIN, committing to a working period of 48-60 months (three successive 18-month cohorts consisting of one to five communities per participating state/territory), to implement a two-generation approach to improving children’s developmental health and family well-being;

attend at least one on site, in person, CoIIN learning collaborative facilitated by the ECCS CoIIN TAC;

identify gaps and barriers to attaining the aim of this program and identify state and community policies and procedures that require immediate and longer term attention to ensure EC systems function effectively and achieve measureable outcomes in the improvement of children’s healthy development and family well-being;

adopt the ECCS Impact’s aim and develop SMART Goals[6] for ECCS CoIIN work for two-generation approaches to children’s developmental health and family wellbeing;

submit monthly data and Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle[7] reports;

share progress reports monthly with CoIIN peers representing other recipients and CoIIN faculty;

participate in peer-to-peer mentoring and sharing of ideas and insights via periodic conference calls and other forms of communication (i.e. list servs; web chats, etc.); and

explore new innovative improvement approaches as they become available (for example Pay for Success[8]).

Outcomes desired during the project period:

Overall Aim: Within 60 months, communities participating in the CoIIN will show a 25percent increase from baseline in age appropriate developmental skills of their community’s three (3) year old children.

(one-three years)

ECCS Impact recipients representing states/territories and their selected communities advance local and state coordination and integration of systems towards improving children’s developmental health and family well-being.

An established core set of process indicators for measuring state-level EC system success and a core set of outcome indicators for improvement of children’s developmental health and family well-being at the population level.

ECCS Impact recipients representing states/territories adopt a core set of process indicators for measuring state-level EC system success and a core set of outcome indicators for improvement of children’s developmental health and family well-being at the population level for local and state CoIIN activities.

ECCS Impact recipients utilize an existing state/territory early childhood data system  to collect, store, report and analyze the new process indicators for measuring state-level EC system success and a core set of outcome indicators for improvement of children’s developmental health and family well-being at the population level.

(four-five years)

Communities, counties, and states/territories adopt and sustain collective impact and collaborative improvement and innovation efforts including policies that were demonstrative to be effective, to spread work to additional communities from this program.

Indicators developed through the CoIIN are incorporated in state/territory and public health systems (i.e. in alignment with Title V performance measurement system).

Successful system innovations, interventions, and outcome indicators for improvement of children’s developmental health and family well-being at the population level created are aligned and work in tandem with other state/territory EC initiatives to achieve school readiness.

[1] Early childhood comprehensive system -an organized, purposeful partnership of interrelated and interdependent agencies/organizations representing health, mental health, social services, families and caregivers, and early childhood education to develop seamless systems of care for children from birth to kindergarten entry.

[2] Trauma informed care - an organizational structure and treatment framework that involves understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma.  It also emphasizes physical, psychological, and emotional safety for both consumers and providers, and helps survivors rebuild a sense of control and empowerment. (Source: http://www.traumainformedcareproject.org/) 

[3] Cohort – a group of place-based communities, selected by the ECCS Impact recipients, that participate in CoIIN improvement cycles.

[4] Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) - an ongoing effort to increase an agency’s approach to manage performance, motivate improvement, and capture lessons learned in areas that may or may not be measured. It is an ongoing effort to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, quality, or performance of services, processes, capacities, and outcomes.

[5] Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network (CoIIN) – a group of self-motivated people (or organizations) with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work[5]. The CoIIN provides a platform for collaborative learning and quality improvement toward common goals and benchmarks using rapid cycles of change. Key features include collaborative learning, common benchmarks, coordinated strategies, rapid test cycles, and real-time data to drive real-time improvement.

[6] SMART Goal - one that is specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and time- bound.

[7] Plan, Do, Study, Act Cycle (PDSA) -  a systematic series of steps for gaining valuable learning and knowledge for the continual improvement of a product or process.

[8] Pay for Success -funding model that drives government resources toward social programs that prove effective at providing results to the people who need them most.