Overview

When we share responsibility for common goals, we can achieve great things. Pro Action has a strong track record for engaging in meaningful partnerships to build the community we envision. Whether as a leader or a participant, Pro Action works to actively integrate services within the agency and with external partners to produce optimal benefits for and with our customers and the community.

Kids on Track Steuben

Kids on Track Steuben is the Implementation Partnership in Steuben County advancing the goals of United Way of the Southern Tier’s Kids on Track initiative. The overarching goals of Kids On Track include school readiness, grade-level academic performance at 3rd grade, and high school completion. To advance these goals, the Kids on Track Implementation Partnership coordinates the efforts of multiple programs to achieve outcomes in the areas of child development and safe, nurturing environments for children. We have a Community of Practice that meets quarterly to oversee the advancement of our key strategies to achieve these outcomes: universal home visiting, early detection and treatment for delays, creating contexts for healthy child development in all settings where children spend time, developing school-based family resource centers, adopting consistent behavior management approaches across settings, and spreading practices for effective teaching and learning across settings. Work done in Communities of Practice last year has yielded the following results:

• A centralized funnel process for referrals coming to the partnership of home visiting programs operating in the county, and a stronger stream of referrals coming from Guthrie and Noyes (meaning important family support services are being offered and delivered to more families.)
• Development of a centralized database (COMET) to better coordinate referrals and services for children and families in Steuben County
• Widespread use of the New Parent Kit from New York State Parenting Education Partnership among programs serving expectant and new parents
• Coordination of work practices among partners to use and teach parents consistent approaches to social-emotional development and behavior guidance for children
• A consistent approach to assessing program effectiveness in family –serving programs (Standards of Quality for Family Strengthening and Support)
• Agreement on Strengthening Families / Protective Factors Framework approach to build protective factors with families; agreement on use of the Protective Factors Instrument to assess presence of protective factors in families served
• “Pop-up” Family Resource Centers at WIC clinics and other locations in small towns and neighborhoods
• Greater community awareness of the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences; more widespread use of intentional resilience-building tools in the scope of service