Meet First 5 Ventura County
F5VC’s Vision is that all Ventura County children are born healthy, thrive in nurturing environments, and enter school prepared and eager to learn.
F5VC’s Mission is to strengthen families, communities, and systems of care for children prenatal to five years through investments, expertise, and leadership so all children reach their full potential.
The first five years of a child’s life are the bricks and mortar of brain development. Research shows that when we invest in the first five years, infants and toddlers become healthy children who are confident, empathetic, and ready for school and life — and our communities, workforce, and economy become stronger and more productive.
F5VC centers Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) and incorporates a racial justice lens in our work. It is particularly important to invest in services that reach high-need families. When children grow up in poverty or experience other ongoing traumatic stress, their brain development can be negatively impacted. Among the families F5VC serves, non-white families (of which over 80% were Hispanic) were seven times less likely to have any college education and 15 times less likely to earn more than $30,000. Research shows that, without intervention, these children will know fewer words at age three, have lower reading scores in 3rd grade, and have lower rates of high school graduation. By focusing on REDI, F5VC aims to create a more equitable system for current and future generations.
Staff designed a REDI poster that is displayed at the Neighborhoods for Learning sites to prompt transparent discussions with families during Parent and Child Together (PACT) classes. F5VC fosters inclusion and awareness by celebrating the diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds of local families through classroom decorations, educational posters, and incorporating keywords and phrases into PACT classes.
Neighborhoods for Learning are a Cornerstone in the Community
After 20 years of contracting with local partners for the delivery of the nationally recognized First 5 Ventura County Neighborhoods for Learning (NfLs), F5VC brought all operations and implementation of the initiative in-house.
The NfLs offer any family in Ventura County with a child 0-5 years old the opportunity to participate in our signature Parent and Child Together (PACT) classes, receive developmental and health screenings, gain assistance accessing support services, engage in parent education, and connect with local families.
PACT Parenting Ladder Survey
F5VC launched the first Parenting Ladder Evaluation to document the impact of PACT classes in the lives of parents. Studies show that parents who attend our PACT classes increase their knowledge of child development, learn effective parenting skills, improve their ability to access support services, and increase their social support networks.
Note: PACT Parenting Ladder Survey (2021, 2022). Items measured on a scale of 1 (low)-7 (high).N = 205 – 209.. *** indicates statistically significant differences at p <0.001.
When families know about what to expect in their child’s development and can incorporate positive parenting strategies, their children are more likely to thrive. Low-income families typically have fewer opportunities to access quality family support services. Among the families F5VC serves, non-White families were less likely to have any college education or earn more than $30k annually. Participating in PACT minimized gaps in knowledge surrounding local supports, early childhood development, and positive parenting techniques. Our program evaluation illuminated the PACT program’s effectiveness in narrowing education- and income-related racial disparities that affect parenting. The Neighborhoods for Learning have a powerful potential to promote equity in diverse communities.
F5VC increased awareness about available services among parents and providers when we launched a new HMG website. The new website is easier to navigate and allows parents, providers, and the community to access relevant information, including online developmental screenings and referrals.
The key to a successful HMG network is collaboration across the early childhood, health, and basic needs communities. HMG staff expanded collaborations with medical clinics, preschools, and childcare providers to champion developmental screenings and interventions to decrease entry point barriers for children.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events in a child’s life that can include abuse, neglect, divorce, caregiver mental illness, and household violence. Encouraging community-based approaches to address ACEs and toxic stress with partners across the state, HMG continued to support the ACEs Aware Network of Care and the ACEs Referral Pathway Pilot.
Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP)
Ventura County is home to an estimated 20,000 Mixtec and Indigenous migrant community members. F5VC partners with MICOP, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen the Mixtec and Indigenous migrant community to bring relevant services to this vulnerable population. MICOP staff delivers culturally-informed Parent and Child Together classes, screenings, and family support services to families who speak Mixteco, Zapotec and Purépecha.
Parent Leadership
Children, families, and communities thrive when parents are engaged partners in decision-making. That is why Parent Leaders and the NfL Parent Advisory groups play a critical role in F5VC’s programs. Parent Advisory Groups meet monthly to offer input to improve programs. F5VC Parent Leaders participated in the Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) training, which aims to empower parents and caregivers to become leaders of change. F5VC Parent Leaders developed a bilingual bookmark, which allowed Parent Leaders to initiate conversations with other local parents who may be interested in NfL services, and to provide encouragement from one parent to another.
The Triple P Positive Parenting Program is an evidence-based parenting program that offers families simple, effective tools for positive parenting. Triple P providers are now able to bill those services to private or public insurance, which led F5VC to change our funding strategy. New Challenge Grants funded the cost of training clinicians or para-professionals to deliver the Triple P program as well as purchase necessary program materials. F5VC funds also covered the cost of services for families who do not qualify for other existing funding sources, reaching more than 100 families. Advocating at the state level resulted in this new, sustainable funding model for Triple P services.
When children are read to daily from an early age, they learn to read sooner and are more successful in school and life. F5VC continues to promote early literacy through multiple partnerships and events. NfLs distributed more than 15,000 bilingual books provided in part by the Dollywood Foundation and Barnes & Noble to children in underserved areas to build their home libraries. These bilingual books, in addition to F5VC’s Reading is a Prescription for Success bookmark, were disseminated through WIC, local preschools, medical clinics, and other community partners throughout the County who share the goal of increasing early literacy.
F5VC hosts Take 5 and Read to Kids!, an annual advocacy and early literacy event, to encourage caregivers and community members to Talk, Read, and Sing every day. High profile community leaders including elected officials and CEOs take time out of their busy schedules to read to young children and highlight the economic benefits of increased literacy rates in Ventura County’s community.
Take 5 and Read to Kids! is a highly visible community event that raises awareness about the importance of reading to young children, builds home libraries, recruits champions for early literacy, and promotes a lifetime love of learning. In May 2022, F5VC welcomed celebrity readers to share the message on the importance of early literacy to parents and the local community by reading at the Neighborhoods for Learning sites.
Family childcare providers who excel at supporting healthy child development often struggle with the financial aspect of their business. F5VC, in a partnership with the Ventura County Office of Education and the Economic Development Collaborative called the Shared Services Alliance of Ventura County, is working to strengthen business practices of family child care providers. Thirty-two participating providers are utilizing the Wonderschool platform, and received a $500 technology stipend and business coaching.
F5VC co-leads the Early Childhood Coalition (ECC), a collaborative effort bringing together over 20 multi-sector service providers to implement a highly coordinated and comprehensive child and family wellness system in neighborhoods with disproportionately high rates of child abuse and neglect. The focus of the ECC is to reduce the number of children entering the child welfare system by enhancing community and parental protective factors in racially and culturally appropriate ways.
One such example was a resource fair hosted by the ECC for families of young children in the Kamala-McKinna neighborhoods of South Oxnard. More than 15 local organizations participated in the event to provide resources, tips for caregivers, parent-child socio-emotional learning activities, and administer COVID-19 vaccinations. Families were connected to Neighborhoods for Learning services as well as other health and family supports.
Among F5VC’s greatest assets is our team. We take pride in the expertise and passion each employee brings to our goal of achieving positive and sustainable outcomes for Ventura County’s children prenatal to age five. Our ongoing role is to identify, develop and retain a high-performing and diverse workforce to drive long-term goals. Focusing on reflecting the communities we are serving, half of our employees are bilingual.
We are rooted in a collaborative culture that fosters a healthy, safe, and productive work environment for employees and their families. F5VC’s commitment to being an employee-centric, family-friendly employer has allowed F5VC to be recognized, yet again, as one of the best places to work in the tri-county region.
F5VC is thankful to have received ARPA funding that will allow us to expand our Neighborhoods for Learning, particularly focusing on the high-need Kamala-McKinna neighborhood. Knowing that we can make the greatest impact when we reach the youngest children, F5VC is also piloting a Home Visiting program for pregnant women and families with newborns, Welcome Every Baby. As a voice for our youngest children, we are advocating for a continued focus on the importance of prenatal to five as we come out of the pandemic and address disparities exacerbated by the pandemic.
The recent ban on flavored tobacco products may decrease available revenues when children’s needs have only increased. First 5s statewide are seeking sustainable investments in early childhood. F5VC will continue to deepen our partnerships and strive to improve the overall early childhood system, so that all children can be born healthy, thrive in nurturing environments, and enter school prepared and eager to learn.
