April 2004

When Baltimore City officials announced the City’s record low infant mortality rates last year, they gave credit to many factors including an increase in services for pregnant women and new mothers.  In announcing the dramatically improving infant mortality statistics, Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley said the numbers “are encouraging and demonstrate that our efforts to reach out are paying off.  Through education and treatment, we are helping save more babies and giving them the best opportunity to start life healthier.”

Particularly acknowledged by officials was Baltimore’s Success By 6® Partnership, which has provided 3500 women and families with vital health services, through at-home visits or convenient neighborhood locations.  Success By 6Ò is a partnership of three major organizations, the Family League of Baltimore City, the United Way of Central Maryland and the Safe and Sound Campaign.  Examples of home-based services include helping families get needed medical care and registered for services such as food stamps for which they are eligible but not enrolled. Ongoing visits support caregivers by addressing long-term goal setting and decision-making, health-related behaviors during pregnancy and other issues. Center-based services include, for example, parent education and skill building, and family literacy support.

The Partnership has been able to expand its services thanks to the Reason to Believe Enterprise, an effort co-founded by Safe and Sound to raise $30 million to increase and sustain opportunities that improve conditions and outcomes for five of the city’s most vulnerable populations.

In addition to investments from Reason to Believe, Success By 6® recently received a federal Early Learning Opportunities Act (ELOA) grant of nearly a million dollars, which will fund several language- and literacy-focused strategies.  “With the start-up phase successfully behind us, we want to add a stronger focus on early childhood development and parenting to the primary Success By 6® emphasis on ensuring that babies are born healthy,” says Success By 6® strategist Barbara Squires.  “This is new for some providers.”

“In Baltimore City, only 32 percent of kindergarteners are assessed as ‘fully ready’ to learn, compared to 52 percent for the state as a whole, and it is the language and literacy component where the City lagged most,” says Squires.  “So helping parents to be their child’s first teacher is an important goal.”

Among the activities that will be added or expanded through the ELOA grant are:

• Bright Beginnings parent/child groups to help parents use everyday moments to engage young children in conversation to foster language; 
• School readiness kits, activity boxes for parents and kids to promote language and literacy, provided to families;
• Assistance to 100 family childcare center providers so they can better promote literacy through their programs (kindergarten assessments show that kids who attend family childcare centers are less ready-to-learn than those who attend center-based programs where staff often have more training);
• Reach out and Read, a program in which doctors “prescribe” books to young families;
• Born to Read, a pilot project through which obstetricians talk to pregnant moms about the importance of reading.

“The ELOA grant will allow us to provide ‘consistency of message’,” says Squires.  “Anyone who touches a family is giving parents the same message about the importance of fostering language skills and literacy.”

As Baltimore’s Success By 6® effort evolves and grows, it may also serve as a model for the Reason to Believe Enterprise’s Compact for Sound Government proposal.  Through the Compact, Reason to Believe is making the case to the State that as investments in certain strategies increase, the government saves money by avoiding expensive remedial interventions. These savings could then be captured in a revolving fund and a portion of the avoided costs be directed towards sustaining and expanding the strategies.

For example, program evaluations have found a lower use of neonatal intensive care (fewer days due to fewer low birth weight babies) through services such as those provided by Success By 6®.  And, therefore, the resulting savings to Medicaid could provide even greater investments in home visiting or similar services.  Similarly, if school readiness efforts such as those provided by Success By 6® lead to fewer children being placed in costly special education programs, that too could create savings for the State that could be invested back into school readiness efforts.

For Hathaway Ferebee, executive director of the Safe and Sound Campaign, the case revolves around the significant differences between strategies and programs. 

“The concept of ‘good programs’ is not an effective one,” Ferebee says.  “A ‘good program’ reaches too few people to make a major impact, and its existence too often depends on a single public official who champions it.  In contrast, Success By 6®, with its longevity and demonstrated success, is a strategy backed by research and sound data.  It can improve outcome statistics citywide and merits public investment.”

For more information on this website about Baltimore’s Safe and Sound Campaign, click here.  For more articles on this website about early childhood interventions, click here.