 in the studio. My name is Lori Aldredi. I'm today's host for a program where we're going to talk about Help Me Grow Yellow. And joining me in the studio are Christina Michael Aburz and Jennifer Travis, Jim Provenza. Jim is a Yolo County Board of Supervisor member, and he's also Chair of First Five Yolo. Jennifer is the program coordinator of Help Me Grow Yolo, and Christina is the executive director of the Northern California Children's Therapy Center. So we have a great panel of guests today, and they Help Me Grow Yolo is a new program in Yolo County, and we're very excited about it. So maybe, Christina, you could start off by telling us a little bit about it. Sure, Help Me Grow is a wonderful program that was brought to Yolo County in the past year and a half from First Five by First Five. And what the program does is provide universal screenings, developmental screenings. And our goal is to provide those screenings to all children in Yolo County under the age of five. And then we also provide thorough review of those screenings and then outreach to families regarding the results of those screenings and referral and resource into the community for services and resources for families that are in our community already. So it's connecting the families and the children. Right, so does it serve kind of as a hub then for all these services? How does that work? So if there's other services within the community and you serve as a screening and a referral resource, how does that work? Well, First Five has worked over the past year to create a large resource list by working with all local partners in our community, of all the resources that are already here in our community, and Help Me Grow has those list of resources. And so the starting point is the screening. We have a 800 number where parents can call and we do the screening. Even if a screening isn't appropriate, we have a long list of resources available for families in the community. So it's really just a place that families can come with questions, concerns and needs that we can be connecting children and families to the resources in the community. And you probably find that all families, all parents have questions about their children and how they're developing and are they developing on track and how does that compare with other children that they may know? And so what I'm hearing you say is then the Help Me Grow Yellow is a way they can get their questions answered, even if there may not be any issues around the developmental growth or their behavioral issues and so on. They can just be referred to various resources. All parents, regardless of their background, their education, their income, every single parent has questions about their children. And is this normal? Is this something they should be doing? When should they start talking? Should they be walking? All of those questions. When do they start sleeping through the night? Is this behavior normal? Everybody has questions and Help Me Grow has answers. We've got the 800 number where people can call every day up and running answered by a developmental professional so we can answer those questions. And if we feel like there's something that needs to happen beyond answering those questions we're available to help with that as well. Now at the end of the program we're going to give that number but do you have it memorized by the chance? I know Jennifer does. I do. Jennifer, do you have that number memorized? I do. I thought I'll slide the paper over here. 844-410, grow. Very good. We'll give that number several times because I know people will have questions. And just to confirm this is all free, right? Absolutely, 100% free to the families. Wonderful. Well Jim, talk a little bit about how First Five YOLO got involved and why you got involved. Well, First Five is set up to distribute money within our community that comes from the state cigarette tax and the idea is to fund programs that help children zero to five but it's not just to help them at that age but it's to help them throughout their lifetime. If one of the issues in our community is that there is a substantial number of children in third grade who aren't reading at grade level and that's a key point in the child's life. If they're not reading at grade level at third grade it protects future problems in terms of high school graduation, going to college, getting a good job. So we go back in time and say well why is it that somebody isn't at grade level in third grade? Well a lot of the issues can be identified very early and are much easier to address at an earlier point than if you wait until, if it's a learning disability, if it's a neurological problem, an emotional problem, whatever the issue is, if it's discovered early we can address it. We have many resources in the community, some of which First Five Funds, some of which the county funds that are available but if a parent doesn't know what it is that needs to be addressed, then it happens too late. And in terms of everyone having questions it tends to go by income. Somebody in a higher income group sometimes has more resources and they might find that oh well my child isn't reading or my child isn't speaking at the same stage as the kid next door who's the same age and it's probably some perfectly normal reason for that but if there is an issue you can find out about it and address it. Well and First Five goes back to getting kids ready for kindergarten, the support of preschool and just to your point about the importance of reading by the end of third grade, what I often hear said is up and through the third grade children are learning to read and after third grade they read to learn. So if they are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade then all that learning that comes afterwards would be impaired. So to your point about the early identification of any issues and helping to solve that seems very important and I know you and First Five Yellow for a long time have worked on that whole early childhood education early identification of any issues where you can provide the support. So how does that fit in with the First Five Yellow strategic plan? Well really the strategic plan is designed to address all these issues. We're funding preschool, improving the quality of preschools, expanding the availability. We have programs that help parents help their children, help with if say the parents first language is not English we help with that, we help them read to the children, help them with their own child's development. So across the board the idea is to give all children an equal chance to succeed and that fits in completely with what we're trying to do because if you can't identify what it is as an issue with a particular child then you end up addressing it too late. And how do you reach out to other potential partners who can help fund this program? Cause I know you're putting in First Five Yellow is putting in a considerable amount of money over the time period of your strategic plan but for this program to grow and expand and meet the demand out there and for it to continue on self-sustaining you'll probably want other partners to get involved in and how are you going about that outreach and what message would you have to potential partners? And that's absolutely true. We have to do that. We have to look for a long-term sustainability. And one of the things is when you succeeded a program and you demonstrated success then you attract other funding. One of the things that we do is try to incorporate within our county operation successful programs that end up saving money down the line as well as helping the children. And that's true with the school districts. It's true with other agencies that end up helping later on. It's really what we call a upstream investment meaning that rather than addressing problems later on when they're more expensive we try to address them in an earlier stage. The challenge is convincing people that it's worth putting the money in at that earlier stage to save it later on. So basically programs like Help Me Grow, YOLO which is based on the national model of Help Me Grow is very cost effective to the county and to schools and so on. So maybe if we can turn to Jennifer a little bit now who's the program coordinator take us through the kind of the steps of how a parent who has questions can screen their child. What happens? Okay, a parent can call us at our 800 number. It's 844-410-GROW. They'll talk to a child development specialist. We can do a survey over the phone. It's a series of questions that parents answer about their child because they're the experts in how their child's doing. And the questionnaires are filled out. We get the results from those questionnaires about everyday tasks that the children do how they interact at home, how they talk, how they play. And we can give them a snapshot of how their child's doing at the moment. So it'll let us know where they can use some extra support or where there might be some concerns that show up and what they can do next about it. So we'd help them find the resources that are available to best fit those needs. So if a child does need therapy or help, what happens then? So depending on the child's age, we help the family make a referral so we can help them refer to Alter Regional or the school district. And they do the assessments because the screenings, they are not assessments. We're not diagnosing. We're just giving an idea of where the child is developmentally. And so once those referrals are made if there's a need for it sometimes it's just here's some activities to do to help your child find motor skills. Then the families are supported into the process. The assessments are done and then they move on from there. So we're just some of the first hands to touch them. And what kind of therapy might they receive? And maybe that's a question for Christina. Between the two of you, I guess my question, next question is, why is the Children's Therapy Center such a logical place to serve as the home in Yolo County for help me grow? And once the parent gets through the screening process, if additional assistance is needed, what do you do? Well, our hope and goal is that most kids coming through the screening process aren't going to need therapy. Our hope and goal is that we can be referring families into the communities where there's already so many wonderful programs, like free music groups, like play groups and Children's Therapy Centers offers those to anybody regardless of ability to pay, regardless of developmental abilities. But that said, Children's Therapy Center has been in Yolo County for 24 years providing infant development program, which is just a comprehensive early education program for children under three. We provide speech therapy. We provide occupational therapy. We provide physical therapy. We provide child development specialists. These are just rich resources that we have in our community already that we can really help these families navigate through. So really kind of combining forces with help me grow and finding a home at Children's Therapy Center has really just seemed to be a very cohesive fit since this happened in July of this year. So we're really excited about it. And going to Jim's point about the early intervention and the cost savings and that is there's so much research behind the cost savings on early intervention. Talking about the need of the children in our community by third grade who are or are not reading and how much resources that costs our school districts to provide intervention for these children. But what we know as developmental experts is that by the age of three, 85% of the child's brain is already developed. And much of that includes the language learning centers in the brain. So if we can get our hands on children young and be making impact young, we are going, it's truly a cost saving model of early intervention. There's been many, many, many research studies out there that have done a cost saving analysis on children who have received early intervention. And the figures go from anywhere from a per dollar put into early intervention up to $17, $18 saved in that child's education down the line because the power of getting our hands on these children young, helping shape the way they learn language, the way their brain develops, we can make that impact. And so that's why it's so, so important to be finding these children through the screening process and then finding their place in the community. And getting down to kind of the nuts and bolts of what parents and grandparents watching may want to say, well, how do I know I should take the screening? What are some of the signs? What are some of the developmental stages people should pay attention to? Well, I think that it's going to be helpful for any family, even no matter what their concerns might be, it's going to give everybody some more tools in their toolbox. So they're gonna know more about their child. It's going to increase their knowledge of child development. So every parent would have to do that. I would encourage absolutely every parent of every child under the age of five to do the screening. It's free, it's in the community. You're going to find out information about how your child is learning. And you're gonna find out about some really amazing, rich resources that we have in our community available to all children. And regardless of whether there's concerns or not, that's something that you can find out about and get your kids in music play, music groups and play groups and things that are happening in the community. So I would encourage absolutely everybody. And to take it one step further, we get that question a lot of when should I be concerned? And the biggest message I could say to parents, to grandparents, to guardians, to friends, listen to your instincts. Nobody knows your child better than you. And if you have a concern and you have a red flag, honor that and ask the question because we're here to answer. Okay, talk about two more things we're getting short of time here. And a couple of other points I thought you might wanna cover is how Help Me Grow YOLO compares to the national model. And also what support you're offering in terms of training, support for these other agencies out there that may serve as resources to families. Any of the three of you that wanna jump in on that? So the national model right now, there are 26 different states using the Help Me Grow model. And so it's set up so that you can make it work for your county. There are four core components that all of them have. We have a call center, so we have our number. We have community outreach. We have healthcare provider outreach and data analysis. So Every Help Me Grow has those four core components and then you implement that in a way that works for your county. So we're working really closely with the family resource centers and a lot of programs here in the county who work with young children, who we can train them on how to do a screening, how to look for those milestones in a child and then what to do next and where to refer, they can refer families back to us and we can help them connect out there. Excellent. Well anything, any other closing comments before we go once more time to tell people how they can learn more information about Help Me Grow and how they can get access to the screenings themselves. Any closing comments about first five? I encourage again everyone to have to participate in this process. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's not a classification of there's a problem or there isn't or it really is a way to provide good advice to the parent on how to help your child grow. Some children may need more intervention, most it's gonna be fairly simple, but we all need help as a parent and now a grandparent. I think this is a great service that everyone should take advantage of. Well said. How can parents and grandparents and guardians, again, how do they contact you? We have our websites HelpMeGrowYOLO.org and our phone number is 844-410-GRO. Perfect. Christina, Jennifer, Jim, thank you all so much for being in the studio with us today. And in the studio can be seen on DCTV, Channel 15, and also on YouTube on the Davis Media Access Channel. We invite you to watch this show many times. There's a lot to be learned every time you watch it. I've learned more today and I've been involved in this program for almost a year now. So thank you again for being here and thank you for watching. Thank you.