OSU’s Early Head Start Partnership Program awarded $10 million expansion grant to serve more central Ohio children and families
Last month, the OSU Early Head Start (OSU-EHS) Partnership Program was awarded an additional $10 million from a federal expansion grant, which allows them to build upon and expand vital services supporting the health, learning, and well-being of young children and families in central Ohio.
The grant also reaffirms the importance of collaborative partnerships like the ones embedded within OSU-EHS that make it possible to more fully meet the range of needs facing families experiencing poverty and its hardships. The $10 million federal expansion will enable the program to expand services to more than 100 additional children and to begin offering prenatal support to 25 soon-to-be mothers, thereby strengthening the prenatal to early childhood support spectrum.
New early education providers will join the OSU-EHS provider network through this grant, and the program will expand the network of community partnerships that offer holistic support for families and children in nutrition and meal planning; dental, vision, and health services; mental health support; and workforce development. The grant will also create new services for families educating their children at home by providing a home-based coach who will offer training and resources in addition to access to monthly social gatherings for children and families. The newly created program for expecting moms will support a healthy birth and access to support services through their child’s third birthday.
We recognize that all children deserve the chance to learn, grow, and reach their full potential, and ensure that all children begin with equitable resources and opportunities. A consistent support network is essential to assisting families from low-income households and to evaluating the needs of the whole child and family. This new grant allows us to expand services to serve even more children and to extend our continuum of support to prenatal mothers.
– Sherrie Sutton, director of the OSU-EHS Partnership Program
Read more about the grant and how one family has been impacted through the OSU-EHS program here.
About the OSU-EHS Partnership Program:
OSU-EHS was founded within the Schoenbaum Family Center in 2015 through a five-year $18 million grant. The program provides high-quality early education for eligible children and families, and does so through its unique partnership model. The OSU-EHS network is comprised of ten child care centers, eight family child care providers, fourteen community agencies and five OSU colleges and departments. By pulling together these groups, the OSU-EHS Partnership Program maximizes the unique strengths of each group and deploys a “two-generation” approach to poverty alleviation. Partners work together to provide a wide range of services that include high-quality early childhood education (for 160 children from birth to age four); professional development, coaching, and curriculum support for early childhood professionals; parent coaching and home visiting; well-checks and vision screenings for children; and resources for families. The program was recognized by the Bipartisan Policy Center as a top partnership program in the country, and in 2019, received another five-year grant to continue their work.
Contacts for the OSU-EHS Partnership Program:
Don Fuzer, principal investigator for the OSU-EHS Partnership Program • fuzer.2@osu.edu • 614-292-4453
Sherrie Sutton, director of the OSU-EHS Partnership Program • sutton.401@osu.edu • 614-292-2010
Community partners of the OSU-EHS Partnership Program:
