About Great Start Collaborative Wayne

Vision
A Great Start for every child in Wayne County: safe, healthy and ready to succeed in school and in life.

Mission
To engage the entire community to assure a coordinated system of services and resources to assist all Wayne County families in providing a great start for their children from prenatal through age eight.

System Components
There are five components to Great Start Collaborative - Wayne, which include:

  • Basic Needs & Family Support - Families of infants and children are economically stable. Infants and young children live in safe families.
  • Early Care & Education - Children are ready to succeed in school and in life.
  • Parenting Leadership - Families support and guide the early learning of their infants and young children.
  • Pediatric & Family Health - Infants, young children and their families are physically healthy.
  • Social-Emotional Health  - Infants, young children and their families are socially and emotionally healthy.

 

Core Values

The early childhood system created by the Great Start Collaborative - Wayne include:

  • Accessible, User Friendly and Affordable - Welcoming, easy to find, and simple to use. Any fees for publicly funded services are based on family income and circumstances.
  • Family-Guided - Parents, guardians and others acting in the parenting role are actively engaged in leadership in the system development, implementation, guidance and evaluation.
  • Sensitive and Responsive - The strengths, needs, values and culture of each family determine an individualized approach.
  • Community-Based - Each local collaborative implements a local system infrastructure of services, supports and resources to achieve the Great Start Results.
  • Collaborative - Shared leadership, responsibility, resources and decision making, each partner is acting to benefit the whole system and its customers.
  • Nonpartisan - All elected officials and policymakers consider the impact of policy and funding decisions on young children.
  • High-quality with Measurable Results - Every public and private early childhood service provider is accountable performance measures that reward results, quality and customer service and satisfaction.
  • Sound, with a Long-Term Financial Base - All sectors contribute to consistently available, diverse and stable financing for essential system components.
  • Publicly and Privately Supported - Public and private funding sources communicate and work together to assure the needs of each family are met.