Thriving Communities Support Thriving Families

Thriving communities are central to child and family well-being. When there is community-level buy-in from both public and private leaders to help strengthen families, invest in early learning, and support healthy development, our youngest Kansans and their families benefit. Communities across Kansas are addressing gaps in care, adopting family-friendly workplace practices, and creating safe, nurturing environments for children.

Each community has unique needs and gaps, and we know there’s not a universal solution to challenges like workforce shortages, access to child care, or helping families meet their basic needs. The resources here can support your community no matter where you are on this journey, and include:
  • An overview of programs and services involved in the early childhood ecosystem
  • Details on the needs of Kansans, and how these needs vary from community to community
  • Strategies and lessons learned through the Child Care Capacity Accelerator and actions identified in our strategic plan
  • Ways to make your workplaces more family friendly
What We Know

We’ve learned a lot about the needs of Kansans and the help they seek from the early childhood ecosystem. In this section, you’ll find the 2024 Needs Assessment along with an overview of the ecosystem, child care data and tools, and details on the unique needs of rural communities.

Child Care Capacity Accelerator

Learn all about the Accelerator–a significant investment of cross-agency resources to increase child care capacity.

Family-Friendly Workplaces

Here you’ll find ideas for implementing policies and practices that are family friendly and help enhance workforce productivity.

Strategic Plan

Ecosystem

With a focus on family well-being in addition to services that directly support young children, partners across our early childhood ecosystem are collaborating more than ever before. Kansas leaders have been shifting from insulated work within individual state agencies and moving toward more unified decision making, data sharing, and cross-cutting solutions. Goals and actions in this pillar are crafted to guide continued collaboration and to prioritize child and family well-being most efficiently to meet a wide range of needs. This Pillar is also about nurturing the ecosystem by creating new resources, increasing capacity, forming public-private partnerships, and using data to improve outcomes for all Kansas children and families.

Read about the Strategic Plan

1-800-Children

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(1-800-332-6378)

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1800CHILDREN@kcsl.org

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