Smart Beginnings Community Assessment Checklist
This document, developed by the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation for SMART BEGINNINGS local entities is an example of a project management and organizing tool for conducting a community assessment. This was designed to assist local leaders in completing the community assessment process. The checklist can serve as both a self-monitoring tool and a tool to assess and document your progress by providing space to add notes about your activities, progress, and barriers encountered.
Explore More
Maternal and Child Health and Mental Well-Being: Cornerstones of a Thriving Community: Webinar Resources
Archived Webinar April 16, 2025
This webinar recording and slide deck are part of the Whole Child, Whole Family, Whole System Webinar Series.
Plan of Safe Care: Making Safety Policy a Strategy for Child and Family Well-being Webinar Resources
Archived Webinar April 9, 2025
These resources are from the final webinar of the series “Moving Away from Family Separation: Cross-Systems strategies to Support Young Children and Families at Risk of Child Welfare Involvement."
Early Childhood Systems Building: Whole Child, Whole Family, Whole System
Video April 3, 2025
Early childhood professionals recognize that the child- and family-serving systems that are not generally considered to be under the umbrella of the early childhood system—like housing, economic development, and transportation—are less often viewed as opportunities for or barriers to child and family well-being. Each of these systems, and how they interact with one another, impacts a child’s outcome. It is up to early childhood systems builders to identify the barriers to positive outcomes that result from an issue with any of the elements within the overall system. This is one of the early childhood systems builders’ greatest challenges, as these barriers are deeply interwoven with our country’s history and ongoing practice of discrimination and disinvestment. This video describes how BUILD views an Early Childhood System that focuses on the whole child, the whole family, and whole systems.