Spartanburg Reporter

City of Spartanburg issued the following announcement on February 9.

Collection of support services for children and families to set new standard of care in Spartanburg

If you are the parent of a young child, living in the City of Spartanburg became an even better choice when the calendar flipped to 2022 a few weeks ago as the City of Spartanburg, in partnership with a number of community organizations, launched Hello Family. The innovative new effort is designed to provide expanded access to a deep well of support for families with children ages 5-and-under.

This is no ordinary program. In fact, it is not a “program” at all. Hello Family is a continuum of support for families who reside in the City of Spartanburg. Hello Family will ensure that every family from prenatal care through the age of 5 will have access to services from eight different programs and providers.

As an example of a local government partnering with community organizations to invest in the health and education of its youngest residents, Hello Family stands alone, certainly in South Carolina and perhaps nationally. Launching it has taken years of planning has been invested by the City and its primary partner in Hello Family, The Mary Black Foundation, to get to this point.

Indeed, City Manager Chris Story first began exploring the concept in 2015. After initial conversations with MBF leadership and others, Story and then-MBF President and CEO Kathy Dunleavy met with Bryan Boroughs at the Greenville-based Institute for Child Success.

The City, Mary Black Foundation under Dunleavy and her successor, Molly Talbot-Metz, and ICS have worked for the past six years to refine the concept, enlist support, and develop the pay-for-success funding model that has made Hello Family possible.

What is Pay-for-Success?

While pay-for-success as a funding model is new to Spartanburg, it is not without precedent and its popularity is increasing as governments seek to fund innovative approaches to solving historic challenges. Pay-for-success models can get very complicated, but basically it works like this:

1. Governments seek funding for programs from foundations and investors who are motivated as much or more by the potential positive social impacts of the new program or intervention as they are by the modest return that is possible if the program is successful.

2. An independent evaluator determines after a period of time whether the program was “successful” based on the government’s goals for the program.

3. If the program is successful in reaching its goals or benchmarks, the government pays the social investors back their initial investment along with a modest return.

The key takeaway is that the model allows government to experiment with new approaches and initiatives while not risking taxpayer money. Indeed, the government only pays if the program is successful.

“It’s a great way for city governments to think about how they pay for outcomes instead of just paying for programs and services,” Talbot-Metz said. “With pay-for-success, a local government can say ‘We’re only going to pay for things that actually are getting us what we want.’”

In the case of Hello Family, more than $6 million has been secured to make the continuum of services accessible to every family in the City for the next five years.

An ambitious approach to building a stronger city

About 650 babies are born to families who reside in the city limits every year. Of those, about 40 percent are born into poverty.

Spartanburg has seen record economic development numbers in recent years. One need only to cruise through Downtown Spartanburg or the city’s Northside to see a city in the midst of a multi-sector development boom.

Even as the City continues to work to attract more investment, jobs and people to its 20 square miles, City Council and administrators have committed to investing in the people who already live here. And while a long list of nonprofit organizations — from Spartanburg Academic Movement to the Mary Black Foundation to the United Way of the Piedmont to the Spartanburg County Foundation, among many others — have been working for years to fund and/or provide important services, resources and education that support young children and their families, Story has long talked about an ambitious goal:

How to make Spartanburg the most supportive city for young children and their families in the nation? What does that even look like? As the concept of Hello Family came into focus, it emerged as a cornerstone to that vision.

“We know that all the evidence and data tells us that investing in young people has a tremendous impact on their future and on the future of the communities they live in,” Story said. “And the earlier you make those investments in their lives, the greater impact they make. That is why we focused on these programs, because collectively they are focused on the youngest people in our community.”

While that reasoning is logical, investing in people — especially in the manner in which Hello Family will — is not something local governments have historically done. More broadly, the fact city leadership has engaged key community leaders, stakeholders and partners in these types of discussions is important. It is a data-driven, outcomes-focused, complete-systems approach to building a healthier, more prosperous and more just community.

“It’s unique to have a city seeing the potential in investing in people,” Talbot-Metz said. “It is a rethinking about what is the role of city government and where should city government put its limited resources.”

That type of “rethinking” doesn’t mean the City has or will neglect its core responsibilities. What it does mean is that in a time of record levels of economic investment in Spartanburg, the City has made a historic commitment in its youngest residents and their families as it seeks to address the long-running challenges created by intergenerational poverty.

“The City of Spartanburg is going to take this step where small city governments aren’t expected to go,” as Buroughs from the Institute for Child Success said.

What are the elements of Hello Family?

Though Hello Family has a coordinator, it would be wrong to describe it as a program. And Hello Family itself has not introduced anything new to Spartanburg — instead, it’s approach is to help existing programs scale up and become accessible to every family in the city with a young child, free of charge

“Hello Family is a continuum of services for families with children under the age of 5,” Talbot-Metz said. “Hello Family is a place where families can connect with people who can help them find whatever services they need at that point in time. It could be doula services while you’re pregnant.

“The main message is that Hello Family is the go-to resource for whatever your family needs. Just call them, because they can help you find whatever you need.”

Collectively, the City and its partners believe, the impact of those programs and services will help improve birth outcomes, child and maternal health, reduce rates of child abuse and neglect, increase access to high-quality early learning opportunities, and ultimately ensure a higher percentage of children arrive for their first day of kindergarten healthy and ready to learn.

The programs and services in the Hello Family continuum include:

BirthMatters: BirthMatters provides community doula services to young (24 years old and younger) expectant mothers at no charge to them. Mothers must participate before 24 weeks in pregnancy and trained doulas will provide educational and emotional support to each family with home visits and birth support.

Family Connects: The Family Connects model is an evidence-based and successfully demonstrated program that connects parents of newborns to the community resources they need through postpartum nurse home visits, regardless of income. Services coming this spring.

Nurse-Family Partnership: Nurse-Family Partnership® (NFP) is an evidence-based community health program that helps transform the lives of at-risk, Medicaid-eligible mothers who are pregnant with their first child. Each mother served by NFP is partnered with a registered nurse early in her pregnancy and receives ongoing nurse home visits that continue through her child’s second birthday.

Help Me Grow SC: Help Me Grow SC helps parents navigate their child's early years with resources and support every step of the way.

Text4Baby: There are a lot of things to remember when you're pregnant or a new mom. Text4baby makes it easy to get important information. Women receive free text messages three times per week, timed to their due date or their baby's birth date, through pregnancy and up until the baby's first birthday.

The Basics Palmetto: The Basics provide easy-to-use, practical ways for parents to foster school readiness. The Basics are five evidence-based parenting and caregiving principles that encompass much of what experts find is important for children from birth to age three.

Triple P: Triple P is a parenting program, but it doesn’t tell you how to be a parent. It’s more like a toolbox of ideas. You choose the strategies you need. You choose the way you want to use them. The three Ps in ‘Triple P’ stand for “Positive Parenting Program.” Because all families are different, Triple P has a range of ways to get your positive parenting program.

Quality Counts: Quality Counts is an initiative that supports continuous quality improvement in early care and education programs with the goal that all children will arrive at school prepared for kindergarten success.

Reach Out and Read: Reach Out and Read equips families with the tools and information they need to make reading aloud a daily routine. It also shares books that serve as a catalyst for healthy childhood development.

To learn more or to get connected to any of the Hello Family services, call (864) 606-9908 or visit hellofamilyspartanburg.org.

Original source can be found here.