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“The Collaborative for Colchester’s Children.” Have you heard about it? What does it mean?
Following up on the success of the partnership between the Colchester Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen in forming and implementing the plan of the Colchester Readiness Council, Colchester was awarded a $50,000 grant to develop a plan for more unified delivery of community services to young children and their families. One of the results of this effort will be to decrease duplication of services across the community and to work as a community to provide increased services where needed in the areas of early care and education, health and wellness, and family support services.
The Collaborative is a community-based work group comprised of parents, senior citizens, business owners, health professionals, town and school officials and agencies, local educators, child care providers, and interested community members. We have spent the last six months developing a community vision for Colchester’s children age birth to 8 and collecting data to create specific goals and an action plan to ensure that all of Colchester’s youngest citizens thrive. We’re now at a place where feedback from the entire community is needed -- whether or not you have or work with children. Give us your thoughts regarding: have we collected the right data? Have we indentified the right focus areas? Have we missed something?
The work group will then take all of the input provided by you via the survey and plan focus groups around the areas you’ve helped identify and we can support with data. Focus groups will again give community members the opportunity for additional input into the plan. Using the results of the survey as a beginning point, discussions will be held around Colchester in early November to talk about what is really important to our community regarding caring for our youngest citizens.
Why should we care? Research repeatedly shows that children who are given a good start at the beginning will be successful throughout life. Think about the difference that will make as they grow – healthy kids; less discipline problems in school, home, and community; kids who love learning.
What do we want for our children birth to 8? The Collaborative wants healthy, happy, and successful children! What do you want for our youngest citizens? Take the five minute survey by Clicking Here and let us know. If you’d like a survey mailed to you, please call my office at 537-7220 and leave your name and address, or pick one up at Town Hall in my office.
Much thanks to Shelly Flynn for coordinating all of this work and making a real difference in our community.
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