Broken Bow Sixpence: A Model of Quality in Rural Nebraska

by | Nov 17, 2016

As their child's first teacher, it's important that parents provide the kinds of interactions and experiences that advance healthy brain development and skill formation in babies and toddlers.

One program, Broken Bow Sixpence, is a parent engagement program working with parents to increase their understanding of child development and coach them in proven techniques for forming healthy attachments with their children, and fostering their children's emotional well-being, curiosity and readiness to learn.

Broken Bow Sixpence meets these local needs by maximizing existing resources seamlessly through its partnerships with Central Plains Center for ServicesBroken Bow Public Schools, and several other community groups.

Targeted Investments, Maximizing Potential
Based on a set of goals established by parents with the coaches, parents work on providing stable, supportive and engaging relationships crucial to early neural and physiological development of infants and toddlers, which produces effects that can persist across a child’s lifespan.

Sixpence-funded partnerships prioritize the role of parents as the key element in a child’s lifelong success. No other relationship children experience in their first three years has as profound, positive and enduring effect as the one they share with responsive parents. “Sixpence helps parents realize they are the first and most important teacher their child will ever have,” said Nancy Ferguson, executive director of Central Plains Center for Services. Sixpence-funded programs recognize that a child’s best chances to thrive in school, adopt positive social behaviors and eventually mature as a productive, contributing citizen are directly related to the presence of nurturing adults from the first days of life. 

Changing child outcomes 
Like all Sixpence grants, Broken Bow Sixpence is subject to regular quality evaluations by independent researchers at the Munroe-Meyer Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In addition, participating providers are required to enroll in Step Up to Quality, Nebraska’s child care rating and improvement system. Together, these offer professional development as well as an accountability system that ensures Nebraska’s child care subsidy and other public dollars purchase high-quality services known to prepare children for lifelong success. 

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