Enhancing Early Childhood Development
UNL is leveraging its expertise in early childhood education to improve developmental outcomes for the nation’s youngest members.
A team in UNL’s Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools is collaborating with Early Head Start programs to implement the Getting Ready intervention.
Developed at UNL in 2004, Getting Ready is a research-based approach to enhance early childhood development by strengthening relationships among parents, educators and children.
Researchers and community partners are tailoring the intervention to support language and social-emotional competencies in infants and toddlers. They’ll test its effectiveness with 240 children, their teachers and families before making the intervention accessible to Early Head Start programs nationally. Ultimately, the intervention also will reach other community-based child care centers.
“We want to learn how this integrated intervention approach will support children’s well-being so that it can be adopted by other early childhood efforts,” said Lisa Knoche, project leader and research associate professor who also directs the Nebraska Early Childhood Research Academy.
A $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families funds the project.