Start Early Washington Policy & Advocacy Documents

Helpful state & policy resource documents for Washington state advocates. Download:

New Documents

• 2025 Washington State Home Visiting Overview + Ask 12.11.24
• Early Learning Facilities Ask Document 12.2.24
• 2025 Fair Start for Kids Act: Supporting Washington’s Working Families, Providers and Employers 11.14.24
• 2025 Early Learning Facilities Overview 10.28.24
• 2025 Start Early Washington Policy + Priorities 10.28.24
• Start Early Washington What We Do 10.17.24

Budget and Policy Priorities

• 2025 Washington State Home Visiting Overview + Ask 12.5.24
• 2025 Early Learning Facilities Ask 12.2.24
• 2025 Fair Start for Kids Act: Supporting Washington’s Working Families, Providers and Employers 11.14.24
• 2025 Start Early Washington Budget and Policy Priorities 10.28.24

Summaries and Analyses

• 2025 Fair Start for Kids Act: Supporting Washington’s Working Families, Providers and Employers 11.14.24
• State Revenue Update 10.1.2024
• UPDATED Washington State Agency Decision Packages Overview 9.30.2024
• ELTA, Capital Gains and Early Learning in WA 7.24.24

Early Learning Facilities

• 2025 Early Learning Facilities Ask 12.2.24
• 2025 Early Learning Facilities Overview 10.28.24

Fair Start for Kids Act

• 2025 Fair Start for Kids Act: Supporting Washington’s Working Families, Providers and Employers 11.14.24
• Fair Start for Kids Act: Distinguishing Policies in Statute / Policies Subject to the Appropriation of Funds 11.7.22
• Fair Start for Kids Act: Detailed Summary as Passed by the Legislature 9.15.21
• Fair Start for Kids Act: Overview as of 9.14.21

Home Visiting Advocacy Documents

• 2025 Washington State Home Visiting Overview + Ask 12.5.24

Historical Summaries and Analyses

• 2024 State Agency Decision Packages 10.19.23
• Early Learning Investments 8.22.23
• Allocation of Federal COVID-19 Relief Funds for Early Learning 10.11.21
• Federal & State Early Learning Investments: 2021-23 Operating & Capital Budgets 9.15.21

Looking for past resources? Find them here!

Start Early Washington Policy & Advocacy Documents

Archived documents for Washington state advocates. Download:

Archived Documents

• Final 2024 Legislative Session Bill Tracker 4.12.24
• State Budget Comparison 3.6.24
• Early Learning Facilities Coalition 2024 Legislative Priorities 2.01.24
• 2024 Budget and Policy Priorities 1.16.24
• Proposed Home Visiting Pilot Project 1.5.24
• 2024 Governor’s Proposed Supplemental Budget 12.14.23
• 2024 Washington State Home Visiting Overview 10.10.23

The weather outside may be frightful, but the great indoors beckons. Inclement weather can offer the perfect opportunity to engage in indoor activities with your children that help them build important academic and social skills; skills such as executive functions, memory, self-regulation and teamwork. Executive Function: means your child will develop abilities to remain focused on an activity, complete tasks and be persistent and Self-Regulation: is the degree to which your child can control their emotional reactions.

The 2021 National Home Visiting Summit brought together over 1,500 leaders, practitioners, advocates and decision-makers in a collaborative pursuit to advance the home visiting field and systems of care to increase service quality and improve outcomes.

Summit attendees participated in virtual workshops, Communities of Practice and plenary sessions that discussed issues facing the home visiting field today, including innovations in home visiting practices and systems, addressing systematic and structural racism, and improving maternal and child health outcomes.

At Start Early, we know that reading is fundamental to a child’s development. As we celebrate Read Across America Day, we recognize the importance of making reading with your little ones a priority every day! By reading with your young child, you are not only bonding and inspiring a love of reading, but also developing strong early language and literacy skills that are key to future learning and success.

Whether your child is a newborn or about to head to kindergarten, here are some great books to read during storytime:

• Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle
• Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae
• Smile, Baby Faces Board Book by Roberta Grobel Intrater
• Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry
• Peekaboo Morning by Rachel Isadora
• We’re Different, We’re the Same by Bobbi Kates
• Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
• Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang
• What If by Samantha Berger
• Swimmy by Leo Lionni
• The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Other Early Learning Resources:

• 7 Books for Teaching Young Children How to Be Great Leaders
• 12 Tips to Boost Early Literacy

Start Early, formerly the Ounce of Prevention Fund, appreciates the steps taken by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and his administration over the past year to support early care and education programs during a global pandemic. We are, however, disappointed that the Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) budget framework offered today proposes cuts in state funding to both the Early Intervention (EI) program and the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). The administration did propose to maintain current funding levels for preschool and evidence-based home visiting programs, however, which is commendable given the significant financial pressures facing the state.

“We strongly support Governor Pritzker’s efforts to make Illinois the best state in the nation for families raising young children,” Ireta Gasner, Start Early vice president of Illinois policy, said. “But now is not the time to cut state funding of services for infants and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities, many of whom have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. We look forward to working with the administration and the Illinois General Assembly to direct additional state and federal resources (including federal child care funds), as they become available, to the state’s early care and education system.”

The public health crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the needs of families, certainly among those already lacking equitable services and opportunities. It has also brought into sharp relief the essential nature of the work performed by early childhood professionals – workers whose efforts are central to the well-being of children, families and communities. Not only must we preserve the ability of state government to serve our communities left most under-resourced, we must do more to equitably invest in our young children and their families.

Despite these challenging times, the administration is laying the necessary groundwork to ensure the state can capitalize on future opportunities to strengthen our early childhood system. The Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding is poised to release its recommendations next month on how to fund and structure our state system to ensure all children, birth to age 5, have access to the highest quality care. In addition, Start Early is thrilled that state agency officials and stakeholders came together to create a comprehensive, multiyear plan to improve services and supports for expecting families, infants and toddlers. Together, we will improve the earliest days of a new baby’s life; we will make sure young children with disabilities and developmental delays receive the services and supports they need; and families facing greater challenges will thrive as their child’s first and most important teacher.

To that end, Start Early is eager to partner with the legislature and the administration to implement and retain policy improvements that positively impact young children. For instance, telehealth has been a lifeline for families in the EI program over the last year. Retaining telehealth as an allowable mode of service delivery, even once in-person services return, should be a top priority. In addition, Start Early will continue to partner with the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus to expand the state’s Medicaid program to include coverage for doula services and evidence-based home visiting. Parents deserve access to quality services that keep them and their children healthy, and these kinds of services are key to reducing racial disparities in maternal and child well-being.

The Illinois Policy Team at Start Early is pleased to release our annual Illinois Legislative Agenda, a snapshot of the budget requests and legislative priorities for which Start Early will be advocating during the Spring 2021 legislative session in the state.

With the new legislative session underway, our team is focused on moving forward funding requests and legislation that will support families and providers across Illinois as they begin to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our early childhood system.

Our goals for the year include:

• Secure additional state funding to protect and strengthen the state’s early childhood system, with a specific focus on investments in the state’s early care and education workforce
• Expand the state’s Medicaid program to cover doula and evidence-based home visiting services
• Maintain telehealth as an allowable service delivery model in the Early Intervention program beyond the current public health crisis
• Pass legislation to create a statewide paid family and medical leave program

The Illinois Policy Team at Start Early is proud to share our first-ever policy agenda! This new, three-year policy agenda represents Start Early’s policy priorities in Illinois through fiscal year 2023 and encompasses not only our advocacy efforts in Springfield, but the administrative policy and systems-building work we do with our public and private sector partners.

Our agenda demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that Illinois has an early childhood system that is designed, implemented and sustained in order to equitably provide a continuum of high-quality services to children from before birth through age 5.

To that end, we will be focused on five key priorities:

1. Increasing investments in and strengthening the design and implementation of Illinois’ core early care and learning programs
2. Strengthening the infrastructure of Illinois’ core early care and learning system
3. Recruiting and retaining a representative, well-compensated and qualified workforce
4. Improving the health, mental health and well-being of young children and their families
5. Improving economic security for families with young children

Incorporated in this agenda are objectives that support the work of the Illinois Prenatal to Three Coalition, a collective effort to advance the Illinois Prenatal to Three (PN3) Policy Agenda. The comprehensive and multi-year PN3 Agenda was developed by a broad group of more than 100 diverse stakeholders with a goal to ensure that Illinois’ youngest children and their families, especially those furthest from opportunity, are on a trajectory for success. In partnership with the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development, we are thrilled to continue leading efforts to forward the work of the Coalition. We are eager and excited to roll up our sleeves alongside so many partners and get to work for Illinois infants and toddlers! Learn more.

In addition to our three-year policy agenda, each winter we will unveil our one-year legislative agenda, which features our top priorities for the state’s General Assembly. Stay tuned for our 2021 Legislative Agenda in January. Until then, we invite you to read our Start Early Illinois Policy Agenda for Fiscal Years 2021-2023. To stay in touch and learn about new publications or updates on our agenda, please sign up for Illinois policy email alerts and follow Start Early’s Illinois Policy Team on Twitter (@EarlyEdIL).

Start Early, provides resources, technical and support services, content expertise and peer learning opportunities to early childhood advocates and practitioners and systems and government leaders. Our goal is to create conditions that enable meaningful policy reforms and system improvements at local, state and federal levels and transform practice across the nation.

That said, we are pleased to share our annual 2020 State Policy Update Report, which provides a snapshot of early childhood care and education budget and policy changes during the 2019-2020 legislative sessions. This robust report illuminates trends and connects early childhood policy and funding advances across the country.

Included in the Report:

• Legislative, budgetary and administrative changes across 29 states organized by topic, demonstrating the breadth of the work done by state early childhood leaders and advocates.

Topics Include:

• Early Care and Education
• Infant and Family Supports
• Early Intervention
• Home Visiting
• Workforce and Higher Education
• Revenue, Data and Governance

Additional Report Insights:

• Data that illustrates how state priorities shifted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and policy recommendations based on the lessons learned during the subsequent economic upheaval
• Stories from state advocates that give voices to policy wins and showcase the direct impact of their work