TalkReadPlay has gained momentum between 2022 and 2024 with a 9 percentage point increase during that time in the percent of caregivers reading to children ages 0-4 at least 4 times per week. 

Contributing factors: 

• Partnerships throughout the community began in 2022, forming collaboration and consistency of messaging about the benefits of TalkReadPlay. 

Limiting factors:

• Data is gained from community survey which might limit broad community participation. 
• Communication on benefits of TalkReadPlay is done only via TalkReadPlay partner organization locations, and thus limits potential exposure to full spectrum of community. 

Empowering caregivers* to be their child’s first and most important teacher helps create strong, positive and nurturing relationships. 90% of brain development happens in the first 5 years of life. Caring, responsive interactions between children and the adults in their lives are the building blocks for early brain development.  

TalkReadPlay (TRP) is a community movement designed  to strengthen families by promoting Early Relational Health, or the emotional wellbeing that grows from the positive connection between children and their caregivers.

*The Foundation uses the shorthand term caregivers to refer to any individual who may be involved in raising a child.

• Birth to Three
• Early Care & Education (AKA Childcare)
• Faith-Based Organizations
• Head Start
• Human Services
• Libraries
• Medical Providers (Health Care)
• Nonprofits
• Parents, Caregivers, Families
• Pre-K Education
• Public Health
• State Policymakers
• Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC)

BUILD KNOWLEDGE of Early Relational Health and child development 

BUILD CONNECTIONS

• Trusted Messengers support families in building protective factors, screening for needed supports and connecting to resources 

• Create environments that spark caregiver-child interaction: TRP Play Spaces, including TRP Center and park installations, Born Learning Trails, etc.

• Foster intergenerational learning, strengthening connections and pre-literacy: Dolly Parton Imagination Library

Provide programming to increase caregiver/child  interaction and quality time spent together:  Daily Vroom App, Playgroups, Storytime, Dolly Parton Imagination Library

• Increase access to proven strategies: Pyramid Model, ASQ Developmental Screener, Triple P (Positive Parenting Program), Home Visitation (Parents as Teachers), Reach Out and Read, Parents Interacting with Infants

TRANSFORM SYSTEMS

• Center caregivers as their child’s first and most important teacher in alignment with their cultures and traditions

• Ensure providers serving families are trained in Early Relational Health

• Strengthen early childhood systems in communities, with linkages and coordination among health, family support, early care and education, home visiting, early intervention, mental health, housing, child welfare, and other services and informal supports

• Create family-centered system of supports (dismantle silos, align and streamline policies/procedures)

• Scale up and sustain evidence-based interventions 

ADVANCE POLICY

• Support 2-generation family economic security and mobility: Paid family leave, child tax credit, and assistance with food, housing, income, and other concrete needs

• Increase access to perinatal mental health supports

Raise awareness:

• Reinforce messages via marketing and promotion.

• Conduct population level survey to assess awareness of TRP and frequency of reading, singing and telling stories.

Build connections: 

• Build capacity of community partners (i.e. Trusted Messengers) to provide quality programming that promotes early positive relationships.

• Promote Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

Transform systems: 

• Train new and existing Trusted Messengers on importance of early brain development, Early Relational Health and core components of TalkReadPlay.

Data included = TRP community survey conduscted in the spring. Survey is sent to community members through various foundation partnership family lists including Dolly Parton Imagination Library participants. 

**Methodology Change**  as of 2023, Data from Watertown Public Library survey (June 2022) and Watertown Family Connections survey (Sept 2022), Lake Mills Clinic patient survey (2022) no longer included.