BY DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

The nonprofit United Way of Southern Kentucky is working on launching a program to serve families of infants and toddlers through kids 5 years old.

UWSK is partnering with ParentPowered, an evidence-based messaging service that sends three weekly texts to families and guardians with children ages 0-5 the focus. The messages are accessible, research-backed strategies intended to promote early development and learning; UWSK — drawing on its knowledge base as the agency that manages the region’s 211 phone line for resources — will also be able to send out customized messages about local resources.

UWSK is planning a soft launch that involves a few funded partners, including Warren County Public Schools, UWSK Director of Community Impact Hannah Gray said. A hard launch will follow, likely late in summer, where the program will be available to serve any child within the age range in Warren County, she added.

The WCPS Board of Education approved the UWSK-WCPS partnership recently. To help UWSK promote the program, WCPS will enable families and guardians in the school system to opt in for any child up to age 5; the partnership also enables UWSK to run reports on ParentPowered data — family surveys, for example — to provide WCPS families more specific information, Gray added.

“Kindergarten readiness is so important to the trajectory of a child’s life, and so that’s what this program is about,” Gray said. “We are trying to help parents get their children ready for kindergarten, and a lot of parents don’t know how to do that or even know that they’re supposed to do that. So, this is our effort to just continue to get the word out, provide supports to those families.”

UWSK is funding the program through its designated kindergarten readiness funds.

The program’s text messages cover “critical domains such as social-emotional learning, parenting approaches, physical development, STEAM and play, and language/literacy,” according to the approval document.

One set of messages, for example, includes the fact that replying to a baby’s babbles is a way to converse with them, showing them that the sounds they make are important, along with a related tip and advice for growth.

These will be available in at least eight languages, as well.

The curriculum it uses is “aligned to Kentucky standards, so we can be assured that anything that’s going out to the families is going to be appropriate for the age level of their child and the content that they should be receiving,” said WCPS Preschool Assistant Director Christina Sanders, who serves on UWSK’s education committee, which selected the platform. It’s “an opportunity for the families that we serve and giving them additional resources for having a successful start to kindergarten to school without requiring a lot extra from our teaching staff.”

By being able to customize messages, UWSK will be able to promote resources from its vast range of more than 1,000 resources regionwide. For example, Gray said, that could be Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, where any children statewide can receive a free book each month until they turn 5.

“Half the battle of getting resources to people is for them to know where they can even find out information about those resources,” Gray said. “So, it’s really incredible that we’re going to have this personal way to communicate with people about where they can find resources.”