Created to sustain the collaborative work of Help Me Grow Skagit, which is led by the Children’s Council of Skagit County, the Help Me Grow Skagit Fund ensures that families with young children continue to benefit from
a coordinated system of resources, support, and community connection.
a coordinated system of resources, support, and community connection.
Working Together for Skagit Families
The Children’s Council of Skagit County, Help Me Grow, and The Help Me Grow Skagit Fund each play a distinct role, but together they form a powerful, connected effort that makes it easier for families to access the care and resources they deserve.
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Help Me Grow Skagit
Help Me Grow Skagit is our county’s local implementation of the statewide Help Me Grow Washington network that connects families with young children with the resources and services they need, when they need them, through coordinated access and community partnerships. Help Me Grow Skagit’s goal is to ensure that families have a clear path to essential supports such as basic needs assistance, health care, developmental screenings, child care navigation, and family resource connections. Help Me Grow Skagit was born out of Skagit County’s First 1,000 Days community health improvement plan developed by Skagit County’s Population Health Trust, the community advisory committee to the Skagit County Board of Health. A community health assessment revealed that Skagit County has a lot of great programs and services to support families with young children, but families often did not know that such supports existed. |
Tracking down information felt like an underground network”
- Parent feedback during focus group
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The Children's Council of Skagit County The Children’s Council of Skagit County, our local early childhood coalition, took on the role of operationalizing this plan, in partnership with the United Way of Skagit County, which, at that time, was also focused on early childhood to improve kindergarten readiness. A year or so later they discovered that Help Me Grow Washington was offering communities the opportunity to become local affiliates, and it aligned perfectly with the system framework they were establishing locally. |
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The key features of Help Me Grow Skagit for families are:
- Family Resource Navigation, including specialized navigation for families who are expecting a baby. The multi-lingual, multi-cultural Family Resource Navigation team is able to support families in English, Spanish, Mixteco, Ukrainian, Russian and Czech languages.
- A Family Resource Center, based at the Children’s Museum of Skagit County to create a welcoming and stigma-free space for families
- Universally offered newborn outreach to families at Island and Skagit Valley Hospital birth centers, which includes a welcome bag with baby items and encouraging notes from the community, delivered by a knowledgeable community-based nurse or lactation specialist
- Play & Grow groups for families with infants to create community connections and a safe space to get credible information and support.
- A partnership with Lantern to share parenting tips, child development information and information about local resources and events with families via text, based on their zip code and child’s date of birth
- Partnerships with pediatric health care providers to help them connect families to local resources that will support their health and well-being.
All of these elements are the result of creatively braided funding and staffing from multiple community organizations who share a commitment to ensure that all children in Skagit County are able to grow and thrive in safe, stable, loving, happy families and environments.
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The Help Me Grow Skagit Fund The Help Me Grow Skagit Fund The Help Me Grow Skagit Fund at the Skagit Community Foundation was created to ensure the long-term vitality of this coordinated system of support. The fund provides a charitable pathway for community members, donors, and partners to invest in the ongoing work of The Children’s Council and Help Me Grow Skagit: supporting collaboration, resource navigation, and early-childhood services across the county. Contributions to the fund help sustain local coordination, strengthen partnerships across agencies, and expand the accessibility of the support network available to young children and their families. |
“If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.”
-Alfie Kohn
