ABOUT US:
Incorporated in 2016, the Coalition is a cross-sector collaboration of agencies and individuals dedicated to working together to improve the quality of life for young children and their families in southern Illinois. The Southern Illinois Coalition for Children and Families is dedicated to providing leadership and support that builds strong communities, strengthens families, and promotes children’s success in school and life.

The Coalition’s primary goal is to develop a strong and effective infrastructure that promotes positive outcomes for children and families in southern Illinois. This is accomplished by: communicating and sharing information about available programs and services, coordinating efforts to leverage resources to fill in gaps, maximizing outcomes and collaborating by working with other stakeholders toward common goals.

The Coalition is committed to excellence, providing quality programs and services through innovative and research-based strategies. By aligning their work, and developing shared processes to achieve common outcomes, Coalition members drive systems development that also advances the work of their own organization. Partners use common data to design and implement systems change in small iterative cycles that adjust as system parts interact.

At the culmination of the strategic planning process, the Governance Council identified and adopted five strategic priority areas to be the focus of the Coalition’s work from 2021-2026.

OUR PRIORITIES

Current priorities include developmental and social-emotional screening, school readiness, strong families, a readily available, qualified early childhood workforce and child centered communities.

A Collective Impact blueprint is used to guide the Coalition’s work that results in systems change. The work plans are developed and implemented by priority-specific Action Teams. These plans include clarifying the problem(s) they are trying to address, identifying a goal or common agenda for their work, creating objectives or mutually reinforcing activities, and identifying desirable results with measurable outcomes.