Our Partners
The strength of our work lies in our partnerships across San Mateo County.
By working in collaboration, we are able to have a greater impact for children and families and help to shape the systems that support them. Meet the partners we collaborate with across our focus areas.
Quality Care and Education
Build Up is a collaborative initiative that tackles the county’s significant child care facilities shortage. It engages with local governments, businesses, and other partners to create and preserve much-needed child care programs.
Through Quality Counts San Mateo County, SMCOE supports early learning quality improvement efforts by providing coaching, training, incentives, and other supports to participating center-based and family childcare early learning programs.
The subcontractor for this initiative is 4Cs of San Mateo County
Early Childhood Quality and Inclusion Projects
As a close partner in First 5 San Mateo County’s quality care and education efforts, SMCOE’s Early Childhood Quality and Inclusion Project helps early learning providers create inclusive environments through capacity building and quality improvement efforts. The initiative also supports families of children with special needs to find appropriate programs.
The subcontractors and partners for this project include: 4Cs of San Mateo County, StarVista, Community Equity Collaborative, Child Care Partnership Council, Build UP, The Big Lift, Good2Know Network, IHSD- Institute and Human and Social Development EHS/Head Start, Early Childhood Language Development Institute, Lifesteps Foundation, Abilitypath
Healthy Children
AbilityPath partners with First 5 San Mateo County on Help Me Grow SMC, an initiative that supports children’s healthy development by identifying and treating those with special needs. It also promotes developmental screening among pediatricians and strengthens the early identification and intervention system.
Funded subpartners: Legal Aid of SMC, Starvista, Lifesteps Foundation Children and Family Services, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Stanford Children’s Health -Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, Stanford Children’s Health Government Relations
Hamai Consulting and Trauma Transformed
First 5 San Mateo County collaboratively funds TRISI alongside San Mateo County Health and MHSA funding. Two organizations, Hamai Consulting and East Bay Agency for Children’s Trauma Transformed (T2), are developing learning cohorts to support and create a more trauma-informed approach among the child- and family-serving workforce.
Children Now
Children Now supports oral health access and utilization for children from birth through age 5 and pregnant women. They achieve this by educating and engaging stakeholders about state policies that align with the county’s oral health strategic plan.
Sonrisas offers dental screenings, education, oral health supply toolkits, and care coordination to low-income children aged 0-5 in San Mateo County. They also provide urgent, restorative, and preventative care to children identified with needs through school-based screening.
Ravenswood offers preventative oral health care to children aged 0-5 through virtual dental home visits. Their services include bringing dental care to partner pre-schools, emphasizing a disease prevention model through telehealth, training parents to be oral health promoters through oral health literacy programs, and conducting dental desensitization visits at dental clinics for children with special needs. They also provide urgent, restorative, and preventative care to children identified with needs through school-based screening.
Resilient Families
CORA (Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse) offers domestic violence mental health services and support to parents and young children. They lead a Coordinated Community Response Team (CCRT) that ensures a trauma-informed approach, facilitating smooth referral pathways for domestic violence victims.
Family Connections engages at-risk families in a bilingual, culturally-responsive, quality family learning community within three early learning programs in the southern part of the county. The program aims to foster strong parent-child attachments and enhance parent resiliency. Additionally, more intensive supports are available to families in need.
First 5 San Mateo County partners with Izzi Early Education to engage at risk, low income families to promote healthy parent-child relationships. Izzi Early Education utilizes authentic family engagement strategies, including Father Engagement and Parent Leadership approaches, for families in its Head Start and Early Head Start early learning programs.
Peninsula Family Service receives funding from First 5 San Mateo County to offer therapeutic treatment addressing toxic stress and trauma for homeless toddlers and preschoolers (18+ months). They provide these services in culturally competent, bilingual, early learning settings at two family shelters, First Step for Families and Haven Family House.
Sueños Unidos
Puente receives funding to operate a bilingual parent-participatory cooperative preschool for children and families in the south coast region. The co-op emphasizes authentic family engagement and parent involvement, offering activity groups for parents and infants as well as Trauma Transformed trainings for both parents and providers.
Family Engagement
First 5 San Mateo County provides funding to SMCOE to increase the capacity of family-serving providers in authentically engaging families. This includes offering skill-building opportunities for providers and parent leaders, as well as facilitating peer networking groups such as Friday CAFEs.
StarVista offers two services to support high-risk families. Their bilingual and culturally sensitive mental health home visiting services aim to mitigate the impact of toxic stress and trauma while also preventing child abuse. They also provide additional programming focused on authentic father engagement, supporting fathers through coaching, Father Cafes, and fatherhood workshops.