Through our work with Frontiers of Innovation, Children’s Home Society of Washington has been able to partner with researchers and families to develop innovative strategies to support healthy brain development of young children.
Frontiers of Innovation is the research and development platform for the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Frontiers of Innovation works to accelerate the development and adoption of science-based innovations that can be expanded to serve more young children and families.
Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) is one of the first strategies we piloted through Frontiers of Innovation. FIND is a video coaching program that records a caregiver’s interactions with their young child. A FIND coach shows the parent clips of positive interactions with their child, which helps support healthy brain development.
We have seen remarkable success with FIND in our early learning home visiting programs and wanted to share this unique strategy with others. In partnership with the University of Oregon, we recently trained 20 FIND coaches at other organizations around Washington state. These new FIND coaches support child care providers for infants and toddlers.
Our hope is FIND provides another valuable tool for child and family service providers to use in building stronger families and nurturing children's brain development.
Jason Gortney is the director of the Office of Policy and Innovation.