© 2025 First 5 Center for Children’s Policy. All rights reserved.
Blog Post
Jaren Gaither • Aug 30, 2023
Pregnancy and the birth of a baby are significant occasions that also bring many challenges. Providing support to new parents and caregivers during this time, and through early childhood, is essential to give all children and families a strong start in life.
Blog Post
Jaren Gaither • Aug 30, 2023
On August 4, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first pill for postpartum depression (PPD), marking a significant milestone in treating a condition that affects one in five California women.
Blog Post
May 10, 2023
The First 5 Center for Children’s Policy is proud to release "First 5 Efforts to Engage Families and Shift Power: A Review of Current Practices" today, which provides important examples of how First 5s bring family voice into their decision making, how they are thinking about sharing power, increasing transparency, and improving program design through engagement with family members in the communities they serve.
Blog Post
Alexandra Parma • Jan 5, 2023
To date, advocates, policymakers, families, and other stakeholders have had few resources to understand how early intervention services work in California. To support filling this gap, California Budget and Policy Center released two new reports.
Blog Post
Kathryn Margolis • Nov 10, 2022
California has created a dyadic services Medi-Cal benefit effective January 2023. The dyadic services benefit allows Medi-Cal to cover behavioral health wellness visits that focus on the individual child and their surrounding environment, including caregiver wellness, all within the context of the child’s medical appointment.
Blog Post
Kiley Barton • Oct 18, 2022
In order to better understand the landscape of how counties are serving young children with developmental concerns, we did a deep dive into available data sources. The data uncover average developmental screening rates across the state, as well as the proportion of infants and toddlers accessing Early Start services (Part C) by regional center.
Blog Post
Kit Strong • Sep 14, 2022
In this blog we break down some important parts of the Family First Prevention Services Act and its implementation in California to help early childhood leaders understand what the opportunities are.
Blog Post
Alexandra Parma • Aug 30, 2022
Among the 2022-2023 California state budget's important investments were a number of historic changes to Early Start.
Blog Post
Alexandra Parma • Jul 14, 2022
New data released from the Department of Health Care Services shows how children in Medi-Cal managed care fared in 2020, and just how far we will need to increase preventive service delivery to ensure children receive all the benefits to which they are entitled.
Blog Post
Jul 6, 2022
Today the First 5 Center for Children’s Policy is proud to release The Role of First 5s in Home Visiting: Innovations, Challenges, and Opportunities in California, which summarizes the role that First 5s have played in home visiting.
© 2025 First 5 Center for Children’s Policy. All rights reserved.