Together, we’re strengthening West Marin’s system of care for children ages 0–3 and their families.
A child’s early years are foundational. By age three, nearly 80% of brain development has already occurred, shaping a child’s lifelong ability to learn, build relationships, and thrive.
In West Marin, families share the same hopes as families everywhere: that their children grow up healthy, safe, and full of opportunity. But rural realities — high housing costs, limited childcare, long travel distances, and gaps in services — make accessing support far more difficult.
For infants and toddlers, these gaps can have lifelong impacts.
Listening to the Community
To better understand these challenges and the opportunities to address them, West Marin Fund launched an in-depth two-year research survey in this area, talking to:
- Families raising infants and toddlers
- Informal caregivers like grandparents and neighbors
- Early childhood providers and service organizations
What we heard was clear: families are deeply committed and resourceful, but navigating the system is difficult, and critical supports are often out of reach.
What We Learned
West Marin’s early childhood system has real strengths: trusted health and safety-net services, quality free enrichment programs, and a collaborative provider community. But families face significant barriers: hard-to-navigate systems, a severe shortage of affordable childcare (especially under age 2), long distances to services, and limited support for caregivers. Families routinely make difficult trade-offs between work, care, and opportunity.
The Infant & Toddler Initiative
West Marin Fund and partners, including the Early Learning Collaborative Action Network (ELCAN), launched this three-year initiative to build a coordinated system of care for children 0–3. It focuses on easier service navigation, programs closer to home, expanded playgroups, caregiver training, rural-appropriate childcare models, and stronger early developmental screening. The goal: a family-centered system where every young child in West Marin can thrive.
Early Progress
Work is already underway: West Marin’s first Early Childhood Family Fair, a bilingual resource guide, expanded provider collaboration and data collection through ELCAN, and long-term planning for the full 0–3 care system.
Join Us!
This is just the beginning of sustained change that will make the system work better for everybody. But it requires community investment to grow.
