More than 330,000 families with children under the age of 18 live on Long Island, according to the 2000 Census. Approximately, half of these families have at least one child under the age of six and 15 percent are headed by a single mother. The period of life from birth to age 6 offers a crucial window of opportunity to develop children's verbal and emotional skills so they enter school ready to learn. United Way of Long Island's Success By 6 initiative is working to help our young Long Islanders succeed.

The Initiative

• Success By 6 focuses on programs that help children, prenatal through age 6 years, achieve healthy, emotional, intellectual, physical and social development for a successful future.
• Success By 6 supports programs that encourage early childhood development, provide access to critical health and human services and increase services for parents and families.
• United Way of Long Island partners with business leaders, local government officials, civic leaders, nonprofit organizations, schools, libraries, religious institutions, service providers, parents and labor leaders in this effort.

Middle Country Library received a $25,000 Success By 6 grant to sustain 11 Mothers' Centers located in Family Place Libraries and to create Kids in Care programs in six libraries throughout Long Island.

Family Place Libraries are a network of Nassau and Suffolk county public libraries that increase services to families with very young children. They are committed to reaching new, underserved, non-traditional and often at-risk families that may not be currently using library resources. Mothers' Centers are a peer leadership model of family support-parents gain confidence, knowledge and skills they need to better advocate for their child and family needs.

Kids In Care is a program that serves child care providers working with young children to obtain the support and resources they need to effectively provide safe, nurturing and learning based environments for the children in their care.

See Success By 6 Grant Real-Life Stories

BornLearning
United Way of Long Island is now part of the BornLearning campaign, which focuses on giving parents, caregivers and communities the knowledge and tools needed to encourage quality early learning opportunities for young children.

The State of Family Support on Long Island
This report was commissioned by United Way of Long Island's Success By 6, with support from the Rauch Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to take on the job of finding out how much family support exists on Long Island. Researchers spent several years identifying the programs that support families with children six and under and determining the extent to which they embrace a specific set of family support principles and practices that respect and engage the family. See the report by clicking here: The State of Family Support on Long Island .

Success By 6 Committee
John Corrado, Chair
Suffolk Transportation Services Inc

Jan Barbieri
Child Care Council of Nassau

Gail Burrus
Suffolk County Perinatal Coalition Inc.

Tom Cruso
Cruso Associates, Inc.

Kathy Deerr
Middle Country Public Library

Eric Eversely
Freeport Public Schools

Sandra Feinberg
Middle Country Public Library

Joan Johnson
Town of Islip Clerk

Linda Landsman
Rauch Foundation

Sonia Murdock
The Postpartum Resource Center of NY

Rick Van Dyke
Family Service League of Suffolk County

Sarah Walzer
The Parent-Child Home Program

Janet Walerstein
Child Care Council of Suffolk

Tom Williams
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk

Staff Contact
For more information, contact Teresa Kemp Zielenski, vice president of community impact, at teresaz@unitedwayli.org or 631.940.3707