ANNUAL REPORT 2023-24
Please join us in celebrating our collective work accomplished over the past 25 years.
Center Equity
From the start, First 5 has stood as a powerful reflection of California voters' values. The passage of Proposition 10 in 1998 was a transformative moment, enabling California to fund early childhood programming in each county, weaving together our societal commitment to a child’s first 5 years of life.
As we reflect and honor the effort, I want to express my gratitude on behalf of First 5 for the many partnerships that supported creating an ever more coordinated early childhood system. Your collaboration, with amazing First 5 colleagues and Commissioners, has been instrumental in advancing a shared vision of collective well-being where all communities thrive, and families and children can live their best lives. Read more >
First 5 Alameda County is committed to being an equity-centered, anti-racist, and anti-classist organization.
Read equity statement >
Kristin Spanos
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
FIRST 5 ALAMEDA COUNTY
Building a Coordinated System
Requires a Focus on Partnership
Requires a Focus on Partnership
Building coordinated systems that center the whole community, whole family, and whole child requires teamwork and cooperation from an array of partners. Click below on the 5 map markers to learn more about the partners who make our work possible.
Building coordinated systems that center the whole community, whole family, and whole child requires teamwork and cooperation from an array of partners. Click below on the 5 map markers to learn more about the partners who make our work possible.
Building a Coordinated System
First 5 funds and administers a Training Initiative, which provides 40+ trainings per year to early care and education professionals, community partners, and parents; a Fatherhood Initiative that provides training and tools to build a more father-friendly system, and served 500 fathers in FY 23-24; Project DULCE, which provides enhanced support and access to legal services within the pediatric setting, serving 150+ families per year at Highland Hospital; and a Parent Partnership Initiative focusing on birth equity and maternal and child health, including funding black-led lactation groups like Midnight Milk Club and HUGs project, which combined have served 1300+ Black mothers and 100+ providers.
Licensed child care centers enrolled in First 5’s Quality Counts Initiative are locations where child care is provided in a nonresidential group setting, such as a school, church, or daycare center. Quality Counts offered support for 356 early care and education professionals in FY 23-24, including professional development opportunities, coaching, and stipends.
Neighborhoods Ready for School is First 5’s place-based initiative, which invests an average of $3M annually in four Family Resource Centers based in four under-resourced communities in Oakland and Union City. Each center provides programming and services for children and families to improve school readiness.
Licensed family child care sites enrolled in First 5’s Quality Counts Initiative are locations where child care is provided within the provider’s own home. Quality Counts offered support for 356 early care and education professionals in FY 23-24, including professional development opportunities, coaching, and stipends.
Help Me Grow referring providers are the pediatric professionals connected to First 5’s Help Me Grow initiative and provide referrals for families needing child development information, developmental screening for a child, care coordination, or family navigation. Help Me Grow serves an average of 500 families monthly.
Financials
Fiscal Year Expenses
by Strategy
Early Care & Education
$21.76 Million
Training
$0.64 Million
Fatherhood
$1.47 Million
Pediatric Care Coordination
$5.52 Million
Parent Partnership
$2.43 Million
Policy, Advocacy & Communications
$3.22 Million
Neighborhoods Ready for School
$3.69 Million
Data & Evaluation
$1.81 Million
Total Revenue Received $40.26 Million
Grants & Partnership $10.41 Million
Sustainability Fund
$5.43 Million
Prop 10
Tobacco Tax
$9.93 Million
Oakland Children’s Initiative
$14.49 Million
With Gratitude
On behalf of our dedicated staff and commissioners, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to our community partners and philanthropic funders. Your collaboration and support enable us to expand our efforts and strengthen the early childhood system of care across Alameda County. We also thank the voters and taxpayers of Alameda County for placing their trust in First 5 to administer vital funds to support the early care and education system. Your collective commitment makes a difference for children and families in our community. In the fiscal year 2023-2024, First 5 invested $28.92 million in programs, initiatives, and systems to support children and families in Alameda County.
Special thanks to our Partners
We collaborate with public systems, community-based organizations, and other agencies to expand and scale our impact. Together, over more than two decades, we have reached more than 134,000 children and more than 75,000 parents and caregivers.
Thanks to voter-led initiatives like the Children’s Health & Child Care Initiative for Alameda County (Measure C) and the Oakland Children’s Initiative, we can build upon the promise made a quarter of a century ago and continue investing in child care and the evolution of our early childhood system. This new funding represents more hope and the potential for generational impact, underscoring Alameda County’s commitment to redefining what it means to be the most family-friendly county in California.
Looking ahead, we are excited to continue deepening this work—strengthening community-rooted support in classrooms, clinics, and beyond. This is achieved through deep partnership with parents and providers to interpret community data, inform investments, shape program design, evolve our local public infrastructure in response to family need, and guide policy advocacy.
Thank you for being a part of the past 25 years, and I look forward to celebrating the impact of our work in the years ahead.
In Community,
Kristin
Kristin Spanos
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
FIRST 5 ALAMEDA COUNTY
Our Equity Statement
First 5 Alameda County is committed to being an equity-centered, anti-racist, and anti-classist organization. We recognize that we operate in a racialized economic system characterized by extractive and exploitative labor practices and public policies perpetuating long-standing disparate life outcomes. To this end, we use anti-racist and equity-based practices to invest in and support children, families, and neighborhoods. Our Place, People, Policy framework intentionally prioritizes our investments in communities that have experienced historic and systemic racism and disinvestment.
As a part of this commitment, we use our resources to redress (to set right) these injustices by:
We acknowledge that our unconscious and conscious bias impacts our practices. Therefore, we are committed to deepening our understanding of how power, wealth, and opportunity imbalances appear in policies, communities, organizations, and interpersonal relationships. We can only do this as lifelong learners with a growth mindset focused on transformative change.
We commit to continuous improvement and to hold ourselves accountable to operationalize this statement and our principles.
In addition to our co-created Equity Statement, we are adopting the “Guiding Principles for Federal Action on Racial Equity” developed by national leaders PolicyLink and Race Forward to further articulate our intentions. The statement and principles are consistent with our systems approach and will be operationalized into each of our strategies.
