Cradle-to-Career Neighborhoods are communities that provide seamless integration of a child and family’s educational experiences from birth through postsecondary attainment and entry into the workforce. By integrating these opportunities within the neighborhoods in which they live and work, families experience improved educational outcomes, enhanced quality of life, and thus are supported to thrive where they live – without needing to traverse a city to access educational programs or to move elsewhere for amenities that cater to their needs.
Cradle-to-Career Neighborhoods seek to create the conditions for families to thrive and advance socioeconomically through: increased access to programs, improved alignment throughout the educational continuum, and by creating more vibrant, interconnected neighborhood spaces in which children can experience joy, health, and healing.
Cradle-to-Career Neighborhoods co-locate and integrate programs throughout a child and family’s educational career within neighborhoods in which they live.
The key components of a Cradle-to-Career Neighborhood include:
- Education Transitions. Seamless transitions at key points in the educational continuum, particularly entry into Kindergarten, high school and postsecondary education;
- Healthy, Thriving, Stable Families. Integrated access to resources and services that strengthen economic stability and mobility, including physical and behavioral health, legal services, workforce development, housing assistance, food security, and more.
- Neighborhood Connectivity. Strengthening access to out of school and recreational programs through partner coordination and innovative mobility solutions along key neighborhood corridors;
- Family-Centered Placemaking. Inclusive, vibrant placemaking that provides thriving public spaces centered on culture, health, joy and healing, and social connectivity that promotes racial, socioeconomic and intergenerational integration.
Ultimately, the Cradle-to-Career Neighborhood envisions a Detroit where families are able thrive within the neighborhoods in which they live and work. It seeks to advance a set of outcomes that will create the conditions for neighborhoods to center the needs and priorities of their families, from one generation of Detroiters to the next.