Vision
A Great Start for every child in Wayne County: safe, healthy and ready to succeed in school and in life.

Mission
The mission of the Great Start Collaborative - Wayne is to engage the entire community to assure a coordinated system of services and resources to assist all Wayne County families in providing a great start for their children from birth through age five.  

System Components
There are five components to Great Start Collaborative - Wayne, which include:

• Basic Needs, Economic Security & Child Safety - Families of infants and children are economically stable.  Infants and young children live in safe families.
  
• Early Care & Education - Children are ready to succeed in school and in life.
  
• Parenting Education and Family Support - Families support and guide the early learning of their infants and young children.
  
• Physical Health Care - Infants, young children and their families are physically healthy.
  
• Social-Emotional Health Care - Infants, young children and their families are socially and emotionally healthy.
  

Core Values
The early childhood system created by the Great Start Collaborative - Wayne include:

• Accessible, User Friendly and Affordable - Welcoming, easy to find, and simple to use.  Any fees for publicly funded services are based on family income and circumstances.
  
• Family-Guided - Parents, guardians and others acting in the parenting role are actively engaged in leadership in the system development, implementation, guidance and evaluation.
  
• Sensitive and Responsive - The strengths, needs, values and culture of each family determine an individualized approach.
  
• Community-Based - Each local collaborative implements a local system infrastructure of services, supports and resources to achieve the Great Start Results.
   
• Collaborative - Shared leadership, responsibility, resources and decision making, each partner is acting to benefit the whole system and its customers.
  
• Nonpartisan - All elected officials and policymakers consider the impact of policy and funding decisions on young children.
  
• High-quality with Measurable Results - Every public and private early childhood service provider is accountable performance measures that reward results, quality and customer service and satisfaction.
  
• Sound, with a Long-Term Financial Base - All sectors contribute to consistently available, diverse and stable financing for essential system components.
  
• Publicly and Privately Supported - Public and private funding sources communicate and work together to assure the needs of each family are met.