About Us
First 5 San Diego promotes the health and well-being of young children during their most critical years of development, from the prenatal stage through five years of age. Our goal is to help ensure that every child in San Diego County enters school ready to succeed.
First 5 San Diego provides San Diego’s youngest children with healthy development screenings, dental care, high-quality preschool and parenting workshops.
Who We Are
First 5 San Diego is committed to creating a system that ensures every child can thrive and learn. We provide public investment, expertise and leadership to put resources in the hands of those who care for our City’s children.
Our overarching goal is to strengthen the relationships essential for the healthy development of young children. These relationships are embedded in health, learning, family and community settings or environments.
Mission
We promote the health, learning, and well-being of young children and their families by fostering collaboration and making equity-centered investments to help every child have the very best start in life.
Values
The First 5 San Diego Commission holds these values:
- LOVE: We stand for love for every child; we believe that every child deserves love, nurturing, and opportunity.
- INTEGRITY: We stand with integrity and transparency in all we do, and we are accountable and responsible to our Commissioners, partners, families, and community.
- JUSTICE: We stand for justice and equity for all children and families in San Diego County and actively work to dismantle racism and other forms of oppression.
Vision
The ultimate goal of First 5 San Diego’s work is that all children ages 0 through 5, are safe, healthy, actively learning, and embraced by loving families and supportive communities.
Additionally, our vision supports the efforts of our membership organization, the First 5 Association of California, which advocates for “strong, effective, stable systems serving California’s youngest children.” From a statewide perspective, one day, California’s success will be measured by the well-being of its youngest children.
Within our communities, our vision aligns with Live Well San Diego, which envisions a region that is building better health, living safely and thriving. We proudly contribute to building better service delivery systems, supporting positive choices, pursuing policy and environmental change and improving our internal culture.
Guiding Principles
First 5 San Diego achieves its mission through these guiding principles:
- Family-Centered: We honor and celebrate every child, and support parents, families, and primary caregivers to be their child’s first and best teachers. We center the experiences and voices of children and families in our planning and oversight of programs and other investments.
- Partnership: We forge authentic partnerships to co-crate a seamless system of care and support for children and families.
- Systems Change: We bring experts, partners, and families together to coordinate, leverage, and expand existing resources – facilitating systems change that will lead to improved outcomes for children and families.
- Prevention: We invest “upstream” to create and promote opportunities for all children, families, and communities to be healthy and strong.
- Advocacy: We are advocates for policy change at all levels of government; we support families to lift their voices in advocacy for their children and communities.
- Capacity: We collaborate with families, communities, and organizations to build capacity to support their goals.
- Impact: We are results- and outcomes- oriented, leveraging proven and promising practices, continuous learning, and data-informed decision-making to guide our work.
Our Impact
In 2019, along with First 5 California and other First 5 Commissions across the state, we celebrated 20 years of impact throughout San Diego County!
From 1999-2019
$717Million
direct services for young children and their families
2019
$34.8 Million
direct services for young children and their families
2019
49,000+
CHILDREN, parents, caregivers and providers served
2019
47,500+
Children received developmental screening
To learn more about First 5 San Diego’s recent achievements and impact, please review the First 5 Commission of San Diego Annual Report.
Additional information on County of San Diego Advisory Boards can be found at the links below.
First 5 Commission of San Diego Fact Sheet
County Board Policies A-72 Board of Supervisors’ Agenda and Related Processes
County Board Policies A-74 Citizen Participation in County Boards, Commissions and Committees
Health & Human Services Agency Policy HHSA-E-7 Advisory Boards
