Welcome to The Children’s Council of Watauga! We are the Smart Start Partnership for Watauga County; Smart Start is the state-funded initiative that supports child care related health and family support services on behalf of children ages 0-5. Its goal is that all children will start school healthy and ready to learn.

This is a broad and ambitious objective, but the genius of Smart Start is that it recognizes different communities will need to address this objective in different ways. It, therefore, allows substantial local control in deciding what services to fund and how to provide them. At least 70% of Smart Start services funding must be spent for child care services, and up to 30% may be used for health and family support services.