This report provides insights into how South Dakota’s leaders view the earliest years of life and the policies that shape children’s opportunities to thrive. We hope the information presented here will be useful for policymakers, practitioners, and community partners as they continue important conversations about how best to ensure a strong start for every child in our state. Supporting children’s healthy development from the very beginning is not only an investment in our future workforce and communities—it is also one of the most powerful primary prevention strategies for reducing childhood adversity and maltreatment. Together, we can build systems that help all South Dakota families thrive.

The survey that informed this report was modeled from one originally conducted in Texas by Child Trends in partnership with TexProtects (Wilson, et al., 2020). The authors would like to thank Dr. April Wilson for granting permission to adapt the original survey and for graciously sharing her expertise and insights into the development of the South Dakota iteration and our overall research design.