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Building a coordinated system of support for family child care: Lessons learned from Philadelphia

Description:
This brief describes how an evaluation of a family child care network in Philadelphia led to consensus around the need to build a system-wide coordinated strategy for supporting family child care. Part of the two-year evaluation entailed bringing early childhood stakeholders, including the network, together to understand the current landscape of services for family child care providers in Philadelphia. With this goal in mind, two meetings were organized to identify gaps in services both within and across organizations, to identify their collective organizational strengths and weaknesses, and to brainstorm potential strategies for collaboration around the development of new initiatives. Collectively, the stakeholders developed the concept of a Referral Continuum, a pipeline of supports that takes providers from initial licensing through accreditation, the highest level of quality in Pennsylvania's STARS, its QRIS. Operationalizing the Continuum has the potential to enhance coordination of the early childhood system because it places provider needs rather than individual organizations' services at the center. The brief begins with a discussion of the family child care network evaluation and the impetus for the collaborative stakeholder work. The sections that follow describe the process and activities used to engage stakeholders. The brief includes tools from the project which may be helpful for other communities that seek to better coordinate their services through a similar process. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Publisher(s):
Country:
United States
State(s)/Territories/Tribal Nation(s):
Pennsylvania

Related resources include summaries, versions, measures (instruments), or other resources in which the current document plays a part. Research products funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation are related to their project records.

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