AMCHP 2006 ANNUAL CONFERENCE
EARLY CHILDHOOD: BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR LIFELONG HEALTH
March 4-8, 2006
LORRIE GREVSTAD: Good afternoon. I have to share with you one of the exciting things you have to put up with a little bit this afternoon is some of the enthusiasm and the ability to want to share some of this information with you, and when we got to talk with Jane and communicate with Francis and al of us about what we would share with you today, it was us having to talk to each other about how two years ago we weren't sure we could do this at all and today we'd like to talk to you for about four hours about it, but we won't lead you to do that.
So it's hard to pick out everything really quickly and highlight it for you and that's what we're going try to do. Sangree gave you a good background on our process. I letters wanted you to know on the back of the Kids Matter plan is the website for it. For those interested in all the details of the needs assessment and environmental scan and how we collected boxes and boxes of information and all this data from stakeholders, that's in a full page report that's on the website that we didn't provide since we knew some of you wouldn't want to have to read all of that. So how did we actually get to where we are and some ability to use the framework that was really important. Part of this is the reason it was incredibly significant for us in Washington about some of our partnerships. And as we've heard this morning and some of us have heard off and on on the weekend with early childhood, it's also when we capture a moment that's opportunistic. And we really did that in Washington State, because there was a tremendous amount of momentum. And we were very fortunate that the MCH Bureau State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Grant and our Head Start collaboration office and our Build Initiative Statewide Systems efforts were really all sort of happening all at the same time all this other state work was going on with not only public stakeholders but an increasing interest from private stakeholders.
And so while we were in the middle of doing that work, we had some legislators who were drafting legislation. And we were able through our private side partners, who can do that kind of conversations with legislators, that some of us public folks can't, they actually said whatever we do in early childhood we should build on existing efforts. We should not lose sight of some incredible work that's been done in a variety of places both public and private. So we literally got one line in the legislation that passed last year that created a Governor appointed Early Learning Council, where it said you should base this on existing efforts, including the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Grant work that was referenced in the state.
So, again, I'm talking and not doing, keeping up with the multi‑tasking here. So we actually were able to get into the legislation and it offers the same common goals and the opportunity for some coordinated outcomes that the Legislature was very interested in. Because, of course, they want to know what constitutents think. We had just spent two and a half years trying to collect as much information from every early childhood child care systems public, private, state level, local level, community level to be able to build that information and to think about linkages of how we might be able to do that work. And so that really was important to the Legislature to know that what they were looking at in this executive summary was what a lot of people in the state thought from a lot of different places.
And an example of using it, it's great to have a partner who actually walks the talk. And Sangree through the Head Start collaboration office also had a five‑year reauthorization grant that she needed to do the planning and writing her grant proposal for just recently.
So she used the framework as the backdrop for all of that. And one of the examples is where on page five where we showed you the outcome map, which is parts of our logic model. She actually took those and then highlighted them literally and intentionally and identified the ones that cross‑matched the kinds of things that her stakeholders were telling her were important in our state and what the federal government was also saying was important to the federal Head Start program.
And so that was a significant activity. And then we're looking at our Maternal Child Health program as well in parts and one of the things I wanted to share with you today in doing that, and talked a little bit with New Mexico about this, and I'm not sure about some of you in the room. But this is such a huge effort to talk to all the different players in all the different components. It really is, as Charlie Bruner, calls it, a system of systems, to have to look at.
In the time that it takes, there's a lot of effort trying to convene and understand and build the relationships and recognize what's going on externally that we need to do, because health hasn't always been a player at those tables.
So now it's having to also, once our plan was submitted and working to implementation, to think: What does it mean in our own house? What does it mean at home? What does it mean in our Title V program. And fortunately one of the places that we'd worked with our needs assessment, for the ECCS grant and this plan, was also coincidental to our five‑year MCH Block Grant planning process. And so we used information in two directions.
We took the needs assessment information being collected from the five‑year Block Grant and used that as part of the needs assessment information to inform what was going on in early childhood. And then we took the needs assessment and environmental scan information that we were doing for early childhood systems grant and gave it back to the five‑year Block Grant planning process so that the information was going in two different directions and could actually show where we could make some alignments and it was important as Sangree said that we really needed to recognize this was systems level work but we don't want it to always be at a systems level. We're not doing systems level for systems levels sake, we're doing it because ultimately we want better outcomes for children. So we wanted that to have information at a systems level, a family and a caregiver level, however you described caregiver, because we also significantly made an intentional decision that this plan was for parents, all children and all parents. So those who are fortunate enough to be at home with a parent at home we wanted this plan to help inform and the framework do that as well.
So that was some of the linkages as we started with MCH. Another one helping define and identify specific strategies and outcomes with our plan. One of the things I'm doing right now is I've been intentionally going to each of the different sections within our office of Maternal Child Health and meeting with them and identifying if there's interest, and we did it with, I sit in a child and adolescent section, and we took our section and have begun conversations about where does the framework, particularly looking at the outcome map again that you have on page 5, and saying where does our work intersect with that. Where do we have priorities about what we're concerned about with children and adolescence that are mentioned or identified that we can drill down in this plan and work on.
And now we're looking at doing that with our children with special healthcare needs section. A week ago I met with the genetics section and I've meant with the maternal health section. It's exciting at looking at how that might also build momentum internally as well. I think it's really important because it's so easy to focus externally and realize we really need to do both, because we can improve services and integration and reduce fragmentation as much in‑house as we can externally with our partners.
One of the examples we have in that is we have a long standing healthy child care Washington program with health and safety and child care and it was very exciting because as Sangree mentioned we forced people to prioritize early childhood stakeholders, so that was coming from them, not from us. They actually identified healthy child care as one of the priorities that was very strategic now that we maintain and do what we can for sustainability within our early childhood systems work.
Sangree also talked about accountability and evaluation. There's three levels of that. And you can't actually talk about moving to evaluating what's happening at a systems level, a family level or a child level if people don't know what the plan is. So we needed to rethink as you move to this implementation and those states lesson learned that we'll talk about it really takes some different thinking to move from two years of planning to now implementing. And so our first year, which is now of our implementation, is really focused on helping people be aware of the plan and how to use the plan and tools that we're creating for both people at a state and a local level about how they can do that. So I won't set that here and I won't mess papers up.
So that really helps be able to focus, because with our evaluation design, we've actually taken very seriously how to look at is the framework speaking to more than just the choir, more than just those of us who spent two years trying to put all this information together.
And will our strategies and many of you have seen this chain, it's not new to you, but can you really take this information and this framework and move it through what's happening? I wanted to move quickly now to talk a little bit about I'm not going to go through each of these slides but you have it in the handout. There are four slides of key stakeholders who are now talking about the plan, and the reason I wanted to highlight them is because they're the private side, private sector. And it's been really important. This is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who really talked about it as a convergence of thinking, and another partner who said it was very synergistic and it shows that we're really moving to do things that are value‑added.
Let me quickly move to lessons learned. No surprise in some of these. It's about relationships, relationships, relationships. I've already talked about building on existing efforts and giving people credit. Valuing your consultants literally as partners and the assistance they can do. Start with the end in mind. We were very intentional about we did not want this to be a traditional strategic plan that went on a shelf. We literally asked people to identify what is strategic and has momentum now and we called that what has legs.
And we talked about aim high and frame high. I put that there very intentionally because if you create a framework at a 50,000 foot level then people can't not find themselves in it. And it was very important to us to be inclusive rather than exclusive. And you can drill down to where the detail is in the plan to where you fit.
But it needed to be the overarching bridge. And the other part about framing high is you also have our executive summary in front of you and it's laid out in the way it is in the one page that Sangree mentioned because that was our private partners who pushed us very hard all the way through the process and said if you don't frame this in a manner that will make sense and speak to business or philanthropy, you're going to lose. And that has become a huge issue to us that I'll share in just a second. The challenges, relationships, relationships, relationships. They take a lot of time but they're worth it in every aspect.
Again, language, clarify meaning. I already talked about the systems level view. It's hard not to fall back to a program view so you want to be careful about that.
Our next steps: Relationships, relationships, relationships. Continue to build on them. Hold on and be ready. We just two days before we flew back here for this meeting our Legislature passed legislation that we never would have dreamed would have passed in the first year that it was actually put forward and has created a cabinet level state agency of early learning.
Partnered or significantly structured with the private public partnership that Sangree mentioned with business and philanthropists from around Washington who have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Governor to literally create this private public partnership in synch with this new agency with decision making authority, not just advisory capacity authority. And they've kicked it off with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who has done three years of research to see if they should be in the early childhood business and just announced a $90 million ten‑year imitative for early childhood. That's the seed money to the private public partnership that they think now they're going to at least double. So it's leverage. So it's worth all the time, and Sangree and I are just two people of many of hundreds of partners who thought we'd never be able to frame it in a way that might make sense to the private side or the partnership and it really has made a huge difference. So with that, we'll ‑‑ you want to wait questions to the end?