Lessons Learned from The Quality Child Care Initiative (QCCI) A Project of the Early Childhood Funders

1
Lessons Learned from The Quality Child Care
Initiative (QCCI) A Project of the Early
Childhood Funders

• Presentation for the
• Early Childhood Funders
• October 28, 2003
• Deborah KoganSocial Policy Research
  AssociatesQCCI Evaluator

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QCCI Emerged as a Project of the Early Childhood
Funders in 1997

• To increase the availability of high quality
  child care for low-income families in Bay Area.
• In response to welfare reform pressures to move
  large numbers of mothers with young children into
  the workforce.
• Supported by research findings on the importance
  of quality child care for early childhood
  development.

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Goals of QCCI

• Illuminate critical issues in child care.
• Increase the knowledge base of various sectors of
  the child care community.
• Develop new partnerships between the
  philanthropic and government sectors.
• Form a child care response that addressed
  regional and local needs.

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Distinctive Features of QCCI

• A comprehensive vision of the issues that affect
  quality child care, drawing on input from
  experienced funders, experts, and the child care
  field.
• A program of joint grantmaking that drew on both
  pooled and directly aligned funds.
• A multi-pronged approach that made direct grants,
  sponsored community forums, funded technical
  assistance resources, supported grantee
  convenings, promoted public-private partnerships,
  and engaged in dissemination of best practices.

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Distinctive Features of QCCI, Continued

• The availability of a wide range of engagement
  levels for participating funders.
• An open and highly collaborative leadership
  structure.
• Use of an action learning loop that unites
  funders and practitioners in a shared learning
  community.
• A regional approach to quality child care issues.
  
• An ability to support flexible responses to
  changing circumstances.

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Two Rounds of QCCI Grantmaking

• During Round 1, QCCI raised 1.2 million in
  pooled funds and made 67 grants to 56
  organizations targeting five strategic areas
  training, advocacy, linkages, facilities, and
  consumer education.
• At the end of Round 1, participating funders felt
  that their work together was not yet complete.
• Funders contributed 2.1 million to support a
  second round of QCCI grantmaking. A total of 29
  grants were made under Round 2.

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Framework Guiding Round 2 Grantmaking

• Four Strategic Goals
• Build a sustainable child care workforce.
• Strengthen advocacy for child care.
• Create new/improve existing child care
  facilities.
• Make child care more accessible to families.

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New Approaches Tested During Round 2

• In response to review and feedback from Round 1,
  new features included
• A reduction in the number of grants made.
• An increase in the average grant level.
• Focus on a priority issue compensation and
  retention of the child care workforce.
• Grounding of advocacy efforts in focused
  high-stakes issues.
• An increased emphasis on disseminating best
  practices using resource/TA organizations.

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Support for Local Compensation/Retention Projects

• Provided coordinated support (865,000) for local
  projects and regional technical assistance
  efforts.
• QCCI support was valued by grantees, because
• QCCI support was timely and flexible.
• Funding enabled several counties to weave
  together an integrated project from multiple
  funding streams.
• QCCI supported networking and information sharing
  among grantees on challenges and accomplishments.
• QCCI encouraged grantees to think about both
  short-term and longer-term strategies.

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Lessons Learned from Compensation/Retention
Projects

• Workforce compensation/retention worked well as
  an organizing issue for advocacy projects
• It brought together center-based staff and
  family-based care providers.
• It enabled child care advocates to build broad
  coalitions of parents, educators/trainers, labor
  organizations, worthy wage coalitions, and care
  giver associations.
• Successful public education campaigns emphasized
  the link between improved compensation and
  improved quality of care.

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Lessons Learned from Compensation/Retention
Projects, Continued

• Grantees found it difficult to sustain
  involvement by child care teachers in
  advocacy/organizing efforts.
• Planning grantees said that design of local
  stipend programs will be a work in progress for
  some time. Design issues include
• How much to raise the bar between initial and
  continued eligibility? How to reach family child
  care providers and individuals from
  underrepresented groups? Whether to link
  stipends to permit applications?

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Lessons Learned from Compensation/Retention
Projects, Continued

• Implementation project grantees found it
  essential to build partnerships with key players
  in the education/professional development arena
• To facilitate access to professional and career
  counseling for child care providers.
• To expand opportunities for classes and workshops
  needed by individuals participating in the
  stipend program.
• To increase early childhood education offerings
  at non-traditional sites, during evening or
  weekend hours, and for Spanish-speaking
  participants.

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Support for Provider Training and Leadership
Projects

• Support included 100,000 to each of four
  resource organizations, with a focus on
  under-served groups and local areas, to expand
  training on
• Providing quality care to infants and toddlers.
• Providing quality care to an increasingly diverse
  population of children and families.
• Providing quality care to children with a wide
  array of special needs.
• Leadership development for child care center
  directors.

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Lessons Learned from Provider Training and
Leadership Projects

• Grantees found that training projects were not
  limited to delivery of training. Rather, needed
  steps included
• Meeting with representatives from targeted
  communities to build trust and identify needs.
• Developing training curricula and resource
  materials in appropriate languages and with
  culturally sensitive content.
• Recruiting and training trainers.
• Arranging for academic credit for successful
  completers.
• Conducting outreach to potential participants.
• Delivering training.
• Providing ongoing hands-on support to providers.

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Lessons Learned from Provider Training and
Leadership Projects, Continued

• Projects reaching out to underserved populations
  found that intensive interpersonal outreach
  efforts by community organizers were needed to
  recruit targeted individuals.
• Sometimes the necessary precursors to training
  took time
• One grantee found it necessary to work at the
  system level to raise the visibility of children
  with special needs before undertaking intensive
  practitioner-level training.
• Another grantee entering a new geographic area
  found that it had to talk with caregivers and
  build a trusting relationship before offering
  training on serving infants and toddlers.
• Practitioners valued training that offered
  academic credits, which helped practitioners
  advance on the permit matrix and qualify for
  local stipends.

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Lessons Learned from Provider Training and
Leadership Projects, Continued

• One grantee emphasized the importance of
  mentor-to-trainee and peer-to-peer dialogue
  during and after training to share experiences
  and solidify learning.
• Organizational (employer) involvement in planning
  and delivery of training supported individual
  caregiver participation and made it easier for
  caregivers to apply their new skills in the
  workplace.
• When preparing a curriculum for use by a new
  cultural and language group, a process of
  cultural translation was often needed to reveal
  the hidden cultural assumptions in the training
  content before the language translation was made.

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Support for Parent Advocacy

• The Parent Action for Child Care Today (PACCT)
  project received a QCCI grant of 80,000,
  designed to
• Develop and promote a parents platform and
  communicate it to key state and local
  decisionmakers in a public Parent Summit.
• Support three local chapters of Parent Voices in
  recruiting parents and involving them in
  meaningful child care advocacy work.
• Increase the stature and maturity of Parent
  Voices as a parent advocacy organization and
  public policy stakeholder at the state level.
• Using the Parent Summit as a stepping stone, the
  project helped mobilize parent energy around a
  key state budget issue (reduction in funding for
  child care set-aside for families who had
  recently left welfare).

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Lessons Learned from Parent Advocacy Project

• It is possible to focus parent advocacy efforts
  around a critical issue and to influence key
  decisionmakers at the state level.
• The work of paid staff is essential to sustain
  the momentum of parent involvement.
• Interest from parents in additional counties
  around the state demonstrated the potential to
  form new local chapters of Parent Voices.
• As a result of its involvement in state budget
  issues, Parent Voices has been collaborating
  closely with other child care, labor,
  faith-based, and non-profit groups.

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Support for Child Care Facilities

• QCCI provided a 100,000 grant to Low Income
  Investment Fund (LIIF) to
• Provide technical assistance to build provider
  capacity on business practices and facilities
  development.
• Link child care providers to expert consultants
  in the fields of facilities financing and
  development.
• Create a Predevelopment Fund to support
  individual planning and predevelopment grants to
  licensed nonprofit child care centers (12 grants
  awarded).
• Expand LIIF activities beyond San Francisco to
  eight additional counties.

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Lessons Learned from Facilities Grant

• Building relationships with child care
  organizations and prospective applicants in new
  counties requires personal contacts and a
  substantial investment of time and effort.
• A number of applicants lacked the threshold
  organizational capacity to manage a capital
  development project. Used referral linkages to
  basic capacity building resources.
• Priority centers (those serving low-income
  families and children with special needs) often
  need the greatest amount of technical assistance
  and capacity building.
• Predevelopment and planning activities are only
  the first step in a long process. Need to
  develop outcome measures that track progress
  toward actual facility development.

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Support for Centralized Eligibility Lists (CEL
Project)

• During Round 2, QCCI continued to play an
  important supporting role in its partnership with
  the State of California Department of
  Education/Child Development Division supporting
  the development of county-level CELs (lists of
  families eligible for subsidized child care)
• Facilitated meetings of the states CEL Task
  Force.
• Supported networking among counties on CEL design
  and implementation issues.

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Lessons Learned from CEL Project

• Modest but strategic investments by the
  philanthropy community can stimulate the public
  sector to make significant investments in
  projects that address the needs of children and
  families.
• QCCI support helped ensure use of uniform design
  and data elements across county CELs, which was
  critical to build the potential for state-level
  summaries.
• Without continued state funding, many counties
  were unable to continue/move forward on CEL
  development.

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Evolution of QCCI During Round 2

• Funder participation grew from 16 to 21
  foundations. Nine new foundations joined the
  initiative.
• Second-round participating funders were more
  comfortable contributing to the pooled fund.
• QCCI handled turnover in administrative staffing
  without disrupting operations.

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Evolution of QCCI During Round 2, Continued

• QCCI Leadership Team remained in place overseeing
  shared funding until the end of QCCI Round 2
  grants led planning for end of formal QCCI
  grantmaking.
• Group of interested ECF members met to develop
  new ECF leadership and assess the feasibility of
  continuing some QCCI-related functions as part of
  ECF.

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Exit Strategy for QCCI

• Short-term funding to leadership and training
  grantees to support planning for organizational
  sustainability.
• Clear communication with grantees about the end
  of the formal QCCI collaborative grantmaking
  program.
• Dissemination of lessons learned
• About funder collaboratives.
• About regional projects supporting quality child
  care.
• Discussions about continuing some QCCI-related
  functions as part of ECF or as independent
  projects by individual funders.

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Funder Perspective on QCCI Accomplishments

• Funders particularly valued QCCIs contribution
  to
• Increasing the visibility and priority of child
  care issues on the public agenda.
• Viewing and addressing child care issues from a
  regional perspective.
• Helping document and disseminate information
  about best practices in the child care field.
• Providing grantees with a single point of access
  to potential funders.
• Reinforcing funders decisions to make
  independent grants in the areas of QCCIs funding
  priorities.

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Grantee Perspective on QCCI Accomplishments

• Grantees particularly valued the following
  aspects of QCCI
• Grant flexibility the willingness of QCCI to
  adapt terms of grant to meet changing conditions.
• The fact that QCCI gave attention to issues not
  recognized by other funders, such as advocacy,
  community organizing, and inclusion of children
  with special needs.
• Modest and streamlined oversight and reporting
  requirements.
• Provision of valuable and interesting information
  at grantee convenings.
• Assistance in developing relevant outcome
  measures.

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Grantee Interest in Continued Philanthropy
Support for Quality Child Care

• Surveyed grantees indicated that they hoped the
  philanthropy community would continue to
• Support innovative projects, such as CARES, that
  build on current efforts and require an extended
  period of time to mature.
• Support advocacy efforts to help protect hard-won
  child care quality improvements.
• Help broaden the child care discussion to include
  voices not always heard, including parents and
  teachers.
• Convince the business sector of the economic
  benefits of quality child care.
• Convene regional stakeholders to develop new
  strategies for quality child care in todays
  difficult economic and political environment.

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Lessons Learned About Funders Collaboratives

• Most funder staff that participated in the funder
  survey would recommend that their foundation
  participate in future collaboratives.
• Perceived benefits of collaboration included
• Ability to leverage individual foundations
  investment with pooled funds from other funders.
• Ability to learn from other funders (about the
  field and about other approaches to grantmaking).
• Coordinated grantmaking strategy that resulted in
  a greater impact on the early childhood education
  field.

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Lessons Learned About Funders Collaboratives,
Continued

• Funders identified the following factors as
  contributing to the success of QCCI as a funders
  collaborative
• Having strong but flexible leadership.
• Using a multi-pronged approach that includes both
  individual grants and grantee/community
  convenings.
• Securing funder buy-in to a broad regional
  picture of the issues and grantmaking strategies.
• Allowing funder participation at a variety of
  different levels of commitment.
• Offering both aligned and pooled funding
  opportunities.
• Coming together in a flexible and time-limited
  project, rather than creating a permanent program
  or organization.