Facts In Action

Research has linked the quality of early care and education services with important short and long-term outcomes for children. Children who receive high quality care enter school ready to learn, are more likely to complete high school and are more likely to be employed as adults. Unfortunately, low-income families often have a hard time accessing quality programs because these services are more costly. In addition, public funding for these programs is fragmented so that families are often only able to find part day or part year services.

In response to this problem, local early care and education providers, including centers, family child care providers, Head Start, and prekindergarten programs, have formed partnerships to enhance the quality of services and improve the continuity of care. A new report from the Partnership Impact Research Project describes these partnerships, focusing on how providers are engaging in them, and what states across the country are doing to support and promote them.

The study examines 65 partnerships - representing over 200 providers - that were formed to provide full-day, full-year, high quality services for working, low-income families. These partnerships report a range of reasons for forming. The three most often cited goals are: to maximize funding and cost-effectiveness; to meet parents' changing needs; and to improve the quality of children's education services.

The report also describes a number of supportive factors key in developing and maintaining the partnerships. Providers report that activities at the formation stages of the partnership that focus on learning about each others' practices, and clearly establish partners' expectations and roles lend to the partnership's long term strength and stability. Strong relationships between partners, time spent working together, and shared educational philosophy and vision help to ensure that partnerships function smoothly.

Providers also describe a number of management practices that facilitate strong partnerships. These include establishing strategies for communication within and across members of the partnership, having the financial know-how to develop mechanisms for combining funding from different sources, involving staff in all phases of the partnership, addressing the differences in staff pay across partners, and developing systems to continuously improve quality.

The report goes on to describe the ways in which states, including Massachusetts, have encouraged the blending of funding and resources to ensure that low-income children have access to full-day, full-year, high-quality early care and education with comprehensive services. While states use different methods to support and encourage partnerships, the report identifies five main categories that broadly define their actions:

• Review programs' policies, goals, and services
• Coordinate among state agencies
• Address differences in professional development standards
• Legislation or regulatory action
• Incentives

What do early care and education partnerships look like in Massachusetts? The report includes various examples from Massachusetts.

• Massachusetts early care and education providers throughout the state are working together to blend services and programs. The Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start program, for example, has created a contract that it uses to form a partnership with other early care and education providers. This contract clearly states the roles and responsibilities of the partners, the ways in which the partnership will be managed, the schedule of payments, and describes how partners will communicate. As reported above, partnership agreements such are these are key for successful and stable partnerships.

• Massachusetts state agencies are supporting such partnerships through the Community Partnerships for Children. This initiative, administered by the state's Department of Education, is a state-funded grant program designed to coordinate high-quality early education services with the goal of ensuring that children's needs are met so they enter school ready to learn. The program requires applicants to develop partnerships with early education providers. The total funding for this initiative in the state's fiscal year 2000 was $93.1 million, provided through state funds. Funding in FY 2001 was $104.2 million, of which 43 percent was derived from federal TANF funds. Unfortunately, since data for the report was collected, state funding for this initiative has been cut. Funding for FY2004 is $74.6 million.

• The Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services supports early care and education partnerships through quality initiatives and partnership slots. The Office of Child Care Services (OCCS) is the lead agency administering the Commonwealth's $282.80 million in federal and state funding in FY03. It also oversees a number of quality initiatives designed to use existing resources more effectively and efficiently to maximize the delivery of high-quality services. For example, the Massachusetts Head Start Collaboration Project, administered through OCCS, works with the state's Head Start and Early Head Start programs to improve the ways in which services and supports for low-income children and their families are designed, delivered, and coordinated. The Head Start/Early Head Start Partner Slots allow providers of subsidized child care to serve children in Head Start or Early Head Start programs. This option adds OCCS-subsidized child care hours before and after the Head Start day to meet the child care needs of eligible families who want their children in Head Start or Early Head Start and who also need additional hours of care.

According to the Partnership Impact report, the consistent theme from both state leaders and providers is that the advantages of partnership outweigh the challenges. However, state leaders informed researchers that the current fiscal crisis is jeopardizing the funding for many state initiatives supporting partnerships. Researchers plan to build on this report to document the impact of partnerships on the quality of early care and education programs.

This article contributed in part by Diane Schilder from The Education Development Center, Inc.

Sources:
Early Care and Education Partnerships: State Actions and Local Lessons, D. Schilder, E. Kiron, and K. Elliott, Partnership Impact Research Project, The Education Development Center, Inc., 2003.

Facts in Action, July/August 2003