Key Themes: Reflections from the Child Indicators Projects
The Importance of Cross-Agency and State-Community Collaboration in Child
Indicator Development: Reflections from the Child Indicators Project
Mairéad Reidy. Ph.D.,
Senior Research Associate
Chapin Hall Center for Children
University of Chicago,
(773) 256 5174 (phone)
reidy-mairead@chmail.spc.uchicago.edu
This short paper is based on discussions between the fourteen states
participating in the ASPE Child Indicators Project. It focuses on state
reflections on the importance of cross-agency and state-community collaboration
for developing and sustaining indicator work, and on the factors that contribute
to successful collaboration.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office
of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), with additional
support from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and The David
and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Child Indicators project has aimed over
the past 3 years to promote state efforts to develop and monitor indicators
of health and well-being of children during this era of shifting policy.
The fourteen participating states are Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida,
Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Utah,
Vermont, and West Virginia. Chapin Hall Center for Children provided technical
assistance to grantees. Grantees typically exchanged knowledge and expertise
through a series of technical assistance workshops coordinated by and held
at Chapin Hall Center for Children. The workshops encouraged peer leadership
and collaboration among states, and provided states with an opportunity to
work with and learn from one another on areas of common interest. This short
paper draws on the discussions of these meetings as well as individual
consultation with states. I am grateful to participants for sharing their
insights.
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Cross-agency collaboration is seen as critical to the development and
sustainability of indicators. The Child Indicators Project centered around
partnerships among state government agencies with lead responsibility for
addressing children's issues and programs, including children's health,
education, welfare, and income support programs. These partnerships were
of central strategic importance in building widespread support for establishing
goals for children and for sharing responsibility for building indicators
and tracking progress towards these goals.
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Cross-agency collaboration is more likely when working with child outcomes
that many agencies can rally around, where no one agency is solely responsible
for moving the indicator, and when agencies understand the interconnectedness
of the effects of program expenditures across agencies.
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School readiness is an example of such a child outcome. The multidimensional
nature of school readiness means that no one agency is solely responsible
for moving the indicators. Likewise, the interconnectedness of the effects
of expenditures across agencies provides an incentive to collaborate. For
example, the department of education understands that money invested in health
and early childhood care makes their work easier down the line. Likewise,
the child welfare agencies need high-quality childcare slots available for
at-risk children.
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Many states also point to the importance of locating a school readiness
indicators initiative within a centralized body, such as a governor's children's
cabinet, and of complementing such a top-down approach with grassroots approaches
that involve the community at all levels.
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There is widespread agreement across states that it is critical to establish
true partnerships among such community stakeholders as residents, parents,
teachers, health care providers, and others. These partnerships are critical
to the identification of community-relevant indicators, to the interpretation
of readiness profiles, and to effectively use indicators to inform policy
changes at the state and local level.
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Cross-agency collaboration is critical to amass the expenditures necessary
for indicator development because, although it is possible to draw on existing
staff and resources for indicators developed using administrative data, indicator
development involving survey work can be costly, and there is much competition
for scarce resources.
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