Child Care Aware® of America’s Consultative Services Application
Child Care Capacity Building – a Human-Centered Approach
This six-step consultation engagement which occurs virtually over approximately 12 weeks allows an organization to identify a team of individuals (between 6 to 9 individuals) to ideate, solution, prototype and test strategies to positively impact the child care capacity challenges and opportunities they have identified. The CCAoA facilitation team will serve as trainers of Human-Centered Service Design (HCSD), provide the structure to engage in meaningful ideation and prototyping of solutions, and thought partnership for assessing impact and identifying next steps. Your team will also be able to participate in a small community of practice with other organizations that are also exploring child care capacity within their own community.
The engagement consists of the following six touchpoints:
Planning Session/Forming your Team
Facilitators meet with the Child Care Resource and Referral agencies (CCR&Rs) to outline the process and establish expectations including how to form their team. The team should represent a combination of roles and views within the organization and external partners to ensure we are able to capture and elevate our shared understanding of the community needs while ensuring solutions are equitable and relevant. An exploratory exercise will be utilized to assist the team to think in more detail about the child care capacity challenges they face and what success may look like.
HCSD Overview/Introductory Session for CCR&R Team
This session allows the team to come together and receive an overview training on the HCSD process prior to getting started while engaging in a tutorial on utilizing the collaborative software. This session is an important foundation of both the how and why we will be engaging in this process to explore child care transformation.
Exploring Child Care Capacity Part I: Identifying the Challenge, Understanding Users & Designing Solutions
In this session, the team will begin to utilize the HCSD process and collaboration software to walk through a series of steps to identify and agree on a primary challenge or opportunity and identify and explore the user’s journey to being to design potential solutions. Through guided collaboration, ideation and consultation the group will learn a process that can also be applied to other challenges in their work.
Exploring Child Care Capacity Part II: Storyboarding, Prototyping & Testing
In the follow-up session, the team decides on a solution and constructs a storyboard outlining the features and the way it addresses the user’s journey. A prototype is scoped and testing decisions are made for implementation as well as considering the measurement of impact.
Follow Up to Assess Results of the Prototype and Moving Forward
CCAoA and the CCR&R will meet to understand the impact of the prototype and consider where additional refinement and enhancement should occur. The process of HCSD emphasizes the importance of ongoing ideation and refinement to continually increase the effectiveness of the results.
Establishment of a Child Care Capacity Community of Practice (COP)
CCAoA will establish and facilitate a COP to provide CCR&Rs across the country to engage in peer-to-peer learning and the exchange of ideas, solutions and successes. As the steward of this group, CCAoA will continually bring resources and support to the group that are pertinent to challenges and opportunities.
Through these six touchpoints, our goal is to empower the CCR&R team to learn new skills and engage in continued HCSD thinking for continuous problem-solving. Our success is measured by the CCR&R team’s enablement of walking through these HCSD steps repeatedly as any set of issues need to be addressed. Putting the human at the center, enabling the CCR&R team to be leaders of these innovative processes and themselves begin to grow others around them for transformation in the early learning and care system.
Cost of Child Care Capacity Building — a Human-Centered Design Approach 12-week Consultation Program
Child Care Aware® of America Member: $2,000*
Non-Member: $2,700*
Important Dates:
Summer Cohort: August 1 – October 31, 2021 (Closed/Full)
Fall Cohort: October 1 – December 31, 2021 (Closed/ Full)
Winter Cohort: Coming Soon
Start Your Application
Please complete the form below or complete it in a full-screen mode here. To preview the questions in PDF form before submitting, email us at learnmore@usa.childcareaware.org.
Create your own user feedback survey
*Note pricing established for summer/fall 2021 cohorts is subject to change based on evaluation/review for future cohorts.
