Tribal Child Care And Development Fund: Guide for New Administrators
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Collaboration and Partnerships
Collaboration is a process of sharing both resources and power to achieve common goals. Tribal programs are especially good at recognizing their interdependence with one another, and understand that the more they work together, the more they all gain. Collaboration greatly enhances an organization’s chances of success. Historically, collaboration applies to agencies, but can also be effective among agencies, families, and neighborhoods because it creates lasting relationships and uses resources effectively.38
Networking
Networking, the cultivation of productive relationships among individuals and organizations, can be a powerful tool for forming collaborations to maximize resources, communication, and learning. Connecting with people who share common goals can provide an opportunity to understand their best practices and lead to jointly creating new ways of looking at and meeting shared goals. Gathering and sharing knowledge by networking within and outside your tribal community can provide valuable insight and prevent the need to “reinvent the wheel.”
“We know in child care we can’t do it alone. We don’t have the funds; we need to reach out to our partners.” Linda Kills Crow, Project Director, TriTAC
Partnerships are important to the success of tribal child care programs and can facilitate ways to best meet the program goals for children and families. Key program partners for tribal CCDF programs include Head Start, TANF, employment services, public health, and other tribal and community educational programs.39 Successful partnerships often display the following partnership principles:40
- Have clearly defined goals at the outset to ensure understanding among partners that will help guide the partnership through obstacles and challenges;
- Involve families and account for their needs and preferences when developing programs and services;
- Include all stakeholders from the beginning and draw from a broad range of perspectives, resources, and expertise;
- Involve powerful champions that make their initiatives visible to the public;
- Aim to achieve positive results and regularly measure their progress;
- Establish clear governance structures that define partner roles and responsibilities;
- Set and adhere to ground rules that guide the partnership in its work;
- Are flexible and adapt to changing conditions and resources;
- Draw on the strengths of all partners and enable all partners to benefit; and
- Work to maintain momentum and sustain their work over time.
| Effective Program Strategy: CHILD CARE/HEAD START Prairie Band Potawatomi |
| The Prairie Band Potawatomi early education center Ben-no-tteh Wigwam (House of the Child) provides full-day, year-round early care and education services including child care, Head Start, Early Head Start, and Early Intervention services. The early childhood program attributes the success of its partnerships to receiving support from the tribal community; taking time to value all the players—parents, teachers, and staff; and involving all the partners in program decision-making. Early childhood program staff focus on the end result, bringing together multiple programs to provide quality services to the community’s children, and spur each other on by saying, “Life is short; just do it!” For more detail on this Effective Program Strategy visit: http://nccic.org/tribal/effective/potawatomi/headstart.html |
Tribal-State Collaborations41
In their FY 2004-2005 CCDF Plans, Tribes and States described a number of ways they are coming together to provide services and supports. Seven major areas of tribal/state child care coordination and collaboration were identified, including:
- Joint planning and policy-making;
- Child care subsidies and dual enrollment;
- Development of Early Learning Guidelines (ELGs);
- Providing child care resource and referral services;
- Child care licensing and monitoring;
- Training and professional development; and
- Grant and funding opportunities.
“I really believe that the more the State and the Tribes can learn about each other’s systems and identify possible areas of collaboration—whether to help a provider purchase necessary items to get licensed or to combine resources for putting on a training—the better we can work together to improve the quality and availability of child care, especially in our rural areas. It is essential, especially in these times of belt tightening, that we all work together towards the common purpose of helping parents choose child care that fits their needs and assist and support child care providers in providing quality care. The opportunities are tremendous when we join forces; together we can achieve so much more than our individual efforts.”
Mary Lorence, State Child Care Administrator, Alaska
Learning & Sharing Opportunities for Tribal CCDF Administrators
Throughout the year, tribal CCDF administrators have various ways to connect, share, and learn from each other. Each spring, the Child Care Bureau, in collaboration with the ACF Regional Offices and TriTAC, conducts the National American Indian and Alaska Native Child Care Conference. Training sessions designed specifically for tribal CCDF administrators are held throughout the conference. These workshops provide an opportunity to learn from expert trainers as well as from experienced tribal CCDF colleagues. On-site technical assistance, also available through TriTAC, can be provided to new tribal CCDF administrators to give them one-on-one support as they transition into their new role.
Several tribal CCDF programs also host annual child care conferences that are often open to tribal CCDF administrators and staff from neighboring Tribes and/or States.
As you delve into the day-to-day work of operating a tribal child care program, your fellow tribal CCDF administrators can be a source of creative program management ideas and problem-solving approaches. Many experienced administrators are willing to provide peer support to new administrators through telephone consultations and informal visits. In addition, TriTAC has developed several publications to showcase innovative tribal CCDF program initiatives (many of which, like the Effective Program Strategies profiles, are highlighted in this Guide) so that these successes can be replicated by other interested Tribes. These publications, as well as all of the Child Care Bureau’s CCDF-related documents and the contact information for all tribal CCDF grantees, are available through the TriTAC website at http://nccic.acf.hhs.gov/tribal.
Your role as the tribal CCDF administrator and the services that you oversee make an important contribution to the lives of the children and families you serve and to your larger tribal community. To support you in your work, the ACF Regional Offices and the staff of TriTAC are available to provide you with free consultation, information services, resource materials, and technical assistance. Contact information for TriTAC and the ACF Regional Offices can be found in Appendix B: Federal CCDF Contacts and Resources.
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38 Community Partnership Toolkit, W.K. Kellogg Foundation. http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/CustomPubs/CPtoolkit/cptoolkit/ 
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39 A list of potential collaborative partners can be found in Appendix E. Back to Text
40 “Principles for Success,” created by the Child Care Partnership Project and available from the National Child Care Information Center at 800-616-2242. Back to Text
41 Tribes and States Working Together: A Guide to Tribal-State Child Care Coordination, available from TriTAC. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ccb/ta/pubs/tswt/tswt1.htm Back to Text