What is the Albuquerque Community Early Childhood

Services Network Summit?

• A one-day retreat dedicated to creating a specific plan to better integrate Early Childhood services and to improve inter-agency collaboration among Early Childhood service providers, policy makers and advocates.

Why am I being invited?

• You and your agency work on behalf of young children in Albuquerque.
• You have unique insights about how the activities of many agencies could work together to improve services to young children and families in Albuquerque.
• You and your agency have a role to play in creating change.
• To see a list of who has been invited and has accepted the invitation to date CLICK HERE.

Who should attend from my agency/program?

• At least one administrator/policy-maker and at least one on-the-ground provider/staff member.

How does this relate to all the work we’ve already done?

• The Early Childhood Services Integration Assessment survey was the first step in the process.
• From here, we’ll be determining where and how we should change the ways agencies collaborate.

What's in it for me and my organization?

• A concrete plan, that you’ve helped shape, for working more effectively with other early childhood agencies and service providers.
• A concrete plan for measuring the contributions of your agency and other agencies toward specific early childhood outcomes.
• An understanding of how social networking principles can improve you and your agency’s effectiveness.

Why is it important for me to attend?

• We can only create a concrete plan when all relevant agencies are represented.
• Groups of people are more creative than individuals.
• You and/or your agency will be a key player in integrating early childhood services; therefore, we need you to be part of the design and evaluation process.

How will my time be used?

We already know that Early Childhood services are not integrated well enough to meet the needs of Albuquerque residents. From the December 4th planning session that you or your agency may have attended, we gained a long list of ideas for improving early childhood collaboration in Albuquerque. In the morning session we will:

• Conduct a quick overview of the global levels of collaboration among Albuquerque’s early childhood agencies and providers, as documented by the EC Integration Assessment Survey conducted in July 2009.
• Review the ideas for improving collaboration that were generated at the December 4th Albuquerque Community Early Childhood Integration Assessment and planning meeting.

Then we will get down to work setting specific outcome objectives and measuring the relationships between individual agencies. The next steps will take up most of the day, and will include:

• Agree on community-wide early childhood outcome objectives, based on the strategic plan.
• Measure levels of collaboration between all relevant individual agencies.
• Identify the appropriate role of individual agencies in accomplishing the collaboration and early childhood outcomes.
• Identify the necessary levels of collaboration between individual agencies.

Who will drive the process?

Jeni Cross, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University and received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis. Her areas of expertise include community development, community attachment, inter-agency collaboration, professional social networks, social norms, and research methods. She teaches courses on community, research methods, and social psychology.

She has received grants from the U.S. Department of Education (Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools) and the U.S. Department of Justice (Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention). Dr. Cross he has worked with public schools and community agencies on a variety of community-based participatory research projects centered on health promotion and community development. She has provided evaluation and research technical assistance to grantees in the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative funded by the United States Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice. Her current research focuses on social norms and energy conservation and inter-organizational social networks.

At the end of the day, what will be accomplished?

• Identify ways to REDUCE the number of meetings, while IMPROVING collaboration between agencies.
• Identify specific strategies for inter-agency collaboration.
• We will have gathered the baseline data on the relationships between individual agencies (more specific data than the assessment previously conducted which gave a global picture).

What do I do now?

Let us know who from your organization is attending by clicking the button below and registering online:

    QUESTIONS?

Regarding content:

Regarding logistics (registration/location)

Kelly Willems

(505) 266-3451

Kelly@KessJones.com