To provide age-appropriate, affordable, high-quality care for all children ages 0-5 in Walla Walla and Columbia Counties, WA and Milton-Freewater, OR.

“Big Goal” Strategies 1 and 2

Strategy 1. Understand the local early learning ecosystem; determine who does and who does not have access to early learning opportunities.

Strategy 2. Identify strategies for creating new early learning opportunities in order to meet the Big Goal.

Project Proposal Outline

Our first step will be to work with the Elevate leadership group to develop a more detailed plan that identifies specific questions to be answered; what new data are needed; potential case studies to review; people to interview, include in focus groups, and survey; and the leaders within the child care network. This step will include creating a detailed and trackable task list and schedule.

We will focus on data collection and updates that build on and expand the 2021 “Creating an Accessible, Valley-Wide Child Care System Feasibility Study.” We will review existing data and determine what needs to be supplemented, updated, or developed anew. Data collection will be in English, Spanish, or both as needed.

Our 2021 feasibility study data collection focused on Walla Walla and Dayton, with some survey and interview coverage of the broader counties; therefore, for this project we will focus some of the primary data collection on understanding and identifying strategies for the Milton-Freewater, Touchet, Waitsburg, and Prescott areas. These areas are more rural, have higher poverty rates, greater racial and ethnic diversity, lower internet and transportation access, and fewer child care options. Therefore, these areas will potentially require a different suite of strategies for creating new child care options.

Data Collection

Existing (Secondary) Data

We will gather and analyze secondary data to include areas not incorporated in the original 2021 feasibility study, update data as available, and answer new questions identified by Elevate leadership group. Existing data will include sources such as the US Census Bureau for demographic data and local and state reports for early learning from sources such as the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families.

Interviews

We will conduct 20 interviews with key people, including child care providers, parents and guardians, employers, community organizations, school administrators, and others as identified through referral and purposeful sampling.

Focus Groups

We will hold six focus groups over Zoom and in person in locations where strict Covid-19 safety precautions can be followed. Focus groups will be conducted in both English and Spanish. The stakeholder groups to be gathered are

• Families and community members
• Childcare providers
• Employers

Surveys

Surveys are a cost-effective way to gather data. If the sampling frames are available, we can conduct the family, childcare provider, or the employer surveys we developed for the 2021 feasibility study to include the areas that were not already included. Implementing new surveys would require the Elevate leadership group to help us identify community-based email and communication networks that enable us to reach the target audiences.

Case Studies

We will collect and analyze case studies to identify best practices, suitable program models and strategies, and lessons learned from other places around the country relevant to the project area. There are many case studies already developed to draw from, and we can follow up with additional research and an interview or two to gather additional information if needed. We’ll start by inventorying our options and developing research questions to guide the inquiry.

Planning, Prioritization, and Strategy Selection

Our goal is to build understanding and consensus as part of an iterative planning process. To this effect, we will facilitate meetings with the Elevate leadership group, either as part of regular meetings or a separate advisory group, to get input and feedback as part of evaluating tradeoffs, feasibility, and prioritization of identified strategies. In the first quarters, we will want to meet as often as the group is willing, ideally once per week for the first month or two and then once per month thereafter.

Throughout the process we will inventory and evaluate the applicability and tradeoffs of strategies for creating new early learning opportunities to meet the Big Goal. Realistically, all identified solutions will require multiple action strategies and funding resources. Therefore, we will evaluate the role and potential of identified strategies and develop a suite of scenarios to achieve the Big Goal.

Set Up Strategies 3 and 4

As all four strategies in pursuit of the “Big Goal” are interconnected, we will ensure our work on strategies 1 and 2 feed directly into strategies 3 and 4. Deliverables

Deliverables for this project are flexible and will be further outlined as part of the initial in-depth planning. Initial deliverable ideas include

• An assessment report documenting findings from the secondary and primary data analysis and case studies. This will be a resource for planning and implementation and available to the public, but not written with the public as a primary audience.
• A detailed action plan including a suite of recommendations and strategies to meet the Big Goal.
• A public-focused document for wide distribution to decision makers and the public that includes the top priorities and most feasible strategies identified.
• A 2-page summary report of findings.
• A database of collected and compiled data.