 |
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||||
|
ACF Home | ACF Services | Working with ACF | ACF Policy/Planning | About ACF | ACF News | ACF Search | |||||||||
 |
|
|
|||||||||
Tribal Child Care Technical Assistance Center (TriTAC)
Effective Program Strategies
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
ACF Home | ACF Services | Working with ACF | ACF Policy/Planning | About ACF | ACF News | ACF Search | |||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||
| Child Care/Head Start/Boys and Girls Club Oglala Sioux Tribe |
 |
Demographic
Information:
The Oglala Sioux Tribe's Child
Care and Development Program provides child care services within the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The reservation occupies
more than 10,000 square miles in southwest South Dakota and is divided into
nine districts. The Tribe's social service agencies face great service-delivery
challenges because of the large distances covered and the diversity of needs
among these largely rural districts. More than half of the reservation's 47,000
residents are under age 18, and working parents often commute more than 100
miles roundtrip to reach jobs on and off the reservation.
Type of Program:
The Oglala Sioux Tribe's Child Care and Development Program operates a
certificate program offering parents a full range of child care options. Through
the certificate program, tribally-operated learning centers, and strategic
partnerships, the Child Care and Development Program serves more than 400
children from birth through age 12 in center- and home-based settings.
In addition to operating the certificate program, the Tribe's Resource and Referral program also provides parent and provider training, a provider resource library (including books, videos, and arts and crafts supplies), and health and safety improvements for public areas of family child care homes (e.g., fixing broken windows, putting up fences near busy roads, or replacing broken steps).
Effective Program Strategy:However, Ms. Jack also knew that there were underutilized resources on the reservation that could be used to address the unmet needs of children and families. The Tribe's Head Start program had wonderful language and culture resources, but the program was suffering from declining enrollment and these resources were reaching a very small population. The local Boys & Girls Club had a beautiful new facility that sat unused during the day while the Club's members were in school. Within the Child Care and Development Program, there were well-trained staff members with flexible schedules who could be serving more children and families.
Although colleagues had warned her that early childhood collaborations didn't have a history of success on the reservation, Ms. Jack thought that these existing resources could be combined in new ways to meet the needs of the Oglala Sioux Tribe's families. She asked the Tribe's Head Start Director and the Director of the Boys and Girls Clubs to meet to discuss a potential partnership.
The result is a unique three-way partnership in which Head Start children receive two hours of programming per day in health, physical fitness, computers, early literacy, and arts and culture provided by Child Care staff in state-of-the-art facilities owned and operated by the Boys & Girls Club. The first community to benefit from this partnership was Pine Ridge, the reservation's largest town. A second program in the town of Wanblee became operational in January 2003.
The 30,000 sq. ft. Pine Ridge Boys & Girls Club facility includes a pool (the only year-round pool on the reservation), a gym, a computer lab, an arts and crafts room, and a library. To make use of the facility, Child Care schedules have been modified so that the staff have time to work with the Head Start children and Head Start schedules have been modified to allow the children time to participate in the program.
The partnership is operated through a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that spells out the responsibilities of each partner. The directors of each program met regularly for several months to develop the agreement and to resolve scheduling difficulties. Now that the partnership is operational, staff from each organization meet weekly for ongoing planning and to work through any new challenges that arise.
Each partner entered into the MOA with its own goals for the project: Head Start wanted to see enrollment and parent involvement increase and to see teacher evaluations improved; the Boys & Girls Club wanted to improve community relations by reaching out to younger children and their families; and Child Care wanted to provide quality activities for additional children and to outreach to their parents with comprehensive resource and referral services. While each partner organization had unique goals, they shared a common aim to provide enhanced quality services in the 2- to 5-year-old age group. A Boys & Girls Club evaluation tool is currently being modified to help the partners determine their success in achieving their individual and collective goals.
Resources:
Child Care and Development Fund dollars are used to purchase some supplies
for the program, including age-appropriate computer software, and to pay a
small portion of the utilities costs for the Boys & Girls Club facility.
However, the key to the success of this partnership has not been blending
dollars; it has been blending the planning efforts of three organizations
to more effectively use existing resources.
Results:
This partnership allows the Child Care and Development Program to reach
more children and families with its services and to provide real full-day
options for families without increasing costs. Because of its partnerships
with Head Start and the Boys & Girls Club, the Child Care and Development
Program reaches more than 320 additional children.
If not for the programming provided by the Child Care and Development Program, the Head Start program would only be able to operate on a half-day schedule. Because of the availability of these extended services, the Tribe reports improved productivity among workers with young children, who can go to work knowing that their children are safe, warm, well fed and well cared for throughout the workday.
The Head Start program has experienced increased enrollment, as parents of Head Start-eligible children are excited by the additional learning opportunities now available. Since the Child Care and Development Program's Mentoring Department provides the programming content and staff, Head Start teachers now have two consecutive hours of planning time each day while the children are at the Boys & Girls Club facilities.
The success of the partnership has attracted new partners to the table, offering additional opportunities to expand and enhance services. The Tribe's Early Head Start program is expected to join the partnership once schedules are worked out. Child Care staff are already being trained on Early Head Start and they will start serving Early Head Start children as soon as the modified MOA is in place. The Oglala Sioux Tribe's Special Education Department has offered to help the partnership identify children with special needs, develop Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), and provide specialized services. The partners have agreed to this proposal and are in the process of incorporating this agency into the MOA as well.
Lessons Learned:Another key is to ensure that expectations are clearly laid out in advance. In this project, all three partners have worked hard to adhere to their agreements so that no partner feels "cheated." Keeping the commitments after the momentum dies down is an ongoing struggle.
Follow-through and consistency across programs are of the utmost importance. In this case, each partner organization had to learn to factor the needs of the other organizations into its day-to-day processes and decision-making, particularly during staffing shortages and other difficult situations.
Ongoing and consistent communication is crucial to a successful collaboration. For this partnership, the preferred method of ongoing communication is a regular schedule of weekly meetings at which all partners must participate. When issues such as scheduling difficulties arise, the problems are solved through these weekly meetings.
One way to lay the groundwork for successful partnerships is to establish yourself as a reputable person who follows through on agreements. Prior to taking the position as Acting Director of the Child Care and Development Program, Ms. Jack was the Oglala Sioux Tribe's Youth Coordinator for 3 years. In this capacity, she occasionally worked with both the Boys & Girls Club and Head Start. The trusting relationships that she developed with them in her previous role helped her build a partnership with them once she began working in Child Care.
Contact Information:Phone:
(605) 867-5172
Fax: (605) 867-1774
Email: pigeon_jack@hotmail.com
| NOTE: If you have information about an Effective Program Strategy in your Tribal community that you would like to share, please contact the Tribal Child Care Technical Assistance Center (TriTAC) at TriTAC@namsinc.org |
Return to Effective Program Strategies
