Early childhood opportunities
“I had the pleasure of partnering with Ashley on a project that was important to both of us. Ashley is a focused driver of initiatives who gets things done. She is an exceptional project manager!”
Role
Project Lead, Design Research Lead
Team
5 Full-time staff, 4 fellows, including:
Doreen Thomann-Howe, Deputy Commissioner at City of New York, Department of Homeless Services
Jin Kim, Senior Advisor, Senior Advisor, Programs & Evaluation, NYC Opportunity
Sola Amusan, Senior Advisor, Programs & Evaluation, NYC Opportunity
Lindsey Cazessus, 2019-2020 Urban Fellow. NYC Opportunity
Partners
StakeholderS
Spoke to
9 Primary stakeholders
12 Agency interviews
1 Advocacy organization
1 Community based organization
33 Shelter Staff
SKILLS & SERVICES
Scoping and stakeholder alignment
Problem definition and framing
Research protocol
Qualitative 1:1 interviewing
Synthesis
Product prototyping
External communications
Personal Wins
Facilitating many leaders from different agencies in one room towards a design research initiative.
Writing an extensive research proposal that got approved through HRA and allowed us the ability to walk into and interview in family shelters.
Getting three agencies in the room together to talk about how they might update technology and improve their data sharing to get to stronger insights about families.
Beginning to archive personal experience in a privacy safe prototype that allowed us to look over the data and see trends
Project Details
In this work, I led a group through a 6 month review, in partnership with the leadership of Department of Homeless Services (DHS), Department of Education (DOE), and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), and enhanced by program experts to understand:
How might we address barriers to receiving existing programs and services for families with children aged birth to three in the shelter system to support their engagement in programs that promote the family's resilience and child's brain development throughout the shelter experience and during transitions?
BACKGROUND
Currently NYC has over 60,000 individuals residing in shelters each night. Three-quarters of those sleeping in shelters are members of a family, with over 24,000 children of which nearly half are under the age of six. In FY18, families with children spent an average of 438 days in homeless shelters. During the life cycle of a family’s placement within the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) there are a number of instances in which families can be better connected to opportunities that best meet their child’s developmental needs.
SCoping & Planning
initial planning
The Children’s Cabinet, an NYC Mayoral Office positioned to support the cross-collaboration of agencies who deliver children’s services across NYC, convened an early childhood taskforce to explore how to support families connecting to social services while in shelter.
Initially this stream of work focused on:
Understanding social services programs and benefit eligibility determinations for families experiencing homelessness
Exploring the cause for varying levels of parental interest and skepticism about services
Discovering whether social service referrals lead to delivered social services.
stakeholder workshops
I brought the taskforce together to understand:
Who was in the room
What agencies and programs they represented
What were their expertise to support the work
What they love outside of work
I developed a getting-to-know-eachother activity and developed nametag table tents that spoke to these needs. For some of these government agency leaders, this was the first time they were able to connect names and faces to those they had emailed for years!
stakeholder interviewing
After understanding who was in the room, the first step was to interview priority stakeholders. I developed interview guides and tracking documents.
Once speaking with these leaders, I understood that young children in families experiencing homelessness face greater health and social emotional challenges than their peers who do not experience homelessness. Furthermore, that it is important, particularly during the critical early years of brain development from birth to three years-old, to facilitate families’ access to the social services and benefits which can support children’s resilience and healthy development. From these discovery interviews, it became clear that we were best positioned to dig down specifically into early childhood programming.
Program Refining
There are 100+ early childhood programs offered across NYC government. My teammates and I collaborated to develop an encompassing document and refined program areas based on wide availability, referral pathway (focusing on those that did not come from referral based services), and delivery.
Problem defining
While it is known what programs in New York City are designed specifically for the development of children from birth to age three, it is still unknown what family homeless specific shelter policies, procedures, and/or tools may be needed in order to connect families in shelter to these programs effectively. Additionally, there is a need on the program administering side to understand what policies or procedures are in place to meet the needs of families in shelter.
Problem framing workshop
I created a workshop where we would collectively reflect on and refine a draft How Might We statement based on information collected during the stakeholder workshops and interviews.
I then led program leaders to consider which prioritized programs to focus on and gaps in understanding within those programs.
Problem (Re)Defining
From these workshops, we then developed this one pager as a communications tool when talking with Commissioners, Directors, Leaders, and others, about the project. This was shared to the taskforce and the larger Children’s Cabinet monthly meetings.
During this exploration we narrowed focus on how to improve EarlyLearn Childcare (ACS/DOE) and Early Intervention (DOHMH) programs service delivery for families living in shelter.
research
Research scoping
Now that the opportunity statement, programs, and inquiry areas were developed, I worked with Early Intervention and EarlyLearn Childcare program experts to bring in program data to support selection of shelters to research. I then worked with DHS to understand which family shelters had the highest rate of enrollment in the priority programs and which had the lowest enrollment rate. Below is a table which outlines shelter tier, location, sample size, and other selection criteria. From there, we identified shelters and began planning for outreach and in-person researtch.
research planning
Once we understood which shelters we wanted to speak to and had clearance from Department of Social Services (DSS), we planned our outreach calendar.
RESEARCH TRAINING
To get Senior Policy Advisors and Fellows ready to enter the field and do research, I developed a short guide to interviewing basics, roles, responsibilities, and key actions.
1:1 Interviews
We spoke with 11 Department of Homeless Services (DHS) family shelters and interviewed 30 direct care providers, case managers, and benefits directors about the challenges and opportunities when connecting families to early childhood programming.
After each interview, we quickly wrote our top 5 takeaways and discussed next steps.
Jin Kim writing quick “top-five-takeaways” from interviews in between shelters.
synthesis
provider Synthesis
I ran a first round of synthesis based on provider interviews. We developed themes and meta-tags based on this first round of synthesis. From here, I planned to refine interview guides for families before returning to the field.
COVID-19
Unfortunately, COVID-19 became a reality at this point in time. DHS asked that we postpone interviewing families in shelter until more was understood about the pandemic. I moved my post-it wall home and waited to find out what would happen next.
After a few weeks, we were told the project would be placed on hold in order to focus attention on pandemic response efforts.
Prototyping
Once I understood that we would not be able to continue this project in the way we had envisioned, I wanted to find a way to save our research findings for possible future use.
Lived Experience Database
During synthesis, we categorized themes and applied meta-tags to further refine sentiment within our thematic areas. Using this information, I created a de-identified Airtable that collected synthesis documentation in a relational database.
shareout & impact
While we were unable to complete an entire design process, we were able to develop initial findings and recommendations to share with the Children’s Cabinet and the First Deputy Mayor based on our interviews with shelter staff.
These findings supported policy and data sharing work including:
Providing universal access to certain programming based on housing status for families.
De-siloing data collection, sharing, and reporting across Early Intervention and Department of Homeless Services.
rising opportunity
This project had to be placed on indefinite hold once COVID-19 pandemic began, we have been unable to speak directly to families. There remains to be a gap in understanding for how families view, connect with, and receive supportive services for children aged 0-3 years old.
There are opportunities to universalize access to support for families who are experiencing houselessness.