Stakeholder engagement in policy design: The case of Illinois’ Smart Start Workforce Grants (SSWG)

• In Event: State and Local Strategies for Supporting the Financial Well-Being of the Early Care and Education Workforce

Abstract

Background:

In the largely private United States childcare market, providers must charge prices that are too high for most working parents, but too low to sustain quality programming and good jobs for childcare providers. Public investment through vouchers is the primary mechanism to address this market failure. Vouchers successfully make care more affordable for families who receive them; however, they are insufficient to address chronically low wages, high turnover, and low-quality programming characterizing much of the childcare industry (Davis & Sojourner, 2021). To supplement vouchers, Illinois launched the Smart Start Workforce Grants (SSWG) in 2024. SSWG is a supply-side intervention designed to attract childcare workers to the industry, improve compensation, and reduce staff turnover through a dedicated funding stream conditional on wage increases to the childcare workforce.  

After announcing the SSWG goals, Illinois aimed to include stakeholder participation in policy design. To engage stakeholders, Illinois created an Ad Hoc Advisory Committee comprised of providers, advocates, academics, and policy administrators statewide. Drawing from literature on stakeholder engagement (e.g., Hadley et al., 2024), this paper presents findings from an evaluation of SSWG’s approach to participatory policy design to elucidate whether and how the stakeholder engagement approach influenced decision-making processes and the SSWG policy itself.  

Approach and Methods:

We conducted two years of fieldwork, with attendance in 20 SSWG Ad Hoc meetings, meeting PowerPoints, ethnographic field notes, stakeholder websites and other public documents, and interviews with 20 stakeholders (transcribed and content coded).

We first analyze state materials announcing the purpose of the establishment of the SSWG Ad Hoc Advisory Committee to clarify the state’s objectives for stakeholder engagement and participatory processes. We then put forth a set of expectations based on these top-down objectives that motivate our analysis. Next, using the Ad Hoc Committee meetings as a primary context of analysis, we aim to understand the factors that shaped stakeholder engagement and the representation of member voice over time. We attend to process factors that influence shifts in decision-making and we examine how diverse stakeholder input is represented in state design choices. From stakeholder interviews, we examine stakeholders’ understandings of their role in the process, their trust in the process, and their assessment of how their input is represented in the final SSWG policy design.  

Results:

Preliminary findings suggest that the final policy design is generally consistent with ad hoc members’ expectations and reflective of input from diverse stakeholders. The ad hoc meetings focused on key issues that stakeholders raised. Meetings were used to collect feedback of concern to state administrators, who ultimately had decision-making power over policy design. Participants report understanding the advisory group as just that – advisory to the state decision makers, not a body with decision-making power itself. Stakeholders’ concerns focused primarily on SSWG eligibility requirements and budget tradeoffs. Findings highlight unique challenges reaching rural providers, home-based providers, and centers with multiple funding streams.

Policy Implications:

The paper will consider implications for different stakeholder engagement models in light of study findings. 

Author

• Julia Henly, The University of Chicago
  Presenting Author