Community Building Resources for Children and Families: Reimagining a Community-Centered Framework for Comprehensive Services

• In Event: Learning With Home-Based Child Care Providers and Parents Through Participatory Research Approaches

Abstract

Introduction
Local communities have numerous formal and informal assets for supporting healthy children and families. Yet these community resources are often obscured in mainstream definitions of comprehensive services (CS) and may be less accessible in communities of Color that face overlapping oppressions and barriers caused by systemic racism, sexism, classism, and disinvestment (Iruka, 2020). Early care and education (ECE) programs such as Head Start and Early Head Start are theorized to holistically support families via CS, but CS approaches in home-based child care contexts are understudied and potentially underestimated (Bromer et al., 2021; Orland et al., 2022; Reid et al., 2020; Turner, 2020).

This study employs a participatory research approach to examine access to CS in four distinct communities in the United States, including the ways family child care (FCC) professionals support families’ access. This paper articulates a reconceptualized vision for CSS that honors the role of the community in supporting children and families’ holistic well-being.

Research Questions and Hypotheses
The research design for the study was intentionally broad to allow for specification in collaboration with four local Community Advisory Boards (CABs) throughout the entire process. To redefine CS in a meaningful way for each community and guide the remainder of the project, we first asked: How do local, FCC-centered communities conceptualize the resources that help children and families thrive? We attempted to de-center pre-existing hypotheses to allow our CABs to guide the work.

Participants and Method
Focus group style data were collected with 12 FCC professionals and parents in three CABs (six who were Black or African American, five who were Latina, and one who was European-American). Over four meetings, each CAB defined goals for thriving children and families, mapped resources in their communities, identified gaps and barriers, and renamed the resulting concepts (Community Building Supports, Community Resources, and Recursos de Construcción de Comunitarios). These local concepts, triangulated with evidence from a literature review about CS in FCC and secondary analyses of interviews from the National Study of Family Child Care Networks (Bromer et al., 2019), were combined to create a preliminary Community Building Resources (CBR) framework. During the presentation, the framework will include findings from a fourth CAB and data collection with the broader communities.

Results
The CBR framework includes many of the categories that are commonly conceptualized as CS for children and families (e.g., physical/mental health, early intervention screenings, information about child development; financial, food, clothing, and housing resources; education, employment, and financial supports; legal and social services). Also included were several more community-oriented resources like youth activities/programs, safe play spaces, and transportation. Additionally, informal resource sharing and emotional supports from FCC professionals and parent networks (often cultivated by FCC professionals) emerged as communal aspects of CS.

The CBR framework expands the lens of comprehensive services beyond individual family “needs” to community resources. This reconceptualization may provide opportunities for more systemic supports for thriving children and families. Successes, challenges, and reflections from the participatory research process will also be discussed.

Group Authors

Facilitating Comprehensive Services in Family Child Care Project Community Advisory Boards

Authors

• Samantha Melvin, Erikson Institute

• Juliet Sara Bromer, Erikson Institute
  Presenting Author

• Crystasany Turner, Erikson Institute

• Jennifer P Baquedano, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and Erikson Institute