Effective partnering with child care and training providers is critical to SWFI success. Here we highlight just one example of how SWFI grantees are developing and maintaining effective partnerships with child care partners. We also highlight several helpful resources on effective partnering.
Moore Community House develops and maintains partnerships with a number of child care providers. They have a child care manager visit all licensed child care centers to develop partnerships and enter into memoranda of understanding (MOU). Moore Community House has developed an MOU template for this purpose. Once initial relationships are established, the child care manager regularly visits child care partners to be an ongoing resource to help them to support SWFI participants.
Moore Community has developed A Practical Guide to Including Child Care as a Work Support in Job Training Programs, now posted on the CoP (please note that this resourse is not specific to SWFI programs and is meant to be a resource guide). This resource describes key steps for programs to follow when integrating job training and child care services, including:
- Step One: Recruit moms of young children
- Step Two: Gather information on licensed child care centers in your area
- Step Three: Share consumer information with your participating parents to help them choose child care services
- Step Four: Identify financial assistance to help moms pay child care fees
- Step Five: Employ a child care case manager to handle the child care support services component
- Step Six: Develop a formal agreement with your participants and participating child care providers
- Step Seven: Remember! Your job training participant is also a mom
In addition to Moore’s guide, several other resources have been posted on the CoP to help SWFI grantees develop effective partnerships between job training and child care providers. These include:
- A Child Care Promising Practices Brief which describes the range of ways that SWFI grantees are meeting participants’ child care needs.
- The SWFI child care systems worksheet which helps grantees delineate their participants child care needs and resources available to meet those needs, so that grantees can identify and fill gaps in their child care systems.
- A detailed toolkit developed for nonprofit organizations on how to strengthen partnerships.
- A checklist of key steps to implement in building the capacity of your organizations’ partnerships.
- A Forbes magazine article on The 12 Habits of Highly Collaborative Organizations.
Moore Community has developed A Practical Guide to Including Child Care as a Work Support in Job Training Programs, now posted on the CoP (please note that this resourse is not specific to SWFI programs and is meant to be a resource guide). This resource describes key steps for programs to follow when integrating job training and child care services, including:
- Step One: Recruit moms of young children
- Step Two: Gather information on licensed child care centers in your area
- Step Three: Share consumer information with your participating parents to help them choose child care services
- Step Four: Identify financial assistance to help moms pay child care fees
- Step Five: Employ a child care case manager to handle the child care support services component
- Step Six: Develop a formal agreement with your participants and participating child care providers
- Step Seven: Remember! Your job training participant is also a mom
In addition to Moore’s guide, several other resources have been posted on the CoP to help SWFI grantees develop effective partnerships between job training and child care providers. These include:
- A Child Care Promising Practices Brief which describes the range of ways that SWFI grantees are meeting participants’ child care needs.
- The SWFI child care systems worksheet which helps grantees delineate their participants child care needs and resources available to meet those needs, so that grantees can identify and fill gaps in their child care systems.
- A detailed toolkit developed for nonprofit organizations on how to strengthen partnerships.
- A checklist of key steps to implement in building the capacity of your organizations’ partnerships.
- A Forbes magazine article on The 12 Habits of Highly Collaborative Organizations.
