Family Voice & Leadership: How to Elevate Family Voice in Community Systems Building

It is essential to involve families in the building and improvement of the system itself. This means inviting families to co-create programs, policies, and systems as equal partners, working side-by-side with public sector leaders and educators. At Start Early, we believe the best way to do this is by teaching systems leaders and families how to work together using the principles of human-centered design (HCD). HCD helps systems consciously create programs that replenish relationships with families and communities, rather than extract a toll from them. One strategy that leverages human-centered design to build comprehensive, equitable, birth to five systems is Family Centered Design from Start Early’s Innovation Lab. Through the Family Centered Design experience, families gain the skills and confidence to make positive changes in the policies, services and systems that affect their lives, and systems leaders gain insight into the families’ lived experience, needs and behaviors.

Finally, system leaders and advocates must deploy strategies to intentionally partner with families – going beyond conducting surveys, focus groups, or interviews to ensure strong family influence and power in decision-making. Examples include forming a parent committee to influence policy and programming decisions, and/or including family leaders on a team to support implementation. And to enable family leadership in these efforts, supports such as stipends, travel reimbursement, and interpretative services should be provided.

Need extra support with promoting family leadership and effectively partnering with families? Start Early Consulting invites systems leaders to leverage our consultants as strategic advisors with this and other work toward a more equitable early childhood system. Please reach out to us at Consulting@StartEarly.org to learn more.