Elevating Family Voices: How ECTA and DaSy Technical Assistance Supports State Innovations for Equitable Family Input

The Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center and the Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy) collaborated to help state early intervention programs improve the quality and representativeness of their family data and use the data to advance equity. Stories from two states highlight the support that ECTA and/or DaSy can provide to Part C and Part B 619 programs seeking to improve their system, service implementation, and child and family outcomes.

An Invitation to Improve Family Outcomes

State early intervention agencies received intensive TA to improve and use data from surveys of participating families. This TA supported states to make systemic changes focused on advancing equity in their programs.

Over two years, ECTA-DaSy TA teams supported a cohort of Part C state agencies to improve family outcomes through collaborative and sustainable systemic change focused on ensuring that all families are served and voices are heard.* The TA focused on supporting states to improve the quality of data collected from families participating in early intervention and to use these data to improve services and supports. TA teams provided a combination of cross-state and state-specific activities including:

  • self-assessment exercises to identify the changes needed;
  • state-specific action plans to provide a road map to system improvement; and
  • ongoing data collection to monitor and evaluate progress.

Learn more by reading the full story: Elevating Family Voices: How ECTA and DaSy Technical Assistance Supports State Innovations for Equitable Family Input.

 

* Advancing equity in early intervention services and outcomes requires attention to interpersonal relationships among families, children, and professionals at the core of early intervention practices, as well as systemic factors including uneven distribution of privilege and power inherent in public systems nationally (NAEYC position statement on Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education).

 

Published May 2024.