Moving at the Speed of TrustLessons for Transforming Early Childhood Systems
For the past three years, I’ve observed a persistent tension in government agencies: how to hold providers accountable while fostering the trust essential to actually improving outcomes for children and families. Since 2023, I have supported our efforts to transform the way our government and other providers deliver high-quality, affordable early childhood services in the United States. Our work across diverse communities mobilizes cross-sector collaborators, including families, caregivers, communities, providers, and policymakers, giving my colleagues and me a unique view into what it takes to manage change and implement new initiatives in early childhood education and other social services.
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, we’ve identified four principles, grounded in practical experience and frameworks for change management and collective impact, that consistently support more responsive, equitable, and effective design and implementation across contexts.
Below, we apply these principles across our work with early childhood partners in South Carolina, Connecticut, and Washington.
1. Learn from Peers and Broaden Your Perspective
Conduct peer learning and landscape analyses, and be open to learning from different sources and contexts. A city in the Pacific Northwest can learn from a city in Mississippi managing the same challenges, and vice versa.
- Spartanburg, SC: As part of our work advising Spartanburg Academic Movement on the design of a Children’s Cabinet, we consulted with five established children’s cabinets nationwide. Comparing and contrasting peer cabinets with Spartanburg’s context helped us develop a perspective and rationale for our cabinet design recommendations.
2. Prioritize Relationships and Community Voice Before Deliverables
Focus on transparency, regular and varied touchpoints, and shared ownership with a variety of stakeholders. Without this foundation of trust and collaboration, initiatives won’t land or last as intended, and you will miss critical information to inform your design.
- Connecticut: Third Sector encouraged the Office of Early Childhood (OEC) to increase touchpoints with parents during program design, modeling this by facilitating conversations between OEC staff and Parent Cabinet members. Despite OEC staff concerns about potential timeline changes, we prompted earlier, more frequent, and transparent touchpoints. As a result, parents are included as co-creators on key decisions. To achieve inclusive decisionmaking, it is better to be transparent than perfect.
3. Align on Shared Goals and Principles
These serve as the “north star” for your process and enable consistent messaging and a clear rationale when adaptation is inevitably necessary.
- Seattle, WA: We developed shared ownership and goals within the Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) by engaging staff at all levels through recurring workgroups. This enabled the DEEL team to boldly pursue new approaches to their work with providers and the community, emphasizing continuous quality improvement and provider solvency for shared accountability. Shared goals underscored DEEL leadership’s role in establishing the conditions for success, such as clear decisionmaking roles and allocated time for implementation.
4. Take a Phased Approach
Move at the speed of trust with phased, adaptable implementation.
- Spartanburg, SC: Peer and community learnings informed the decision to take a phased approach to Cabinet implementation, starting at half capacity and increasing to the full recommended number of seats. This strategy acknowledges the unknowns of launching a new body and reduces the risk of later downsizing, allowing the Cabinet to learn, grow, and build trust among partners and families over time.
- Seattle, WA: Building on shared goals, community engagement, DEEL workgroups, and a national landscape analysis of peer jurisdictions, we recommended that the Seattle Preschool Program (SPP) shift to multi-year contracts with reduced payment points and refined quality and equity measures co-created with providers. Phased implementation ensures relationships and communication with providers are the foundation before larger changes are phased in over the next 2+ years. This approach also ensures DEEL has time to adapt to new processes and continue fostering internal alignment.
These unique projects demonstrate that these four key principles–learning from peers of all kinds, prioritizing relationships over deliverables, aligning on shared goals, and taking a phased approach–are essential to successfully designing and implementing new initiatives while navigating changing local and national landscapes.
As the early childhood field makes intentional shifts toward more inclusive practices like participatory governance, these principles are more important than ever to help communities implement them effectively. Without prioritizing these principles, communities working to build trust and imagine new futures for children and families risk recreating the same barriers to access and community collaboration they’re trying to solve.
To learn more about Third Sector and how we can support your goals, please reach out to Kesha Lee (klee@thirdsectorcap.org) or Dre Szegedy-Maszak (dszegedymaszak@thirdsectorcap.org).
