Missouri's early childhood programs are in the transition stage of combining into one Office of Childhood, scheduled to launch Aug. 28.
The new office, located on the first floor of the Jefferson State Office Building in Jefferson City, will consolidate nearly all of the state's early childhood programs related to child care, home visiting, early learning and early intervention across the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of Health and Senior Services, and Department of Social Services.
The purpose of consolidating the programs is to provide a more streamlined approach to early childhood programs in Missouri to allow people to better find the services they need and to allow program coordinators to better work together to accomplish their goals, said Office of Childhood Assistant Commissioner Pam Thomas, who presented an update on the Office of Childhood at the Missouri State Board of Education meeting Tuesday.
Office of Childhood leaders have completed the planning phase of launching the new office and are now in the transition stage.
The office will have about 145 employees. A few DSS employees have already moved into the office, and all Office of Childhood employees who work in Jefferson City will continue to transition into that space over the next six to eight weeks, Thomas said Tuesday.
The transition priorities are to maintain essential services; maximize limited resources; strengthen partnerships between public and private programs; and focus on the safety, health and education of children.
The office has 10 transition teams: office design and operations, communications, human resources, legal, data systems, technology, facilities, budget, purchasing and accounting.
Much of the transition work is centered around three areas: structure (how decisions are made), processes (how the work gets done) and people (how they work together), Thomas said.
"This is really hard work," Thomas said. "We are asking them to change where they work and how to think about work and not just to get outside of the box, but to get outside of the building."
Office leaders are meeting with stakeholders, including employees who will be in the Office of Childhood, to discuss how to improve the current programs and to create an organization chart that outlines the roles, responsibilities and relationships between all Office of Childhood employees.
They are having in-depth conversations with program leaders in all three state agencies to plan the processes they will use for the Office of Childhood, Thomas said.
In March and April, office leaders received feedback from a series of 16 listening sessions where they interviewed more than 150 providers - such as Parents as Teachers, child care, and home visitor programs - in 11 locations throughout Missouri.
The conversations resulted in 61 pages of suggestions. Based on this feedback, office leaders identified several improvements to make. Some changes will be made this summer; others will be made over the next year or so, Thomas said. The top three topics of conversation were child care subsidy, training and communication.
For child care subsidy, the most common suggestions were reducing paper and manual processes, creating a directory for state contacts, cross training staff to answer general questions, and hosting regular meetings to keep providers informed.
The most common suggestions for training and professional development were improving the quality of training and connecting training to school readiness.
Common communication recommendations were using plain language that is easy to understand and providing regular updates - especially before, during and after policy changes. For example, providing a chart on how policy changes will affect each employee's practices.
Last week, about 10 Office of Childhood leaders began a six-week leadership development program to learn about communication strategies, behavior assessments, implementing change in an organization, analyzing and improving performance, and how to know if they're being effective as a leader and in the work they're doing.
Every Office of Childhood program is also cross-training across each program and learning how to better work together and be more effective in their work.
The Office of Childhood's objectives are to identify what children and families need, provide high-quality services and evaluate the work the employees are doing "to ensure positive outcomes," Thomas said.
"These discussions with providers and employees have helped us determine that main objective for what we do in the new office - and that is we do what's best for children," Thomas said. "We want them to be safe, we want them to be healthy, we want them to have access to high-quality learning opportunities, and most of all, we want them to be ready for school."