Members of the Alliance’s peer learning community on the ECE workforce had a chance to learn how advocates from Child Care Aware of Washington (CCA) “flipped the script” by facilitating a process that gives early childhood educators the power to make decisions about the advocacy agenda and goals.
The meeting was facilitated by Jennifer Jennings-Shaffer of Odyssey Strategic Consulting, Melia LeCour of Becoming Justice, and Casey Osborn-Hinman, consultants who serve as CCA’s partners on this journey. (Download the PowerPoint slides here.)
Pre-Meeting Webinar
Before meeting participants arrived in Seattle, they joined a webinar that provided an overview of Liberatory Design, and the modes and mindsets that undergird the work that Child Care Aware of Washington did with early childhood educators.
Panel 1: Background and Context for the Creation of the Early Educator Design Team
The first panel introduced the rationale behind creating the Early Educator Design Team, a group of early childhood educators recruited to lead the development of policy priorities and strategies to address the ECE workforce compensation crisis. Why did Child Care Aware of Washington decide to invest in the time and energy to take a different approach? How did they use Liberatory Design practices to develop trust and build relationship and community with the educators?
Panel 2: Developing the Early Educator Policy Platform and Advancing the Access and Living Wage Proviso
One of the first work products developed by the Design Team was a policy platform that serves as an anchor for their work to reform the child care system in Washington State. They also advocated for a bill (proviso) that charged agency leaders to develop an implementation plan to expand access to child care in collaboration with those with lived experience. This panel discussed how the educators worked across differences, identified common challenges, and developed a collective vision. Child Care Aware staff shared the shifts in mindsets and practices they had to intentionally make to step back so the educators can lead.
Panel 3: Partnering with DCYF to Co-Design the Cost of Quality Care Rate Model
The Design Team made key recommendations about what a cost of care model for Washington State should include. This panel discussed the role that Child Care Aware played in supporting state agency leaders and the Design Team to navigate new ways of engaging with each other. It highlighted what it took to engage state agency leaders in this work – the importance of getting buy-in for the new approach, overcoming educators’ distrust and traditional power dynamics, being comfortable with tension, and being transparent about agency’s constraints.
Panel 4: Growing the Child Care for WA Campaign: Expansion and Mobilization
As the work moves into an advocacy phase in 2025, a broader group of advocacy organizations not steeped in Liberatory Design is now helping to advocate for the agenda and goals that the Design Team has developed. The panel discussed how to keep the spirit of Liberatory Design alive while adding more players to the work, ensuring the leadership and voice of Design Team members are still centered, the tension that comes from operating in a more traditional advocacy and policy environment, the adjustments the Design Team had to make, and the work to repair relationships when trust is broken.
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