State Scenarios: Personnel / Workforce
Consider this scenario...
Your state has provided statewide training and technical assistance through a contract with an agency for several years. You are pleased with the contractor's work and outcomes achieved by personnel in the field but you want to now focus on improving the inclusion of children with disabilities in programs across the state. You want your training and TA project to work more closely with other training efforts in the state. As a result, you would like both the planning and provision of training and TA to be cross-sector, which means partnering with other early care and education entities such as Head Start, state Pre-kindergarten and Child Care.
Sample Process:
1. Gathering Stakeholders for a Self-Assessment
Being generally familiar with the System Framework Self-Assessment as a means to target needed changes, you review the Guidance Document and decide to convene a group of relevant stakeholders to complete the Self-Assessment for the Personnel/Workforce Component. This will provide baseline information about what aspects of your Personnel/Workforce system are strong and what areas should be improved.
2. Completing the Self-Assessment
In reviewing the Personnel/Workforce Component, your stakeholder group decides to focus their analysis on Subcomponent 1: Leadership, Coordination and Sustainability.
As a result, the Self-Assessment determines that Quality Indicator PN1 contains the elements in need of improvement to respond to the challenge faced by your state. This will assist your state in establishing a cross-sector training and TA system to support inclusive practices statewide.
In completing the Self-Assessment, your stakeholder group identifies the level of implementation for each of the Elements of Quality under Quality Indicator PN1 along with supporting evidence.
3. Using the Self-Assessment Results for Improvement
Your team uses the results of the Self-Assessment to determine what needs to be improved to establish a cross-sector training and TA system. The information is used to help set priorities for your action planning and implementation.
Specifically, you determine that you are aware of existing initiatives related to implementing inclusive practices and have excellent connections with these key partners. You have had separate conversations with these individuals about developing cross-sector training and TA to support inclusive practices statewide, but these individuals have not come together to jointly discuss how to make this happen. You identify your first activity as forming a cross-sector leadership team. You also identify having this leadership team develop a mission and vision for this work, ensuring it aligns with your program's and your partners' missions and visions, align current policies across the existing initiatives to ensure successful implementation, and develop strategies on how to fund and implement the cross-sector training and TA system on inclusion.
4. Considering Links to Other Components
In summary, the System Framework and the Self-Assessment are tools you can use to identify areas of improvement to enhance your system of services.
ECTA recommends you complete the Self-Assessment for the entire Systems Framework. But you may decide to complete just the Personnel/Workforce Component, or a specific Subcomponent, but always consider how the System Framework Components interact with each other. Remember, the components are not stand-alone. Even though your challenge is related to Personnel/Workforce, other components may be impacted by your challenge as well (e.g. Finance, Governance).
5. Using TA Support
Don't hesitate to call on your TA providers for assistance in using the System Framework and Self-Assessment, including:
- Stakeholder selection and communication
- Stakeholder meeting facilitation
- Priority selection of activities to address improvement
- Action planning and implementation
- Evaluation of state efforts
Finally, use the information provided in Considerations for Implementing System Change to help guide implementation of your improvement plan activities to improve your Personnel/Workforce system.
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