It Takes a Village Community Partnership: How It's Helped This Mother

The professional development seminar for my fields this semester has been to attend several meetings of "It Takes A Village Community Partnership." I have attended several meetings and hope to continue after graduation, because I have been very impressed by the goals they are trying to accomplish and have learned a lot from those in attendance (the agencies in attendance are varied. Originally, during the first two years of ITAV meetings, there were often 50 people at the table from the Police Department to housing agencies.) They have all given me insight as to their objectives.

I have learned much about the group since my first meeting with them back in March. The group has been meeting for two years. They continue to enlist many community agencies as they try to create a forum in which they all could meet, share ideas, and create an avenue of communication between all partner agencies. The rationale behind this is to eliminate the duplication of services that one agency may already be working on.

Generally, during the initial stage of each meeting, the facilitator identifies which agencies are in attendance and introduces new faces and agencies, as they become part of the meetings. Continuous ideas for recruitment remain part of the partnership's goal, as ITAV identifies which agencies we think would be beneficial to our goal and solicits those agencies. ITAV invites such agencies to attend its meetings and become part of the partnership.

Currently the project that ITAV is working on is focused on developmental screenings done to 3-5 years old in the Woonsocket community. They have noted that typically routine screenings normally performed by pediatricians are not always being done. Pediatricians in clinics are often overly scheduled, and follow-ups don't always occur to make sure that screenings are being checked.

The City of Woonsocket's Education Department generally does a pretty good job of screening kids from kindergarten to transition through the city's Child Outreach Program. (Child Outreach tries to find 3 year olds in the city that can benefit from services to better prepare them for kindergarten.) However, Child Outreach doesn't always find the city's 3 year olds because they may or may not have school aged siblings. As a result, ITAV is looking for a new way to identify more than the "1%" of 3 year olds the school department believes is out there. (The school department relies solely on Census figures to identify the 3 year olds residing in the communities, and this is not always accurate.)

The Woonsocket School Department believes the numbers are low, ("1%" of the 3-5 year old in the city). "It Takes A Village" knows that the numbers are much higher, because the agencies involved are the agencies that know about the many 3-5 year olds that reside in the city and does not solely rely on Census figures. ITAV reasons: that the Woonsocket School Department doesn't come in contact with many of the children this age because their population is primarily that of beginning school age kids.

Many of the children who will eventually need services by age 3 come from Spanish speaking families. This can make it difficult to communicate needs with the parent. If the family is primarily Spanish speaking at home, the child's speech suffers in terms of being able to communicate in English during kindergarten. True, there are ESL teachers in the system, by not enough to focus their attention on the language skills the child needs and the education they are receiving once they begin to enter the school system.

Because Head Start has many Spanish speaking families and is increasing, the Woonsocket School Department tends to refer such families to Head Start as a means of intervention. (Woonsocket currently has 4 ESL kindergartens) Head Start is designed to educate high-risk families with children who may have developmental difficulties; not to educate Spanish speaking children without the typical risks associated with their population. For example, Head Start will take a sexually abused, English speaking child before it takes a child without crisis who's only barrier is speaking Spanish. Opposite of what the education department's goals are, ITAV is not out for special education programs; it is out for social service programs.

After the first meetings of ITAV where we identified what it is we want to work on and who we can work with, the following meetings focused on plans we could take into action in order to bring the agencies together. Currently the idea is to get Landmark Medical Center involved. For example, our agencies want to be able to contact the pediatrician. By age 3, a child should be having vision, hearing, cognitive and motor skills testing. Our reasoning is that if the doctor refers a child to an ear, nose, and throat doctor, we hope that the child will be seen by a speech therapist as well. And, if the parent refuses services, we want to get them to sign a refusal. We want the pediatricians to go straight to diagnosis and start working on it.

ITAV also plans to talk to parent educators. The rationale behind this is to start with 3 year olds and work back! We will likely miss less of the children who will fall through the cracks later. Early Intervention is the agency that will likely keep track of these children. We do not want to leave any child hanging. By starting from 3 years old back and working from 3 years to 5, we will be closing the loops and getting them all prepared before they reach the school system.

Also, Head Start is in the process of hooking up with the Department of Human Services! (What I've learned here and think that is worth mentioning, is that if a family makes one dollar over being eligible for welfare benefits, this will make them ineligible for Head Start.) ITAV believes that the higher income families are the ones falling through the cracks!

Upon discussing issues with the school department, we are hoping to get a universal pre-K for ESL population who can then be screened. This would have to be community funded. Further, Head Start believes that there is a community need for Spanish Head Start. Head Start is in the process of using a Spanish screening tool. It would be beneficial if all the agencies have knowledge and use of universal Spanish speaking tools we could use to screen Spanish-speaking children.

What all the agencies do agree on is the need to develop an intact, all-encompassing referral system where agencies can work together more efficiently to avoid duplicate services and neglected ones. The referral system's rationale is that whomever gets the child first will keep abreast of the follow-ups.

Starting from the ground up, this community partnership has developed steps that it plans to take over the course of the summer to improve citywide communication and screenings. They are:

1. Develop cross-training opportunities between partner agencies

2. Develop a format and checklist for all providers and screeners in order to best coordinate care for the child

3. we will develop a release form

4. we will work on getting release form approved

5. In Aug/Sept we hope to have the first of cross-trainings begin before school starts.

I am happy to have chosen It Takes A village Community Partnership because it not only allowed me to sit in on the meetings and be involved in the discussions, but it has taught me, by being part of it all, what all the agencies do to help their clients. I have been given an insight to Woonsocket Head Start, to early intervention, and early start, family resources, Thundermist health associates, parents as teachers, and Woonsocket education department.

I have also learned what it is like to be part of such a committee. The steps a committee takes, how to develop an action plan and be guided by a timeline. I have been able to learn how to anticipate future service needs. I have been made aware of the need for mental health services for children, language services for children, the need for a universal preschool, and have learned about the barriers that are faced by these agencies as well as the public school departments.