To truly shift power and unleash parent wisdom, states and communities must make space for and fully support parent participation in policy and advocacy.
From May 2021 to June 2022, five state teams (Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas and Washington) set out to identify policy and advocacy priorities to increase equitable access to Early Head Start and Head Start, placing special emphasis on partnering with families and promoting equity.
Over the course of this work, each state worked to develop their own approach to engaging parents, reflecting different state contexts and different levels of prior project engagement.
This paper highlights some of the experiences and lessons learned from the five states as they worked to develop sustainable parent partnership models with shared power and reexamine methods of early childhood advocacy with a more intentional equity lens.
Learn more about the state and national partners in the project here.
