Incorporating Inclusive Community Engagement Frameworks into Expanded Data Strategies

In a new report, Alycia Hardy and Alyssa Fortner detail how the current Child Care and Early Education (CCEE) system and the data strategies used to shape it are often far removed from equitable community engagement practices. They propose a set of recommendations for strategies to expand data processes through equitable community engagement.

The influx of federal relief dollars to child care programs in response to the impact of the pandemic on the sector provides an enormous opportunity to begin to do things differently. To implement strategies that truly identify and fully address the wide spread inequities in the sector—so we can build back better—researchers, administrators, policy analyst, and policymakers must expand data strategies beyond disaggregating outcomes by race/ethnicity.

While data processes are powerful tools used by researchers and policymakers to directly inform key policy decisions in CCEE, they were created within the systems, institutions, and structures that have been shaped by the historic impacts of white supremacy culture and systemic racism. Therefore, it won’t be enough to simply expand data processes without addressing the limited engagement with directly impacted communities. And specifically, how communities of color—who have the knowledge and expertise to identify harmful practices rooted in systemic racism and co-create actionable restorative solutions to address those harms—are often disconnected from community engagement and decision making.

This report outlines three important recommendations with community engagement frameworks:
- Integrate data across state agencies to better understand and meet community needs and create aligned CCEE resources. 
- Use data to physically map resources through spatial analyses to gauge and increase equitable access to appropriate resources. 
- Make data accessible, usable, and inclusive for practitioners, families, and advocates, not just researchers, policy analysts, and policymakers. 

Read the report here: [link removed]
Read the summary here: [link removed]

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