Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities - Impact Case Study

Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership Impact Case Study

Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities

Deepening connections between children’s services and communities Participants:

Leanne Amoore (Left)

Educational Leader Resource Officer, Corangamite Shire Family Day Care Service

Christine Dewhurst (Right)

Coordinator, Corangamite Shire Family Day Care Service

Bastow | Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities

A family day care service in regional Victoria has developed deeper connections with their families and the local community since its coordinator and another team member completed Bastow’s Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities course delivered by Dr Anne Kennedy and Lynn Turner from Community Child Care Association.

Being geographically separated from their educators and their families is a continual challenge facing the coordination team at Corangamite Shire’s Family Day Care Service. So when Coordinator, Christine Dewhurst, read about the Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities course, she knew it was the perfect opportunity to explore fresh approaches to overcoming this perennial problem. Christine invited the service’s Educational Leader Resource Officer, Leanne Amoore, to join her on the course so they could work together to strengthen the coordination unit’s relationships with families.

‘Distance is our biggest challenge – we often don’t get to meet families because our enrolment is done over the phone and through each educator,’ explains Leanne.

‘Sometimes, I’ll meet a parent when I’m visiting one of our educators, which is lovely. Other than that, a parent is often just a voice at the other end of the phone.’

Most of the day care service’s 25 educators are scattered across the breadth of the shire, which stretches from Colac to Warrnambool in southwest Victoria, with a small number based in a neighbouring shire. The service is headquartered in Camperdown and many educators are located over an hour’s drive from the central office.

According to Christine, engaging with families in a meaningful way is one of the most difficult aspects of early childhood education and care.

‘The parents put their children into care so they can go to work,’ she explains. ‘They don’t necessarily have time during the day for closer collaboration with their early childhood providers.’

Christine hoped the course, which is designed for early childhood professionals, would expose herself and Leanne to new ideas and practical examples of effective client engagement across a wide variety of early childhood services. She wasn’t disappointed. Course participants ranged from people working in kindergartens, long day care and out of school hours care to inclusion support groups.

Christine and Leanne’s collective learning, and the workplace projects they each completed during the course, have resulted in individual leadership growth, better team morale, improvements in the quality of services being delivered and stronger connections with over 150 of their families and the local community.

Practical outcomes include a growing and engaged community on Facebook, improved planning sessions with educators and greater insights into the needs and perspectives of their families.

From reticence to revelation Leanne admits she initially felt apprehensive when Christine suggested they both enrol for the Bastow course.

A country girl who rarely visits Melbourne, Leanne baulked at the idea of travelling there for professional development.

However, her wariness quickly turned to inspiration and enthusiasm once the course began.

‘This course was one of the most engaging things I’ve ever attended in my 15 years working in children’s services. I came back from every session with knowledge and new ideas I could apply in my work and share with our team of educators.’

Leanne Amoore

Pictured: Leanne with child at Corangamite Shire Family Day Care Service

Completing the course did more than improve Leanne’s knowledge about engaging with families and establishing partnerships – it also increased her confidence and maturity as a leader.

‘There was a ‘Wow!’ moment during the training that I now use as a continual reminder to myself,’ says Leanne.

‘It was about the importance of not leading with the solution and instead leading through enquiry. I’m a really helpful sort of person and I’ve always had the attitude of ‘I can fix it for you’; I was always finding the solutions for everybody,’ she explains.

‘It’s so easy to step in and give people the answer, rather than stepping back, asking the right questions and helping them come up with the solutions for themselves.’

Leanne says the Bastow course gave her the confidence to be less prescriptive in how she leads. As a result, her colleagues are taking more ownership and feeling more motivated about their work.

She has also adopted flexible working hours so she can meet with educators outside normal office hours.

Previously, she only met with educators during daytime visits, while they were caring for children. Now, Leanne opens the learning resource room one evening each fortnight, so educators can have quality time with her and also connect with each other. She was also instrumental in reinvigorating a regional family day care educational leaders group, which meets quarterly.

‘I’ve gained so much personally from doing the course, as well as being able to dramatically improve our connections with community and families,’ says Leanne. ‘It’s really been a double or triple whammy for me.’

Bastow | Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities

A learning experience that keeps on growing

Engaging through a vibrant online community

Christine says the course generated enormous personal and professional growth in Leanne.

Leanne’s workplace project was to establish an online Facebook community for Corangamite Family Day Care.

‘There are so many things she is much more confident about now, especially in regard to putting forward and implementing new ideas,’ says Christine.

‘We’d talked about the idea quite a bit in the 12 months leading up to the course, but had never taken it any further,’ she says. ‘The course opened up the opportunity to finally make it happen – I was really excited.’

‘Attending the course with Leanne made it more alive for me on a daily basis, because I could talk with her about what we were learning – we both still constantly reflect on the experience,’ she adds.

The women’s shared learning experience has made them more open to discussing a wider range of issues with educators, and team morale has increased as a result.

Other changes are improving educators’ confidence and abilities and therefore raising the standard of educational care. ‘Any changes we make with the educators naturally flow onto the children,’ Christine explains.

The service has also joined Bastow’s Polycom network and attends Twilight seminar events remotely. The events serve as excellent networking opportunities, with educators and people from other work groups and organisations invited to the service’s headquarters to watch the evening seminars.

‘Bastow’s courses and events are so good,’ says Christine. ‘They are so accessible, and provide excellent exposure for people who may not otherwise have access to key professionals and influencers who have a huge amount of knowledge and impact in our field.’

She started the project with limited social media experience; the course facilitators guided her along the path to making the Facebook page a reality. She investigated the council’s communication and social media policies, researched Facebook pages operated by similar organisations and honed her social media skills. Leanne initially needed to convince council’s senior management about the benefits of being on Facebook and having an unrestricted page that accepts external posts.

‘We needed our Facebook page to be engaging, practical and meaningful – for us and for the community,’ she explains. ‘And it was clear from my research that if there are restrictions and posts have to be pre-approved, it’s like you’re policing what people can share. Keeping access unrestricted means people are more likely to engage with us.’

The resulting Facebook community has exceeded expectations and its following continues to grow.

Pictured: Sophie Katona, Early Childhood Educator, with child

‘The engagement through Facebook continues to astound me – it’s like the roots of a tree how it branches out,’ says Leanne. ‘My initial goal was to get 50 likes and we’re already up to 230 – and some posts have reached up to 3000 people.’

Leanne says the service receives enquiries via Facebook from people wanting to become educators, from families needing care and from community groups asking if they can post on the page. Posts are regularly shared on the Facebook pages of local health services, community notice boards and other organisations.

‘It’s built a real social profile for us and created an online community that brings people together from totally different ends of the shire,’ she says.

Christine says the Facebook page has increased intrinsic collaboration between the coordination unit and parents.

‘It’s now embedded, and that’s what we most want,’ she explains. ‘When we’re being assessed by the ratings and assessment authority, they stress the importance of embedding improvements across our service, and our online community is a great example of that.’

While Leanne finds the success of the Facebook page personally satisfying, her greatest satisfaction comes from the deepening connections between the service and its community.

‘The profile of our day care service is growing and there’s an air of optimism – that’s all the recognition I need,’ says Leanne.

Bastow | Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities

Eliciting meaningful feedback Christine’s workplace project focussed on improving the quality and level of feedback to the day care service’s annual client survey. The previous survey was sent to 150 families with their childcare invoices, but only five responses came back.

‘The next questionnaire I issued was very different,’ says Christine. ‘The presentations we heard during the course made me reflect on the best questions to put to the community and the most effective ways to gather their feedback.’

The survey was personally handed to parents by each educator, which immediately increased everyone’s buy in. Promoting the survey on the new Facebook page also significantly boosted the response rate. ‘We received 66 responses to the survey I did for my Bastow project, which was a massive improvement,’ Christine says.

The larger response yielded many important insights, including greater understanding of what parents most want to feel reassured about.

‘Early childhood professionals naturally believe educating children is the most important thing,’ she says. ‘However, parents told us what they value most is knowing that their children are safe and happy. Now we know it’s important to change how we communicate, so we are continually letting parents know that their children are learning – and safe and happy.’

‘The profile of our day care service is growing and there’s an air of optimism – that’s all the recognition I need.’

Pictured: Child at Corangamite Shire Family Day Care Service

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