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Child Welfare and Early Childhood Facilitated Peer Learning Teams

Purpose

This peer learning community brings together state and local leaders to strengthen collaboration between child welfare and early childhood systems so that young children (ages 0–5) in foster care or receiving child welfare prevention services can access stable, high-quality early care and education (ECE). Building on years of field-building work, this initiative moves beyond awareness to practical implementation, supporting teams already working to improve systems—and ready to accelerate change.

From May through October 2026, participants will engage in a collaborative learning experience that combines facilitated peer learning sessions with supported consultation and targeted technical assistance. Throughout the process, participants will have ongoing opportunities to problem-solve together, test new ideas, and receive peer feedback between sessions, helping to strengthen implementation and shared learning over time.

Who is Participating?

Fourteen teams of “doers,” “designers,” and “decision-shapers” representing a rare cross-section of the field, including:

  • State and local child welfare and early learning leaders from Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Washington, and Wisconsin.
  • National system-change experts, including Safe Babies at ZERO TO THREE.
  • Children’s Home Society of America (CHSA) teams. CHSA is a membership organization of some of the longest-standing foster care agencies and also offers an array of other family-supporting programs.
  • Research and policy partners, including Chapin Hall and Brightpoint, leading the federally funded Illinois Early Learning Access Project.
    Leaders from early learning agencies, Help Me Grow, prevention and early intervention programs, and public policy organizations.

Participants are not starting from scratch; they are already operating concrete initiatives and seeking a structured space to strengthen, align, and scale their work.

What Teams Are Working On

Teams come with clearly defined, solvable challenges that require cross-system solutions, including:

  • Limited trauma-informed capacity among ECE providers.
  • Weak or inconsistent referral pathways from child welfare to ECE.
  • Delays and gaps related to child care subsidies and vouchers.
  • Misaligned eligibility rules across funding streams
  • Barriers faced by kinship caregivers, such as transportation, employment-linked eligibility, and stigma

What Makes This Learning Community Different

  • Implementation-focused: Teams design, test, and refine real practice and policy changes during the series.
  • Peer-driven: Structured peer exchange surfaces lessons from states already experimenting with new approaches.
  • Cross-sector by design: Child welfare, early learning, research, and policy leaders work together at the same table.
  • Grounded in proven models, including: Early Childhood Navigators, Safe Babies/ Early Childhood Courts, and research-practice partnerships.

Why This Matters

Timely access to stable, high-quality early care and education can dramatically alter life trajectories for young children involved in child welfare. By investing in a cohort that already holds key levers of policy, funding, and practice, this learning community aims to produce concrete, scalable solutions that benefit both participating jurisdictions and the broader national field.

What Participants Will Accomplish

By the end of the learning community, participants will:

  • Strengthen cross-system collaboration through concrete strategies (e.g., shared referral protocols, joint staffing).
  • Identify and plan one actionable practice, policy, or program change to improve ECE access and stability.
  • Identify effective models and sustainable funding or policy levers to support scale.
  • Build durable cross-state and cross-role relationships to support continued learning and improvement.