Authentic Family & Community Engagement CoP: Part 2

Advocacy is empathy, compassion, and community at work. ― Janna Cachola

In June, The BUILD Initiative welcomed advocates from Connecticut and Texas to share how they partner with parents to co-design and lead community engagement towards shifting prenatal-to-three outcomes for children and families. Jayson-Ann Johnson and Talyn Cook from Bridgeport Prospers were joined by Amanda Cobb and Terry Wydick, Jr. of Help Me Grow/Help Me Thrive North Texas; we had a fantastic conversation and heard about their approaches to community leadership and power building.

While we were able to address several questions during the webinar, Jayson-Ann and Amanda offered to follow-up a few that weren’t answered.

Can you all speak a little more about compensation? Are participants compensated in ways other than monetarily? For example, are youth advocates in Bridgeport able to identify their time as “volunteer work” on their college apps?

• Yes! All of our advocates are able to list the work they do with us as part-time work or volunteer work if they desire. They are all paid as consultants and have responsibilities and skills they develop in their roles that they can list and speak to in an interview.
  Jayson-Ann Johnson, Bridgeport Prospers 
• Our Family Advisory Council for Help Me Grow and Help Me Thrive are compensated $25 per hour for their service. We do have a max number of hours they can claim for budget purposes. However, our members have the added benefit of building their own capacity by attending training, conferences, and other community events. Family members are able to network and connect with other family-serving agencies as well.
  Amanda Cobb, Help Me Grow/Help Me Thrive North Texas What types of professional development activities are parent leaders participating in?
• Parent leaders take part in various trainings, including and not limited to canvassing, implicit bias, cultural awareness, advocacy, and mental health first aid. We also share opportunities surrounding leadership fellowships and provide recommendations when applicable.
  Jayson-Ann Johnson, Bridgeport Prospers
• Our parent leaders are attending a variety of professional development. They have presented at and attended Help Me Grow’s National Forums. They have attended Brazelton’s National Fatherhood Forum and National Families Support Network Parent Advisory Committee Training to name some of the larger ones. They have also attended Parent Café and WowTalk trainings from Be Strong Families as well as TBRI (Trust- Based Relational Intervention Trainings). I share opportunities with them as they come across my email and sometimes members bring opportunities to the group to share.  Basically, if it is something that builds their capacity as parents and they have a plan to share it with group and other parents, we try our best to approve and compensate them for their time. Our family members also come to the table with a wealth of expertise, and they have created their own trainings to share with their group and with other parents.  We have had two trainings that spun off into larger community trainings and events.  One topic was Sickle Cell Awareness held in conjunction with a blood drive. Another topic was about Domestic Violence as one of our members is a survivor. Our group researched and shared the impact on children along with the member’s personal story.  They also researched local and national supports and created a flier to share with the community. This training was held again with our Provider Support and Training Subcommittee to share with our community partners.
  Amanda Cobb, Help Me Grow/Help Me Thrive North Texas 

What does co-design and co-facilitation look like or mean?

• Co-design and co-facilitation happen when there is a constant feedback loop happening. Our advocates are directly in the community gathering information. As a group, we analyze the information to determine our approach, goals, and activities to meet the community’s needs. As an organization, we do not approach the advocates with our own agenda of what we think is best or what we think will be good for the community. We work together to plan and lead each community-facing event.
  Jayson-Ann Johnson, Bridgeport Prospers
• It means SHARED POWER. Nothing for families without families. As a group or agency, we are always looking to our community and parents to find out the needs of our parents. Before we implement a new initiative, we are talking with our parent leaders and getting insight. We want to know if it meets the need and what is the impact and thinking through unintended consequences. Organizations should not be making decisions for families, but WITH families.
  Amanda Cobb, Help Me Grow/Help Me Thrive North Texas 

What does the onboarding and engagement process look like?

• We spend a lot of time building trust and rapport intentionally. We have spent time sharing our stories and our “why” of wanting to be in the work. We spend one whole meeting when we onboard new members just letting everyone share about their personal journey, what they have gained from being in this role on the council, and [we] are able to answer questions from our new members. We continue doing team building every meeting and our members take turns leading these parts of the meetings. We do a community builder at the start of every meeting. This can be a simple question, like what is your favorite season and why or it can be sharing a personal story or success or challenge. We also always end our meetings with a closing connection: Another member poses a question or ends with a positive quote or a call to action to send us forward in the week and work ahead.
  Amanda Cobb, Help Me Grow/Help Me Thrive North Texas 

Thank you Jayson-Ann and Amanda for taking the time to provide additional context and resources through your responses to these questions. The most essential elements of building authentic partnerships with parents and community members are listening, time, and valuing relationship over process. The work happening in Connecticut and Texas provides great examples of what it looks like to co-create different and sustainable ways of working together and designing solutions in partnership with the families and communities we hope to serve.

To hear the full conversation with Amanda, Jayson-Ann, and their partners please visit the BUILD Initiative website.  You can use the following link to download the NOW Transformative Community Capacity to Advance Equity Playbook or visit the NOW Innovation Forum, which has a full database of tools and resources – www.networksofopportunity.org