The Family Conservancy

Strategies
Support educators and expand the capacity of the early education sector.
Empower children and families to address their immediate needs.
Help children and adults develop resilience.

]Outcomes
Children transition to kindergarten ready for success.
Parents experience increased well-being, and advocate for their children.
Individuals and families develop social-emotional skills and healthy relationships, learn coping skills and heal from trauma.

Our Intended Impact
Children grow up in thriving families and healthy communities, and experience well-being throughout their lives.

Beginning in 2021, we formulated an agency dashboard to quickly and effectively analyze our agency’s performance in advancing our Theory of Change. This tool provides us with timely data so that we can provide proactive quality improvement and enhanced service delivery to the children and families we serve. The dashboard is housed on our website (http://tfckc.org/dashboard) and is updated quarterly.

Public Policy Agenda
Our Advocacy Committee has finalized TFC’s 2022 Public Policy Agenda. The agenda outlines focus areas and initiatives we plan to pursue throughout 2022.

Our agency’s long history spanning nearly 140 years, we have been responsive to the needs of the community as well as changes in funding. In addition to exceptional financial oversight, TFC boasts program experts in all of our programs who are leaders in their field. The expertise is further demonstrated through our lower than average turnover rates, which also proves continuity of service to clients and the community.The Family Conservancy uses partnerships and collaboration to serve the community and to connect to populations who are seeking or in need of our services. Some core partnerships and affiliations include Mid America Regional Council, Child Care Aware of Missouri, Child Care Aware of Kansas, United Way of Greater Kansas City, United Way of Wyandotte County, and many more. In addition to being the number one recipient of United Way funding – via contracts, allocations and designations – TFC maintains over 100 funding streams to support a variety of programming.

Theory of Change Strategy I: Improving Early Learning and the Early Education Sector

Early Care and Education
TFC provides training, coaching and consultation to thousands of early educators each year, because we believe that child care should be about much more than care. When children have access to high-quality early learning environments, they’re able to take advantage of a critical brain development period that occurs during the first five years of life and create a foundation for success in school and life.
2021 Program Highlights:
TFC trainers and coaches supported 7,268 teachers and providers
306 training opportunities were offered
612 programs were coached by the Early Care and Education team

Training
TFC offers a variety of training opportunities for early education professionals. Training is offered in the community, on-site at child care programs and online. ECE addresses the needs of all child care providers and early educators by offering training geared toward a variety of needs:

Level 1 trainings focus on entry-level skills – health and safety; child abuse and neglect
Level 2 training is comparable to a Child Development Associate (CDA) degree
Levels 3-5 support advanced, developmentally appropriate classroom practices to help educators provide a higher quality of instruction

Coaching and Consultation
TFC also offers fee-for-service options to early education programs that include playground services (audits, inspections, and consultations), classroom or program assessment, accreditation coaching, or general consultation.

CLASS Institute
TFC delivers on-site coaching through a variety of projects. One of the largest projects is The CLASS Institute. This is a 12-month training and coaching program that uses the Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS™). CLASS™ is an observational tool that provides a common lens and language focused on what matters—the classroom interactions between the teacher and students that will boost student learning. TFC staff helps identify teacher’s strengths and opportunities for growth. Programming also includes a director’s support group to help early childhood program directors create systems within their program to sustain quality gained from The CLASS Institute.

In 2019, the CLASS Institute began offering a cohort designed specifically for in-home child care providers. Additionally, as an alternative to the 12-month commitment, individualized training and coaching opportunities were offered throughout the year.

Directors Leadership Academy
One of the many training series provided by the team is the Director’s Leadership Academy (DLA). TFC authored this curriculum, which was rolled out in 2014, providing education opportunities for early childhood program directors. DLA focuses on new directors and assistant directors of child care centers who lack experience or education in early childhood administration. The program features components that are vital to a director to successfully perfor