#ideastage

By Rachael Wussow, Micaela Hellman-Tincher + Donna Chan

As with any complex social issue, solving the child care crisis in the Bay Area doesn't hinge on any one factor alone. As we move into prototyping our ideas, we wanted to account for four areas that, when examined and addressed all together, begin to untangle the issue. These are supply, cost, access and quality.

Without an adequate supply of spots in child care, there simply is not enough care for all those who need it. However, even with enough spots, if each costs too much, low-income families either cannot obtain care (which may result in jeopardized employment or education for parents and siblings), or drain their budgets in doing so. A large supply of affordable slots is similarly futile if slots are hard to access (if common hours of care do not match the hours that a working parent needs, for example; or if parents are unaware that child care subsidies exist to help cover costs). Finally, as child care is essentially every infant’s first educational experience, child care spots must be of high quality.

   Thus, for every child care solution we seek, we aim to address not only these four issues but to also develop ideas that are based around the insights we gathered from the many parents, providers and child care domain experts we have interviewed. Here’s a quick peek into some of the ideas we are developing.

Idea No. 1: Make A Space

For the thousands of kids waiting for subsidized access to child care, which can cost an average of $9,492 per year in San Francisco, we are looking to develop alternative funding streams to help kids get scholarships for these spots. Why wait until college to award kids funds that set them up for academic and social success?

From Kickstarter to Kiva, we see how effective multiple, small-scale donors can be. Why not use this model to help child care providers raise money to partially cover the cost of a child in their care?

Here are a few slides from the storyboard we are developing for this model. These slides follow Sandy, an innovative child care provider, who is asking all the parents in her child care to contribute an extra $50 per month in order to provide a 50% scholarship for a child in need from their community.

Idea No. 2: Child Care to the People

For parents with non-traditional work schedules for whom 9-5 child care options do not fit their needs, we are looking into low-cost alternatives to replace the expensive and inconsistent babysitters they are often forced to rely on. By exploring the intersection of underutilized public buildings and co-op models, we are considering possibilities where we can help these parents get reliable, enriching and affordable child care options in their community.

Here’s a sneak peak of this model:

Idea No. 3: KidConnect

We’ve heard over and over again about parents who missed out on subsidy opportunities because they didn’t know about them, or who had to make hard last-minute decisions because they didn’t plan for child care early enough. We are working on an idea to help parents get connected to information about child care options soon into their pregnancy so that, by the time their baby comes, they have a plan for their child’s first educational experience and are connected to all the options to pay for it. 

Here are some of the parts of the KidConnect journey:

We’re taking these initial ideas back to the community to gauge desirability among users, dig into the specifics of feasibility, funding viability and how to measure impact. We’d love your thoughts. If you want to join the discussion, please reach out to us at [email protected].

By Kris Marich, Maurius Rossouw + Stephanie Chen

The past month, the team worked toward developing design concepts for the prisoner reentry space. Although we researched the prisoner's entire journey, from pre-incarceration environment through to post-release and re-integration, we decided to focus our attention on the timeframe more immediately pre- and post-release. The three concepts described below aim to address key problems in that timeframe.

1. Career Year

More than half (53%) of business leaders say that their companies face a challenge in recruiting non-managerial employees with the skills, training, and education their company needs (Across the Great Divide: Perspectives of CEOs and College Presidents on America’s Higher Education and Skills Gap). At the same time, most new jobs in the U.S.—and an estimated 64% of all jobs by 2018—will require at least some postsecondary education and training (Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018, June 2010). These are positive indicators, showing that if proper training can be provided, many job opportunities may exist for formerly incarcerated individuals to be employed in higher-paying, professional careers. 

Career Year is a concept for an organization, inspired by the national success of Tipping Point grantee Year Up, that provides professional training and paid internships to motivated and capable inmates, who have historically lacked the opportunity to succeed. Career Year aims to better integrate the formerly incarcerated into society by providing them with the training, experiences and support that empowers them to reach their potential in professional careers. The program has two main components. The first is a rigorous, industry-specific classroom training module that develops both professional and life skills. The second is a paid internship with one of Career Year’s corporate partners, paving the way towards a prosperous career path as a professional.

2. Post-Release Success Accelerator

We have heard repeatedly that there is a need for success stories and advice from people who have ‘been there’, but that successful, formerly incarcerated individuals are often too busy trying to support themselves to mentor others.

Post-Release Success Accelerator is a peer mentorship program that pairs successful, formerly incarcerated individuals with newly released probationers. The program aims to do the following: reduce recidivism; accelerate the success of “stars” who have completed probation; and lighten the caseload of Probation Officers. Probation Officers would identify successful probationers on their caseload that might make good mentors. Selected mentors would then be given a two or four-year paid mentorship position and tuition to City College for a degree of the mentor’s choosing in exchange for mentoring new probationers while getting their education.

California recidivism rates are currently just under 70% with almost 1/3 of recidivism happening in the first month post-release. Mentors would provide high-touch support to newly released probationers in order to reduce recidivism, especially during this critical initial period.

Paid mentor positions and continued education would provide opportunities and incentive for successful, formerly incarcerated individuals to mentor, while their mentees would gain support of ‘someone who’s been there’. Probation Officers would receive secondary support for their typically large caseloads.

3. Spotlight

Another insight from the research phase was that often a jail sentence is short enough to ‘hurt’ but not long enough to ‘help’, i.e., short jail sentences don’t necessarily offer the time needed to initiate change in one’s life, whether self-motivated through reflection or via programs offered while incarcerated.

Currently, ‘wraparound’ service provision involves multiple programs and organizations working in unison to provide housing, employment, and health services for newly released probationers. It has been shown to be effective in reducing recidivism and increasing the success of this population upon release, especially when initiated in the weeks prior to release, while an inmate is still incarcerated.

OurSpotlight concept aims to offer a similar high-touch and customized approach to in-jail programming that also provides a method to highlight the achievements of inmates, and allows for these positive accomplishments to be kept and displayed on a permanent record. Spotlight invokes a wraparound model for programming on the ‘inside’ by assessing an individual inmate’s program needs at intake and creating a customized plan for their success as early as possible. 

Participants completing programming collect badges, certificates, reviews and recommendations that are recorded in a new part of an inmate’s permanent records—their ‘Spotlight’. These positive accomplishments can be highlighted on a resume and would be included on a background check or RAP sheet, in addition to the potentially negative record.

This would aim to put inmates on a forward path from the start of incarceration, and to make any positive attributes apparent for both themselves and potential employers.

By Stephanie Mattero, Anna Xu + Dan Goldstein

The positive impact of high-quality early childhood education (ECE) on children from low-income families is real. To break the cycle of poverty, seminal research demonstrates that children from financially unstable households who participate in high-quality preschool improve their socioeconomic outcomes and generate as high as $17 of social benefit per one dollar invested[1].

 In the San Francisco Bay Area, 566,910 children under age six[2] are in need of ECE. However, there is not enough supply of high-quality, formalized preschools due to affordability, program variables and licensing requirements.

  Of these children, 146,803 are eligible to receive government subsidies to participate in ECE, but 79,714 children (54.3%) are not accessing these subsidies[3]. Accessing preschool can be challenging due to cultural, language and transportation barriers.

Third, children from low-income communities experience economic instability and other stresses of poverty, which negatively impact their progress in preschool. There is not enough support to ensure parents’ economic self-sufficiency and stable home environments.

How can we address these unmet needs?

We have synthesized 50 interviews with parents from low-income environments, educators, academics, policymakers and other stakeholders, along with extensive secondary research, to generate and evaluate potential solutions. From thousands of ideas generated in brainstorms with designers and domain experts, we have filtered the ideas by impact: Does this idea improve high-risk children’s outcomes in early learning and developmental standards? Does this idea increase supply of and access to high-quality preschool for the most marginalized children in the San Francisco Bay Area?

Here we show two ideas we intend to explore further, the Discovery Bus and the Dual School.

1. Discovery Bus

Discovery Bus is a full-time, licensed, mobile preschool providing evidence-based, high-quality curriculum to children from low-income communities, enabling them to enter kindergarten on the same level as their higher-income peers. Discovery Bus brings preschool to the front door of underserved families, potentially increasing supply, increasing access and improving school readiness.

2. Dual School

Dual School is a dual-generational approach to preschool, in which children from low-income communities participate in evidence-based, high-quality curriculum, while parents participate in an evidence-based, career development program to ensure their families’ economic stability. Dual School supports both the children and their parents, creating a positive feedback loop in which parents’ economic self-sufficiency protects and enhances the gains children make through quality early childhood programs. 

We welcome your feedback, information and contacts and would love to have a conversation with you about these ideas! To contact us, please email [email protected].

[1] Anoshua Chaudhuri, Michael Potepan, “Key to Economic Success in the 21st Century: Investment in Early Childhood Programs,” Bay Area Council (May 2009): 3.

[2] Ibid, 27.