Designing Family Programs to Support the Unique Needs and Contexts of Community-Based Organizations

Over the last 4 years, Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) and their partners have been working to develop Skillsville — a children’s television show and suite of connected programs and resources designed to support learning and development for young children and their families across the country.^[i] As with any project of this scale, developing programs for families and educational organizations across a range of communities can be challenging. In this reflection, we share lessons learned from implementing the TPT Skillsville Family Program with two community partners and offer recommendations for program developers based on the ways that these partners adapted the program to their unique goals, families, and learning contexts.

Building a National Program for Families

The Skillsville Family Program was funded by a Ready to Learn grant from the US Department of Education and engages caregivers and their 5- to 8-year-old children in learning about executive function skills, self-regulation strategies, and career exposure. It is run by community organizations as a series of in-person events, each centered on a different executive function skill, referred to by child-friendly terms: Feel, Focus, Think Differently, Organize, and Remember. Together, families learn about why these skills are important to their daily life and future success, how different careers rely on a given skill, and how self-regulation strategies can bolster that skill when they need support. This is done by co-engaging in multimedia content, including Skillsville TV episodes, paper and tablet-based games, and self-regulation activities.

Designing for Community Partners

Developing and implementing a program at this scale requires project leaders to think about both how to develop quality, reliable resources and experiences for educators, children, and families and how to support communities in adapting these resources for their own goals and needs. Historically, many research and development efforts in the field of education have aspired towards scale and fidelity — in other words, promoting the use of new programs broadly while ensuring that the implementation of those programs is as similar as possible across many different settings (Datnow et al., 2023; Shelton et al., 2023). However, there is growing evidence that despite best efforts to focus on fidelity, communities almost always adapt programs and resources to fit their own needs, goals, and contexts (Lovett et al., 2024; NASEM, 2022). Research also suggests that these adaptations can be a critical factor in adopting and sustaining new programs long term as local stakeholders determine a program’s value and tailor it to ensure ongoing success in their settings (NASEM, 2022).

Recognizing the importance of this adaptation process also highlights how crucial it is to understand the needs and goals of individual communities, which ultimately drive whether and how organizations adopt and adapt new programs and resources (Datnow et al., 2023). These needs and goals vary across communities and may differ substantially from those that guided the original development of a program or educational resources such as the Skillsville Family Program.

Case Study Examples

As part of Skillsville’s development and testing, we had the opportunity to collaborate closely with two community-based organizations situated on opposite sides of the country and serving two distinct communities: Parent University in Savannah, GA, and Metropolitan Family Service in Portland, OR. Through the collaboration process, we developed a much deeper understanding of these organizations’ goals, needs, and contexts as they adapted the Family Program for their communities and shared their reflections and insights.

Case Study 1: Parent University

Parent University is a grassroots community collaborative in Savannah, GA, that provides free continuing education and learning opportunities for caregivers to support family success.^[ii] The group hosts monthly in-person or virtual gatherings focused on parenting and life skills. In-person meetings include family meals and guest speakers before and after the class offerings, as well as free childcare while adults attend two 45-minute sessions on topics of interest. Topics are presented at the start of the meeting and then caregivers decide which courses they want to attend for that day. Meetings are typically held at a different location each month, such as local schools or libraries, to support Parent University’s goal of reaching caregivers across the Savannah area.

Parent University educators facilitated four Skillsville sessions (one per month) from February through May 2024 at the same dates, times, and locations as other programming (except for one session that was scheduled specifically for the Skillsville Family Program). The Skillsville sessions were 90 minutes long and included both caregivers and their children. Five families with at least one 5- to 8-year-old child initially participated, with three families ultimately completing all four sessions. Data collection included session observations; feedback forms from caregivers, children, and educators; post-program interviews with educators; midpoint and post-program interviews with families; and pre-post program surveys with caregivers and educators. Families also participated in a reflection circle –– a community listening session to share additional thoughts, react to initial research findings, and explore what resonated with participants and what was missing or needed further unpacking (Cunningham-Erves et al., 2022).

From these sources, the research team identified several ways that Parent University modified the Skillsville Family Program to meet their needs:

• Adapting the program schedule—Most organizations implement Skillsville Family Program sessions multiple times per month. Parent University, however, adapted the schedule to match their monthly meeting model. Families reported that this schedule made it easier for them to find dedicated time for the classes, as well as to practice and build on the skills and strategies that they were learning about in between sessions.
• Supporting implementation—Typical Skillsville Family Program training occurs before the first session with periodic check-ins from the project team to see how implementation is going. Because Parent University meets once a month, the educators requested additional trainings approximately one week before each session to better understand the content and activities, and to address any questions.
• Leveraging spaces and materials—Because Parent University takes place at a different location each time, educators were unfamiliar with the rooms or technology available before each session began. They worked with what was there and pivoted, as necessary. For example, when internet hotspots were not initially working, they used the delay as a learning opportunity to discuss how technology glitches can happen in life and in work. The educators also praised how families demonstrated patience, turn-taking, and teamwork while navigating technology difficulties.
• Making content personally relevant—Educators encouraged caregivers’ active participation and involvement in the sessions and provided timely information to support families’ content understanding. One way that they did so was through a “word wall,” where educators wrote down any unfamiliar vocabulary as it came up and later unpacked the definitions of those words with families, connecting the terms to the program and families’ everyday lives. 

Case Study 2: Metropolitan Family Service

Metropolitan Family Service (MFS) is a nonprofit organization based in the Portland, OR, metro region that serves families from different socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds through a variety of family service programs — from tax preparation support to afterschool care. Their early childhood program, Ready Set Go! (RSG),^[iii] supports kindergarten readiness through weekly educator-facilitated caregiver-child interaction groups, caregiver meetings, home visits, and other family services. RSG educators also work to maintain ongoing connections with families and provide support as children enter kindergarten and beyond. The RSG program is inclusive of all families in the region and a majority of RSG educators are bilingual (Spanish/English).

Building on the team’s prior experience partnering with MFS, the Skillsville project team collaborated with MFS RSG educators to run the Skillsville Family Program and explore how MFS adapted the program to their community through a participatory case study process (Hudon et al., 2021; Yin, 2018). The MFS team led the implementation of four Skillsville Family Program sessions at one of their RSG sites (a local elementary school) over two weeks in June 2024. Nine Spanish-speaking families with at least one child between the ages of 5 and 8 participated. Data were collected through ongoing meeting notes, workshop observations, family feedback surveys, and post-program caregiver interviews. Informed by this data, MFS educators and Skillsville project team members constructed a detailed case study description of the program adaptation and implementation process and used this description to identify emergent themes about the unique ways that MFS adapted the Skillsville Family Program and how the program itself influenced these adaptations:

• Supporting community goals—The MFS team was motivated to try out the program and to make adaptations based on the ways they saw Skillsville connecting with their existing community goals and priorities, such as creating opportunities for caregivers and children to spend time together and providing professional growth opportunities for participating educators.
• Building on existing relationships—Educators reflected on the many ways that relationships were central to the success of the program, including the existing relationship between MFS and Skillsville project team members that supported the partnership; the trust between MFS and families that ensured family buy-in and engagement; and the relationship between the two educators facilitating the program that allowed them to adapt and adjust the program as needed.
• Focusing on language support—From the beginning, the MFS team worked to ensure that the program experience would be welcoming to families with unique linguistic preferences, including those that only spoke Spanish or were bilingual. While some of the program resources were available in Spanish and English, some aspects of the program design and development cycle made it more difficult for educators to support family language preferences. For example, at the time of the study, educator presentation notes were only in English, and TV episodes were in English with auto-generated Spanish subtitles.
• Navigating program and technology complexities—The media elements of the program, such as the TV episodes and the tablets, were a draw for families, and the tablets in particular were a favorite for children. But the MFS team also reflected on the many challenges that this aspect of the program presented, such as managing the logistics of the technology for families and dealing with internet connectivity problems. The educators also reflected on challenges associated with presenting the complexity of the program content, such as helping families draw connections between the many career examples, associated success skills, and self-regulation strategies.

Reflections for Program Designers

As is clear from these case studies, each organization made unique modifications and adaptions to the Skillsville Family Program to meet the needs and goals of their communities. Both organizations navigated challenges and leveraged the program to support children and families. Looking across the two case studies, we reflected on several ways these experiences can inform other program designers seeking to create programs that can be successfully implemented by community organizations across the country:

• Think critically about including community perspectives and voices from the beginning of the project. This helps ensure that these perspectives are integral to the program design, allows for modifications at stages of the project when the program design is still flexible, and can support broader relevance and adaptability of the program across contexts.
• Support communities in making program content relevant and accessible to their families, since this is a top priority for educators. For many community-based organizations, this goal is not secondary to the content but rather a primary focus of their work. Aligning the design and goals of a program to this community priority, therefore, can support program adoption and sustainability.
• Consider the challenges that community-based organizations face when implementing technology-based programs. Although many organizations are eager to incorporate technologies that support learning for their communities, they also face considerable challenges to implementing these technologies, such as limited access to reliable internet or IT support. Program designers should think carefully about whether specific technologies can be successfully implemented by educators, especially in informal learning contexts.
• Prepare for a variety of implementation schedules and contexts. As these case studies show, organizations may need or want to implement a program in very different contexts and on very different schedules compared to what was envisioned by developers. Considering these options early in the development process and providing suggestions for making these types of adaptations successful would likely increase the value of a program for organizations. For example, this might include suggestions for keeping families engaged in between session when meetings are scheduled less frequently.
• Document and study adaptations from the beginning to better create programs that work for multiple communities. Scholars studying program dissemination, scale-up, and sustainability have emphasized the need to document program adaptations and better understanding how these influence program outcomes (Lovett et al., 2024; Pinto et al., 2024). Preparing for adaptations as a natural part of program implementation, rather than focusing narrowly on fidelity, may be an important way of encouraging broad program adoption and ultimately helping organizations across the country support the success of young children and their families.

[i] https://www.skillsville.org/

[ii] https://www.parentuniversitysav.org/

[iii] https://www.mfspdx.org/rsg

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the families and staff at our partner organizations who contributed their time and expertise to these efforts. Special thanks to Saray Garcia, María Quijano, and Amy Corbett. The contents of this article were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The Department does not mandate or prescribe practices, models, or other activities described or discussed in this document. The contents of this article may contain examples of, adaptations of, and links to resources created and maintained by another public or private organization. The Department does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. The content of this article does not necessarily represent the policy of the Department. This publication is not intended to represent the views or policy of or be an endorsement of any views expressed or materials provided by any Federal agency.

Authors

Scott Pattison, TERC
Camellia Sanford-Dolly, Rockman et al Cooperative
Bryce Becker, Twin Cities Public Television
Viviana López Burgos, TERC
Smirla Ramos Montañez, TERC
Siobhan O'Malley, Metropolitan Family Service

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