Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies serve thousands of parents each year and work to provide efficient, effective services to help parents meet their child care needs. Many seek parents’ views as they think about how to improve their services. Building on their contact with parents, this quick guide explains how CCDF Lead Agencies can use community-engaged methods (CEM) to partner with parents on research and practices that impact their lives. CEM is an approach that includes people with direct, firsthand involvement (such as parents served by CCDF Lead Agencies) in the process of knowledge-building and decisionmaking. The end goal of CEM is to change the systems, policies, and programs that have a negative impact on people’s lives.

For more information, see the full brief, “Partnering with Parents in Research: Community-Engaged Approaches to Improve Data Collection and Analysis.”

Purpose

This guide aims to introduce CCDF Lead Agency staff and researchers to applying CEM to engage parents in research. The quick guide focuses on defining CEM and the motivations for using them, explaining how to build strong partnerships, and providing concrete examples of how to engage parents in research related to child care and early education.

Key Findings and Highlights

• Community-engaged methods involves fairness and justice, collaboration (working with each other), education, and action.
• CEM can be used to create more useful research findings, help research have a greater impact on programs and policymaking, and build community power and trust.
• The steps of successful, ethical community engagement and partnership include
  • preparing yourself and your organization to partner with parents,
  • defining the “parent community” you want to partner with,
  • finding parent-led organizations to work with,
  • building trusting relationships with parents, and
  • partnering with parents for research.
• Parents have key knowledge and expertise. So do organizations led by parents. These groups should be part of the teams that make decisions about research and practices that affect them and their families.

Methods

This guide draws on findings from early childhood and community-engagement projects. We also spoke with five researchers who partnered with parents in research and five parents who have been research partners. Two Urban Institute researchers, two parents, and one university researcher wrote the brief that this quick guide is based on together. As a team, we offer guidance on creating strong partnerships of parents, agencies, and researchers.