2Gen Professional Development: Recapping a Network Masterclass Webinar

“As a result of our trainings, subgrantees formulate their own trainings and opportunities for continued learning around trauma informed care. This to me shows an organizational value shift toward genuinely being more trauma informed, something that will have a lasting impact.” – Sara VanSlambrook

In April, Ascend began our 2018 Network Masterclass Webinar series with a 2Gen professional development training. The webinar covered professional development principles and practices for staff of 2Gen organizations. It highlighted guidelines for incorporating 2Gen into an organization’s strategic framework, and provided three practical examples for successful organizational change. Speakers on the webinar included:

• Sara VanSlambrook, Director, Greater Families 2020, United Way of Central Indiana
• Kristin Bernhard, Deputy Commissioner for System Reform, Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning
• Janae Bradford, Assistant Director, Family Advancement, CAP Tulsa

Check out the webinar recording on our GoTo channel here and read on for some key take-aways from the speakers, covering topics like: trauma-informed care training, cross disciplinary 2Gen engagement, and the importance of relationship building, both internally and externally. If you have questions about 2Gen professional development, Ascend would be happy to connect you to our panelists for further discussion.

Sara VanSlambrook (United Way of Central Indiana) on trauma-informed care training:

“We also offer ongoing training in key elements of the 2Gen model – coactive coaching is offered for our family coaches as well as our employment and financial coaches on a quarterly basis, trauma informed care basics followed by trauma informed care for managers, also a trauma informed care for ECE teachers onsite in the form of a lunch and learn to meet them where they are at.

Beyond the training and sharing, we have two program officers that work very closely with our eight partners to provide hands-on technical assistance to staff on an ongoing basis – attending their partner meetings, meeting regularly with staff, connecting them with resources, providing encouragement, asking challenging questions.”

Kristin Bernhard (Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning) on cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer:

“How do we know that this work is being successful? When so many people are talking about the 2Gen approach, and are thinking about where are those partners that we need to connect with to achieve it, that you can’t keep track of all the conversations that are happening. I love hearing stories about how our staff are being asked to present on our 2Gen work to other partners to the degree that we almost can’t keep up with the amount of collaborative conversations are happening.

[I enjoy] providing managers, providing directors, providing staff at all levels the opportunity to learn unique tools and participate in them themselves, so that they can take and transfer them down to their team. For Georgia, [working] with the executive, mid-level and field staff was the right approach. And helping staff at all agencies understand the importance of this work and how they could apply it.”

Janae Bradford (CAP Tulsa) on relationship-building:

“I want to reiterate how important partnerships are when implementing a 2Gen program… Running a program with multiple partners is hard work.  It’s imperative to find common ground between your organizations and missions.  It is also necessary to understand the mission of your partners and what draws them to the partnership… And finally, use your data to strengthen the partnership and develop a shared mission among partners.”

If you are interested in more tools for your organization, you can check out Ascend’s 2Gen Toolbox, a collection of resources for organizations looking to integrate the 2Gen approach into their team culture, and the Outcomes bank, an open sourced compendium of different tools that help organizations collect data on adults and the children in their lives.

Further resources for 2Gen professional development include:

• The COACH approach, CNM Ingenuity, Inc.
• Family Centered Coaching Toolkit, from Building Better Programs at CBPP and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• “What are the Effects of Pairing Head Start Services for Children with Career Pathway Training for Parents?” Lindsay Chase-Lansdale et al, March 2017.
• A Path Out of Poverty: Career Training + Quality Head Start, NPR report
• “Boosting Family Income to Promote Child Development,” Greg J. Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, The Future of Children, 24:1, Spring 2014, pp. 99-120.
• “The Life-cycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program,” Jorge Luis Garcia, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf, and Maria José Prados, CESR-Schaffer Working Paper 2016-18.