Minnesota has gathered a group of community-based organizations and tribal nations to envision pathways to early childhood statewide systems. Host Karen Ponder and BUILD executive director Susan Hibbard discuss state-funded initiatives with Jovon Perry, director of Economic Assistance and Employment Supports at Minnesota’s Children and Family Services, and Cindi Yang, director of the Child Care Services Division of Children and Family Services.
More information about Minnesota’s Department of Human Services here.
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Karen Ponder: Hello, and welcome to Critical Connections. A podcast from the BUILD Initiative. I'm Karen Ponder. This series focuses on the importance of strong state and community connections for developing equitable early childhood systems. You'll hear about key ingredients needed to build and sustain this work. And you'll also hear some lessons learned from some of the early developers.
Karen Ponder: Today we're talking about Minnesota and its early childhood statewide systems work. We'll talk about recent work in Minnesota that's funded through state grants, specifically the whole family systems, community resource hubs, and the community solutions fund. With state support, a group of community based organizations and tribal nations were selected to address what the leaders in Minnesota saw as pressing issues and solve difficult problems for communities, for children, and for families across the state.
Karen Ponder: Joining me today to co-host is the Executive Director of BUILD, Susan Hibbard. Susan was one of the creators of the BUILD Initiative and has been a very innovative and tireless leader in furthering early child assistance work all across the nation. Susan, I couldn't be happier to have this conversation with you today.
Susan Hibbard: Thanks.
Karen Ponder: Also joining us to tell us about their work in Minnesota are two seasoned state leaders who I'm delighted to welcome. Jovon Perry is the Director of the Economic Assistance & Employment Supports Division in the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Welcome Jovon.
Jovon Perry: Hello and thank you for having me.
Karen Ponder: And also, Cindi Yang, director of Child Care Services Division in the Children and Family Services, also within the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Welcome Cindi.
Cindi Yang: Hi, thank thank you for having me today.
Karen Ponder: Jovon, I know that you have been a key part of the change that's happening in Minnesota to solve problems that affect communities and to really support young children and their families. And we all admire your leadership role in helping Minnesota advance a two generation strategy that connects economic development and economic security with the more typical early childhood systems work like childcare. I'm curious, what brought you to this particular work?
Jovon Perry: What brought me to the work is that I am myself, a mother raising children as an African American woman living in Minnesota. So in Minnesota, African-Americans and American Indians experience economic, health, housing and education deep disparities. And so as a mother raising children in my own community, I have a lot of passion and a lot of motivation really to utilize my career, utilize my life, in a way that collaborates with many others to push towards structural, systemic and institutional change. So it's something that I must do for myself and for my children, and something that I feel charged to do for others as well. So that's what brings me to this work.
Karen Ponder: Cindi, you've also been a really important leader in the whole family systems work in Minnesota. And I know that you too are a long time leader and supporter of a number of Hmong organizations. Did your experiences partnering with other Hmong leaders help shape your two generation multi-system focus of the state level community work?
Cindi Yang: Yes, definitely. Your question is really important because I think about our Hmong community, and Minnesota actually has the largest Hmong population in the nation here next to California. And so there's about 70,000 Hmong in our state. And so although 70,000 may sound a lot, it's actually a really small community. And so it's really important when I think about just our cultural values and the importance of community collaboration, and even so as a Hmong women to really tap into our community to help uplift one another and to help build a stronger community.
Cindi Yang: Many of the experiences that I've had within my professional and also personal experiences within being on Hmong organizational boards or events, all of that really plays into what I bring to the table as a state leader within the Department of Human Services. And so it is really critical for us to leverage our community to really leverage our lived experiences and really our roots and our cultural values and bring that lens of diversity and the values that we hold into my daily work. So my experiences with other Hmong leaders has been really critical to how I bring in the cultural perspective into state government.
Karen Ponder: Thank you for sharing that. So important. It helps us really understand some of your passion for this work. So what are the goals that you're trying to achieve in these collective efforts, and how are communities organizing themselves to reach the goals? Jovon, you want to start with that one?
Jovon Perry: Yeah, certainly. So our goal is to create, design, and redesign I should say, our current system into one that helps children and families, not only to move out of poverty, but to thrive as residents of Minnesota. In communities that we are partnering with and co-creating with, are really looking within for solutions within their communities they're looking for cultural practices and cultural ways of addressing problems that have been long term issues within communities. They're looking at collaborative models and how to work across different agencies, different communities, different organizations. And they're speaking out and willing to work with local and state government leaders who are willing to listen and who are willing to come into co-creative, collaborative space with them. Share power in ways that try out new ideas, learn from those ideas together and really are committed towards working towards change.
Karen Ponder: Thanks Jovon. Cindi, what would you add to that question?
Cindi Yang: A couple of things that I'll add really is with specifically with the whole family systems work, that we are also looking to tailor solutions that really meets that particular community's needs. And so I think taking that approach, we're trying to do things very differently, trying to disrupt the system. And then the other piece that I'll just quickly mention here is around the preschool development grant, which is a federally funded program that Minnesota received. And we've been working on the preschool development grant for a few years now. And specifically a new development within this past year or so is around the community resource hub.
Cindi Yang: And really the goal of the preschool development grant community resource hub is really threefold. We want to make it easier for families to get what they need, we want to also increase access to services, and we want to grow community engagement and feedback loops. Grantees do meet as a group monthly to receive reflective consultation with some of our trained mental health professionals. The reflective piece is really important to make sure that we're all fully understanding the experiences of the communities and the organizations. And we can take some learnings from that so that we can do better with next strategies and approaches to our work.
Susan Hibbard: Jovon and Cindi, something that each of you really highlighted that I think is so important for other state and community leaders to hear is looking to communities for innovative solutions. Often state systems leaders act like the communities and families have problems, and the state is there to fund solutions. I think this approach of co-creation and of honoring the leadership and experience of the communities is really something for Minnesota to be proud of and that other states might learn from. I'm wondering if you could share some of the innovative solutions that you've seen related to community issues that communities have driven the approach?
Cindi Yang: I've been in state government going on for six years, but prior to working at the state, I myself worked in nonprofit and higher education, really doing grassroots work and really working with communities. And so I think having that personal and professional experience of really truly understand what the impact is at the ground level and how state policies play a role, whether that's actually creating more barriers or creating opportunities. It's really remembering that experience in my position as director of Child Care Services. And so with that, when I think about the whole family systems work that we've been working on in Minnesota, one of the examples around innovative solutions is through one of our grantees, Ojibwe, [inaudible 00:10:08] tribal college, and they're doing something which I wouldn't necessarily consider unique, but that it's really important. And that it's important that the state workers create opportunities for these types of innovative solutions to happen.
Cindi Yang: And so what Ojibwe [inaudible 00:10:28], and I'll refer to them as [inaudible 00:10:31], what they have been working on is planning and implementing the first Ojibwe language and cultural immersion program for children ages zero to five in Minnesota. So the program is a three generation model in which Ojibwe infants and toddlers spend time with their parents and elders first speakers in a home like environment. And really the setting is modeled after grandmas house where children are safe and comfortable, where they participate in traditional cultural activities with adults to learn the language, to hear the stories, to sing, to dance and make art in their cultural tradition. And so program leaders truly believe that language defines our realities and that by becoming fluent, Ojibwe speakers from birth and developing a strong sense of self identity and pride for who they are, that they will help young Ojibwe children to stand resilient against the many social hardships and cultural genocide that are imposed on them by white dominant culture that they face as they grow up.
Cindi Yang: And so, I think about my own culture and how important being able to speak Hmong is, but there are some generational gaps where even our children are not speaking Hmong. And this is such a critical program for us to help operate and to really help make it become a model so that we have these types of important programs for the communities that truly meets their need.
Jovon Perry: So I love the question that Susan asked about innovative solutions to big community issues that are really being driven and bubbling up from community, but are being also co-created. So, City of Saint Paul is really doing some dynamic and really important work to address economic disparities within our communities of color. They are working with many others. Many organizations, local organizations, as well as with state government to support stronger economic development, to build financial assets and financial literacy. And they're doing that by a addressing generational poverty through a two gen model. And what that looks like specifically is that they've developed a people's prosperity guaranteed income pilot, which provides families with flexible grants of $500 a month. They've also developed what they're calling a college bound Saint. Paul, which are college savings accounts of $50 a month for every child who is a Saint Paul resident born after January 1st, 2020.
Jovon Perry: So the goal of these sorts of pilots is really for the state and the nation to look at models where we are trying to push against the status quo. We're trying to rethink and reimagine programs like [inaudible 00:13:44], like unemployment insurance and other federal and state programs that we've developed to address poverty, and think of it through ways that the community is saying we need in order to really integrate equitable solutions and equitable outcomes so that families are moving past poverty, moving past generational poverty into thriving.
Susan Hibbard: That's such a great example of understanding the assets that families and communities are, rather than imposing a solution on something that we may not understand or have experienced. Thank you for sharing that.
Karen Ponder: So we know that some states have found that building local infrastructure and being connected with the state in a more formal way, for example, having two-way feedback loops, has helped to get better results for children and families. I'm just wondering if Minnesota is thinking about local infrastructure across the state to support communities, or how do you think about whether this work should be statewide and aligned across communities? Cindi, do you want to respond to that?
Cindi Yang: So I had talked about [inaudible 00:15:02], one of our grantees earlier, and there was a problem that was elevated up to us in that many of the elders in the program doing the work lived in Canada internationally, but they would often have to drive down to Fond du Lac to actually join meetings or to do the work. And so the question was posed around how can the state really better meet the needs of the grantees in that particular community in that could staff of the program go across the border and do the work in Canada and have the meetings in Canada? Because it was not cost effective for the elders to always be traveling and coming down. Oddly enough, we've never really had that question asked, could we use federal funding to pay for travel into international territories, into Ontario?
Cindi Yang: And so it took us a little bit of time. I think the many pieces that we need to think about and understand is what's our understanding of federal policies and what's the interpretation of that? Have we ever practiced that before? And are we willing to raise the question upwards to the federal office? And so after much research and conversations and strategizing, we ultimately decided to consult with federal office and pose that question. And through some policy analysis and interpretation, we were very fortunate to learn that we can fund that type of activity. And so I think that was a huge win for the grantee, and that really helped the effectiveness of their work, their meetings, their conversations, their strategizing. And then also from a financial perspective, that saved quite a bit of money for them too. And so that's just one example that I often talk about around the whole family systems work and how little an issue could really make a huge impact in policy change for our partners in our community.
Karen Ponder: You know, that's a great example of how the importance of communities, the state, and in this case, the feds, working together to figure out solutions that actually work for communities and for families. So I applaud you for doing that hard work. Sometimes it's so time consuming to try to work through all those different ways, but it makes the difference for children and families.
Susan Hibbard: I think we all saw during the pandemic that state leaders really were more flexible and able to make changes when the need was great and you and Minnesota have done it in instances that didn't require a pandemic, but to meet the needs of communities. Jovon, have you learned from the community work, things that have affected your state system's work or other state policies and practices? Are there ways that what you are learning from this community work is changing how the state's doing business?
Jovon Perry: Yes. So, White Earth Nation is another one of our funded sites that we've been partnering with and they developed a system called WECARE. And with this system at White Earth Nation, which is a tribal nation here in Minnesota, it allows for integrated care, integrated services across the tribal nation and across many different program areas that a family may experience coming into the tribal nation to address barriers. So if a person comes in, for example, for a specific need, let's say that they are looking for housing, they would begin meeting with someone within the WECARE system, fill out an application, which they would tell their story once, and request a need once. They would then be assessed across all of the different program areas for what other resources are available to them. They would then meet with a team of people across all of these different program areas to help support not only themselves, but their whole family.
Jovon Perry: We have learned at the state so much from that model. Not only have we been and helpful to the tribe in supporting their work, with helping them to better understand the data that they are taking in and interpreting, but also in advocating through their tribal government, their tribal council, to make sure that that system is really widespread and used across the tribe. But we have learned so much from it because we're in the midst of always wanting to update our system. We have a very, very old technology system at the state of Minnesota that determines eligibility, but also does case management. And we need to develop something that is very similar to WECARE.
Jovon Perry: So our IT professionals, our program experts, visited the White Earth Nation and the WECARE system to see how it works. They took notes about the engagement and the integrated model. And it's directly impacting now how we are creating our own eligibility determination systems, our own case management systems, how we talk about cross collaboration across our other state agencies, through our children's cabinet and our other avenues for coming together as state leaders to just rethink and reimagine what it looks like for people when they engage our system. Through this work of collaborating and co-creating with communities, we're learning how to better state systems broadly. And that's always a good thing.
Karen Ponder: So I know that just from my own state and community work, that everything you try is not always successful. I'm curious, what has been really challenging that you might have needed to adjust along the way? Jovon, what would you say?
Jovon Perry: Well, we are always trying our best to work against a big, huge machine of bureaucracy. So, trying to introduce collaborative governance, trying to introduce co-creation. Agile and adaptive, human centered ways of doing the work is very, very new to a fully formed bureaucratic system that's used to working in a certain way. We have been faced with that challenge of how do we update systems? How do we support our administrators of state and federal programs, counties and tribes, and how do we support community organizations and families directly in the ways that they have shared with us that they need us to adapt to? And so that's a slow process. It's a hard process. Because again, the state isn't used to working in agile ways, in ways that hear from community, adapt and change, then go back and ask the community, "Did that work?" And then if it didn't, we adapt and change again.
Jovon Perry: Well, no. We're not used to working that way. We're used to working in ways that we sit around a table and we take years and years to develop a system and then we implement it. And by the time we implement it, because it's technology, it's already years behind. And we often don't get it right. And we've spent so much money and so much time and resource that we are dedicated in a way that we won't shift it or change it. It's kind of cemented until the next big change in innovation around technology comes around. And so, we've been faced with that challenge and within each of our areas, we've been trying to get at that, and now we're doing it more collaboratively. So recently we've, in the Department of Human Services, been working to develop a new eligibility determination application, and then benefits, which has taken our time to completion for an application for public benefits from over an hour to under 12 minutes, which is amazing.
Karen Ponder: I love the idea of, and these are my words, not yours Jovon, but the idea of reinventing government so that it works for the communities, the children and the families that it intends to serve. So once you get this right, you can teach all of us better ways to do it. I'm curious, Cindi, if there are other lessons that you all have learned along the way, particularly about working with children in families and allowing communities to find solutions? Anything you'd want to share with us?
Cindi Yang: Yes, definitely. The first piece of going towards the road of success is the willingness to even try. And so I think, specifically with the whole family systems, we have us three division directors who are willing to take that risk and to really push all of us to not just think outside the box, but also do outside the box. And so, one of the biggest challenge in doing this work has been the tension of trying to operate in a community led way within an accountability driven system. And so we are working hard to try to break down the silos. For example, I mentioned the three division directors, we're trying to blend three funding streams to seamlessly serve communities instead of having communities apply for three different funding sources. But this makes for a very challenging fiscal operation and management scenario on the back end because our systems don't typically operate in this way.
Cindi Yang: And so we're trying to take an approach of, let's not work through the lens of how do we easily administer this, but how do we make it easier for grantees to access the funds? And so we also see this in the contracting process where we are trying to foster an iterative community led process, but our contracts in monitoring responsibilities require that we use prescriptive results based accountability structures. And then there has also been some challenges really in addressing the inherent distrust and power imbalance between community sites with state staff. This co-creative collaboration really requires trust and intentional focus on showing up as equal contributors to the planning and to our work. We need to not be afraid to share power, to share responsibilities, to share accountability. And so it's continuous work that we all continue to strive for.
Karen Ponder: I was just thinking of how do you demonstrate accountability in all the typical ways that states want to to do that with this kind of a sort of ebb and flow, learning and doing approach. So thank you for mentioning that. I know that that's hard and probably is not easily determined, especially when you work with systems that have operated in a certain manner of speaking for so many years. Thanks for your pioneer work in this area. So is there anything else you think we need to know to better understand your work and what you're accomplishing in Minnesota?
Cindi Yang: There is one other piece that I think is really important to highlight. In my six years in state government, I continuously hear about the challenges of our granting and contracting, and especially from smaller organizations and organizations that serves our communities of color around how challenging it is for them to actually access resources within state government.
Cindi Yang: And so with this information and what we've been learning with our innovative work, one of the solutions that I'm trying to work on within my division is actually bring on an equity and contracts coordinator. And this role is so critical because this role will be leading work that's related to promoting equity and grant making and contracting within our division. And then we're also wanting to develop guidelines and reporting procedures that is much more equitable for our contracting process, so that we can really understand and comply with our division's commitment to racial equity. And so this is a really unique position, but we're really happy to be able to bring this on because I think there's a lot of different ways in how we could be providing resources to our grantees and communities and that we can also share those learnings across our agency as well.
Karen Ponder: So Jovon and Cindi, it's been such a pleasure to have the chance to discuss your work in Minnesota. We hear bits and pieces about it, but just to have you have this conversation about it has been so helpful. And just learning about your approach and then hearing what you've learned, will also be helpful to other states who are on a journey to build comprehensive, equitable statewide systems of early childhood. Thanks again for your willingness to have this conversation and I wish you both the best as you continue your journey to improve communities and the lives of children and families throughout your great state. Thanks for us today.
Karen Ponder: This is the final podcast in our series of six called Critical Connections. The first five podcasts featured states with a formal state and community early childhood system structure. These states were Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, Oregon, and Arizona. And you can hear their stories through our podcast series. What we've learned at BUILD though with state and community leaders is that there is no perfect approach to building an equitable statewide system. Many states like Minnesota are taking different approaches to systems building, meeting the needs of children and families. And we know that all states are learning and figuring out their next steps. And we can all learn from each other. We're here to help you by sharing resources and connecting you with others who are doing similar work.
Karen Ponder: Thanks for joining us for this episode. Please leave a review and rate us on Apple podcasts. It helps other people find us. You can follow us there or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Critical Connections is a podcast from the BUILD Initiative. It is produced by LWC. Kojin Tashiro is our producer and sound designer and Jen Chien is our editor. BUILD Initiative is a national organization that is a catalyst for change and it supports state leaders to develop equitable early childhood systems. BUILD assists state leaders from both the private and public sectors as they work to set policies, offer services and advocate for young children and their families. If you would like to learn more about our guests or our organization, visit BUILD's website at www.buildinitiative.org. I'm Karen Ponder, thanks for joining us today.