Every Child Counts, First 5 Alameda County contracted with LFA to evaluate the effectiveness of its Quality Improvement Initiative (QII). This Proposition 10-funded initiative’s goal is to improve the quality of child care for children 0-5 in Alameda County. Using the Harms scales to establish a baseline child care environment assessment, ECC works with participating centers and family child care homes (FCCs) to plan and implement funded improvement plans. LFA surveyed participants from the first three grant cycles, conducted key informant interviews with assessors, staff, and Advisory Board members, and conducted focus groups with participants to hear their stories directly. Our findings will guide the ECC Child Advisory Fund's deliberations during their strategic planning process in late 2004-early 2005.

Every Child Counts, First 5 Alameda County began Partners in Collaboration (PIC) in summer 2004 to bring together early childhood Mentor Teachers and Mental Health Consultants to partner in mentoring a new early childhood educator. The primary goals of the new partnership are to encourage a greater collaboration between teachers and mental health consultants by increasing each's knowledge of the other's discipline and to coach mentee teachers in ways of handling classroom issues using group management techniques and environmental solutions before moving a child to an individual therapeutic solution. LFA worked with ECC staff to generate a set of scenarios of typical situations found in early childhood classrooms; we then interviewed PIC participants prior to their beginning the program. At the end of the intervention, LFA will conduct interviews with participants again using the same scenarios, and we will hold a focus group with the mentee teachers. This evaluation will help ECC understand whether the intervention has been successful and will gather data on ways the program can be improved moving forward.

ECC First 5 Alameda continues to work with LFA to evaluate its various programs targeting systems change in the early education community in Alameda County. Every Director Counts aims to increase the capacity of child care center directors to envision, plan for, and lead change that improves quality at their centers. LFA will evaluate the impact of participating directors’ Program Enhancement Plans in a two-phase project beginning with logic model development.