Frequently Asked Questions

Who should be included in my Cohort team?

Team composition will look different for every state or community, so we encourage teams to think about including 5-6 members who are good collaborators in general and who have the capacity to impact change specifically on the challenges your team seeks to address in your community. As a reminder, each team is required to have at least one currently operating family child care provider team member. Other team members can represent a variety of roles, including appointed advisors and commissioners, CCDF Administrators, QRIS leaders, advocates, union leaders, chairs of local early childhood councils, community-based organizations, and more. See below for some examples of participants and organizations from last year’s pilot Cohort*:

• Director of Early Childhood Accountability and Access, [State] Department of Education

• Policy Director, [State] Policy Institute for Children

• Child Care Contract Manager, Workforce Solutions for [County]

• Program Officer, Charitable Foundation

• President, Family Child Care Providers Association

• President, Child Care Aware of [State]

• Senior Policy Analyst, Advocates for Children of [State]

• Director of Quality Early Learning, Child Care Associates

• Resource and Referral Assistant Director, Child Care Resource Center

*Please note that family child care providers were not required participants for the pilot Cohort. This year it is a requirement that at least one currently operating family child care provider be a team member.

What is a “cohort” and what is a “team”?

The “cohort” is the group of teams from across the country participating in the “Creating the Conditions” Cohort (i.e., there might be five teams participating in the Cohort). The “team” is the 5-6 people in your state/community that you are applying for the Cohort with. The Cohort is all of the teams together, while the team is the group of people from your community who you will be working closely with to change policy, practice, or systems.

How should my team pay the $5,000 participation fee?

There are different ways your team might fund the participation fee. Teams should identify a source of funding that makes sense for them. We encourage teams to consider different funding sources including your organization, philanthropy or funders, state funds, or federal funds.

What will a team do together?

Through the “Creating the Conditions” Cohort, teams will have the opportunity to identify an issue related to family child care in their community and work toward progress on that issue through the creation and execution of a family child care policy agenda. All Our Kin will support teams to understand their local family child care context, create a tailored policy agenda, build relationships with necessary stakeholders, increase internal capacity, and learn from national experts and other leaders in the field to impact meaningful change for family child care in their communities. More information on Cohort activities can be found in the “Creating the Conditions” Overview.

What is the time commitment for being in the Cohort?

The formal meeting time for the “Creating the Conditions” Cohort is as follows:

• Three full Cohort meetings, approximately 1.5 hours each (launch, midpoint, wrap-up)

• Seven individual team meetings between November-May, approximately 1-hour each

Outside of those meetings, the work that teams will do is meant to be aligned with work that you and your team members seek to do or are already doing, and will depend on the issue or challenge that your team identifies to work on. Our hope is that the “Creating the Conditions” cohort will help to enhance and support ongoing work and will therefore fall within that time.

What are the responsibilities of the Team Lead?

The Team Lead will serve as the main point of contact for the team and will be responsible for coordinating with All Our Kin to schedule and plan meetings, co-create meeting agendas, and facilitate the team’s progress on policy agenda goals. In addition to the time commitment described in Question #5, The team lead might also spend an additional 30 minutes - 1 hour each month supporting meeting coordination and preparation alongside All Our Kin’s team.

How are we expected to compensate family child care provider participants? Is there a range you can provide?

We want to be mindful that compensation of family child care provider participants might look different for every team, so we do not have an exact range to provide. However, it is our recommendation that provider participants be compensated for their time in the same way that other team members would, which could look like translating a team member’s salary into an hourly rate and using that to compensate the provider for the time she spends in Cohort meetings and supporting the work in between meetings. Additionally, it is our recommendation that each team support a process for compensating provider participants that does not place undue administrative burden on providers.