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This month Home Grown celebrates three years of creating and funding crucial supports for home-based child care.<\/a> Launched in October 2019, the organization\u2019s collaborative model for innovation and replication has generated life-changing programs and policy initiatives for providers, families, and children across the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collaboration Sustains Momentum <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike most \u201cbig bets\u201d\u2014high-risk, high-reward initiatives backed by established funders\u2014Home Grown is structured as a funders collaborative, where funders align their own missions and money behind Home Grown\u2019s initiatives and pool their money to underwrite staffing and administrative costs of the organization. \u201cWe\u2019re successful,\u201d says Executive Director Natalie Renew, \u201cbecause we really work together, learn together, and solve problems together.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Provider Leadership <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Provider voice and leadership are essential to Home Grown\u2019s success. An advisory of seven providers, including both licensed family child care (FCC) and family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) caregivers, keeps the organization grounded in the problems, priorities, and strengths that matter most to providers and families. Additionally, a provider-in-residence, who advises on strategy and program development and co-leads select initiatives, is embedded into the staffing structure of Home Grown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The open channel between providers and staff also enables the organization to build momentum around key issues, says Renew. \u201cWe listen hard to what they need, what they want, what they hope for themselves and for their programs. We\u2019re able to amplify their messages, their desires, and also to build programs and policy initiatives around their goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Home Grown launched the Leading from Home<\/a> initiative to support provider leaders as they seek to have a voice in policy and decision-making and to grow their local networks of providers and parents. More than 30 provider leaders participate, collaborating with their fellow leaders across the country and provider mentors as they work for positive change for home-based child care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Innovation Sparks Replicable and Scalable Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, the goal of the organization is to be a kind of innovation lab, to test and refine solutions in local networks until they can be replicated and scaled to work on a state or national level. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Supporting Family, Friend, and Neighbor Caregivers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Home Grown is a leader in elevating and supporting the work of FFN caregivers. Ruth Evangelista, a home-based provider in Minnesota whose first language is Spanish, is the leader of the network La RED Latina de Educaci\u00f3n Temprana in Richfield, Minnesota. La RED Latina was a recipient of the Home Grown emergency funding, the first such funding La RED Latina received. Through her involvement with Home Grown, she and her network of more than 100 providers were able to convince state regulators to include FFNs and home-based providers in benefits previously channeled exclusively to childcare centers. She notes that home-based care is the preferred choice for many Spanish speaking immigrants but \u201cthe system doesn’t always work for us.\u201d In Ruth\u2019s three years on Home Grown\u2019s advisory board, the network she leads has gained both strength and recognition as a leading force for change in the child care community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Programs and Policy Initiatives Are Powered by Story<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A key pillar of Home Grown\u2019s work is movement building, lifting the visibility and perception of home-based child care providers. \u201cBy telling these stories, Home Grown has illuminated both the value and the struggle\u2014and the value in the struggle\u2014 of home-based providers,\u201d says Joan Lombardi, an advisor to philanthropic foundations. \u201cWhile families sitting around the kitchen table understand how critical child care is to their ability to get to work everyday and participate in the American economy, many of the men who dominate the decision-making process at the national level, still don\u2019t see child care as everybody\u2019s problem. They still see child care as the family\u2019s problem, not the nation\u2019s problem. Home Grown is working to change that through vivid storytelling and smart data curation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Home Grown\u2019s website houses a wealth of resources that document both fledgling research and key data about the state of childcare, and home-based care. They send a monthly newsletter that reaches more than 4000 readers, including home-based providers, funders, state administrators, network leaders, policy makers, and advocates. Renew sits on the board of the RAPID Survey Project<\/a>, which collects and distributes reliable and relevant data about the needs and well-being of the adults in young childrens\u2019 lives. Home Grown\u2019s communications team adds flesh to the bones of the data story by sharing the voices, stories, and wisdom of home-based providers themselves, like Diane Gardner, president of Quality Influential Professionals, a Philadelphia network serving 65 family child care providers that recently gained 501(c)(3) status, with Home Grown\u2019s technical assistance and legal support. Gardner\u2019s final word is a fitting summary of Home Grown\u2019s compassionate, clear-eyed intentions, and its power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re just starting a home-based child care business, you learn by baby steps,\u201d she says. \u201cThat’s the way I look at Home Grown. They are there to support us as we make our first steps. They cheer us on, they give us resources, they give us access to experts who can support our goals. They have the tools to show us how we can make our organization stand alone, and they help us tell our stories. And yet, if we fall down or make a mistake, they are also there to pick us up and help us get back on our feet\u2014just like we do for our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n