Whole Family Systems

Building Bridges to Digital Equity and Early Childhood Education

Overview

Whole Family Systems (WFS) focuses on addressing the challenges of refugee and immigrant families in early child development. The program is a family-driven model that identifies current issues, with inclusive and equitable family-driven solutions to inform shifts in programs, policy, and practice at the state level.

It is a partnership between the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Build Initiative, and local community sites. WFS a multi-year, co-created process intended to develop and expand upon the previous policy and system change work done through the 2-Gen Policy Network (Cohort 1) and Early Childhood System Reform.

Economic Assistance and Employment Supports, Child Care Services, and Child Safety and Permanency divisions are partnering to fund this second group of local sites. Braiding funding and multi-year contracts allow Whole Family Systems to break down program silos to uncover the address systemic influences on racial, geographic, and economic inequities and to support coordination across the programs and systems that serve children and families.

Read more about the program by watching the video below or reading the brochure by clicking here.

Two Current Prototypes

Early Childhood Learning Access

IMAA partners with families who are part of the cohort for digital equity and literacy to identify and address the social-cultural determinants and the systemic policies, practices, programs, initiatives, funding, governance, data and communications that impact immigrant family access to and engagement with early childhood learning programs in southern Minnesota. The project will also work for the continued engagement of parents when their children transition from pre-kindergarten into Kindergarten. The project will break down barriers in state and local programming and identify new opportunities to increase access to early childhood learning.

Digital Equity and Literacy

Provide laptops, internet access and digital literacy training to address the digital equity gaps for immigrant and refugee families. Families will have opportunities to be successful by having access to virtual learning and other family needs such as communicating with teachers, childcare providers and other formal and informal supports.

After conducting interviews with Year 3 families, we discovered that a significant hurdle for many of them is accessing information. In response, our WFS team collaborated closely with our Core Team and implementation partners to develop an Early Education Resource Timeline.

Although the timeline may not encompass every detail, it highlights crucial dates and application processes for families navigating the early childhood education system. Furthermore, it includes links to various resources that families can utilize for additional support.

Click on the links below to the right to access the resources listed in the timeline.

Early Education Resource Timeline – Spanish

Early Education Resource Timeline – English