How ABCD uses the principles of co-design to foster effective collaborations
The success of many organizations like ours depends on authentically collaborating with the community members we aim to serve. ABCD’s mission is to partner with and build connections across healthcare, community agencies, and early childhood systems to expand best practices. An essential component of achieving this mission is partnering directly with families of young children and the providers that serve them.
The Problem
As part of ABCD's ongoing commitment to equity, we must reach linguistically diverse families whose primary language is not English. We know that we can only accomplish this through intentional, dedicated work.
So, What is Co-design?
Co-design is a collaborative process that builds relationships, explores key issues from multiple diverse perspectives, nurtures curiosity, and ensures services are designed, developed, and implemented with people and communities, not for them. It embodies the concept, "Nothing about us without us."
Creating Organizational Buy-In for Co-Design
ABCD's Executive Director, Eileen Auer Bennett, first developed an interest in co-design in 2021 at a training on Language Justice. She came across the book Beyond Sticky Notes and, prompted by the interest of several ABCD team members, started a staff book club to work through the concepts, tips, and guidance together. Through open discussion over several months, the ABCD team developed a shared ethos in their approach to co-design, laying the foundation for applying co-design throughout their work.
Co-design in Action: Striving for Meaningful Family Engagement
As a team, we first applied the co-design methodology to a project aiming to expand the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Learn the Signs. Act Early. program among linguistically diverse families and in-home childcare providers and populations whose primary language is not English.
Research shows that families whose primary language is not English children are less likely to receive standardized developmental screening in Colorado. To address this problem, we enlisted the leadership of local childcare providers and home visitors with lived experience and deep roots in their communities. This group included families and professionals from various backgrounds who speak Dari, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, and Arabic.
Photos from Summer 2024 Spanish language workshops co-designed alongside community leaders.
Together with our local experts, we identified vital content, developed a prototype training and materials relevant to their respective communities, recruited and trained 48 family participants, and collectively reached 75 children. After the pilot sessions were complete, our co-design team refined the training materials, reviewed participant feedback, and made adjustments for a second round of training. The co-design process created family and community buy-in, ultimately leading to more families whose primary language is not English seeking and receiving developmental screenings and referrals for their young children.
Expanding into New Projects
Our next experiment with co-design is a project to create a proof of concept for how child care health consultants can support the integration of oral health screenings and referrals into universal pre-K settings.
For this project, we are using co-design at different implementation levels. First, we have our internal partnership teams of ABCD and Healthy Child Care Colorado. In addition, we have additional partners in six Colorado communities who are tasked with shepherding the work forward in their respective communities. They will convene local design teams with support and guidance from our lead team.
ABCD's Executive Director, Eileen Auer Bennett, facilitates a planning discussion with Healthy Child Care Colorado and local design teams.
Thus far, we've trained all partners in co-design, empowering them to apply co-design principles in their communities. As this project moves into the implementation phase, we're looking forward to seeing how co-design fits and doesn't fit in various community settings.
The Challenges of Co-Design
Co-design is not a one-size-fits-all method. Implementing a co-design approach in any setting involves inherent challenges and questions, such as knowing when to use it and when not to use it, and barriers that run counter to it, like deadlines and outcomes expected by funders. Successfully implementing a co-design process requires buy-in, patience, and flexibility from all partners (including funders!).
Despite its challenges, we at ABCD believe that co-design is essential to embodying our commitment to equity and organizational values. The collaborative nature of our work calls for deeper, more intentional partnerships. Are you part of an organization that shares our mission to support young children in Colorado and their families? If so, we'd love to explore a partnership with you. Learn more about how to work with us here.