Listening Session Notes by Alessandra Pollock

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 18:22:22 UTC

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 18:22:36 UTC

Lack of knowledge about training/technical skills

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:40:22 UTC

Some people do not understand that training, learning to use tools, and self-care are part of the job of program management. This may be especially true for leaders of color who have experienced inequities. Others mentioned needing the technical skills to do the work (like reports, data collection on computer, putting data together in a nice format).

Challenges with in-person meetings and overall delivery of offerings

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:40:45 UTC

Others mentioned location, convenience of meeting, timing of workshops don't always work for the team. Request that workshop material could be brought to organizations in their own setting

Lack of funding and time (multiple responses)

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:43:49 UTC

Request for incentives (for time & travel) to participate to help with competing priorities. Some staff feel burned out after going to an offering but having to catch up on case notes or meeting clients or adding in a teach-back is also extra work. Request for STAR credits/merit points towards a degree for home visitors combined with support from supervisors to flex to attend workshops on the weekends. One person said having an "innovation" staff member, funded by KC, at their organization to learn and integrate IS materials.

Wait lists

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:44:51 UTC

-for professionals who speak Chinese and Vietnamese (OT, PT, others).

-enough interpreters, particularly Chinese and Vietnamese

Capacity (tied to funding)

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:46:21 UTC

-One organization has a deficit because they gave 5% cost of living increases, but grants didn't increase commensurately.

-One person said "taking on more providers and expanding services (enhanced trainings/workshops)"

-grant writing for funding sustainability

Learning about how IST helped a peer overcome programming challenges

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:46:45 UTC

Evaluation

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:46:58 UTC

Including participant reluctance and concern about sharing outcome or other data. Community trust and aligned evaluation.

More funding to hire program staff

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:47:06 UTC

Training for staff development

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:47:27 UTC

One person mentioned training home visitors to be supervisors, another mentioned training emerging youth and parent leaders to be co-facilitators.

Ability to follow/bill BSK for work done for families after children turn 5

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:48:00 UTC

Meeting increasing need--higher requests for services and more time needed for translation

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:48:35 UTC

Support or consultant provided directly to the program to start/continue/ move forward

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:49:03 UTC

Access to vetted service providers

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:49:26 UTC

This was mentioned in each session, once around OT/PT/speech therapy and another related to how to outsource mental health. Another example was a database of resources/people who are open to coming and having conversations with families.

New Communities Barrier

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:57:00 UTC

One person mentioned challenge with bridging the gap between knowing that a new (to org) community needed assistance, often because it was requested, but not having the funding to hire community-embedded staff. How do they bridge the gap?

Check ins on program development

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 20:59:32 UTC

Remembering the nuances of IS trainings, regular check ins would be welcome.

Partnerships

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 21:01:38 UTC

Supporting partnerships; connector to build relationships/ partnerships; help us know who we should connect with.

All the things at the federal level

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 21:02:27 UTC

Not sure how BSK could help, but these current topics (Medicaid, immigration policy, visas, family members picked up by ICE). There is pressure on organizations to have all of the answers in these hard times.

Family stress, provider/ organization stress, fear

alessandra201 — 2025-10-06 21:02:55 UTC

Seems to be worse than during the pandemic

Partners WITHOUT IS Experience

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:50:46 UTC

Want to build capacity for their volunteer program, community partnerships and connections to similar organizations as well as enhanced trainings on parent-child relationships.

Partners WITHOUT IS Experience

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:51:35 UTC

Were most interested in starting to implement, sustaining implementation, and learning and adaptation.

Partners WITHOUT IS Experience

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:52:12 UTC

Were most interested in Program Highlights Lunch and Learn and Design Workshops

What will happen with the information we've shared?

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:53:40 UTC

Discussion around 1:1 feedback for participating organizations

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:54:01 UTC

What reflections or feedback do you have for us?

Working with Hannah has always been helpful.

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:54:12 UTC

Having a physical safe space for families

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:54:54 UTC

Expanding geographically

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:55:07 UTC

Working with new youth populations

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:55:20 UTC

Continuing to meet ideas with curiosity

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:55:29 UTC

Continue to build connections

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:55:37 UTC

Partners WITHOUT IS Experience

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:57:57 UTC

These partners mentioned transportation, scheduling, childcare considerations

Partners WITHOUT IS Experience

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 17:59:55 UTC

Interested in learning from peers that work with refugee families and/or the African diaspora. Also learning from peers that work closely with their community and also finding peers that work closely with communities similar to other organizations.

Brainstorming

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:10:05 UTC

Breaking down logistics of steps

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:10:56 UTC

including what is needed to meet goals, deadlines, calendar, checklists, other planning, checking in with program leads, checklists with BSK and health departments.

Maintaining program stability

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:12:13 UTC

Including making the program offer enough to be able to go for other grants.

Sustained and Enough Funding

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:12:39 UTC

General funding challenges as well as for things like diapers and incentives.

Program Design Challenges

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:13:15 UTC

Scheduling conflicts with mothers who work, which makes it hard to reschedule sessions if one is missed.

Templates

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:14:07 UTC

Good for sharing and future reference

One-on-one support

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:14:23 UTC

Workshops and trainings

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:15:03 UTC

One person mentioned workshops that help with grant writing. Another person mentioned workshop focused on administrative work, including roles and knowing how to operate programming. One person mentioned learning from others and doing hands on activities as helpful.

Everyone receives materials in a different way.

alessandra201 — 2025-10-08 18:15:25 UTC

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:30:08 UTC

Having a person to guide us, having a sounding board to help us and look out for us

Brainstorming

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:36:08 UTC

Step by step questioning, help put on paper what we are thinking and use that as model for future programs.

Get a framework; clarity within team about what we hope to achieve and how we should go about within the framework.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:42:03 UTC

Helps to have team learn and hear things from someone outside of the org so we all develop and learn together, allows program leaders to participate vs. always leading/facilitating.

Others shared, assistance with budegeting, providing documents to guide teams.

Bolstered ability to manage and create change in really helpful ways with support of my team.

Cross-team learning was also great.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:45:10 UTC

Getting to learn from other teams and the ways that they are doing their work. Refreshing to hear other ideas, helps us to not get too stuck in our ways of doing things, but also think of other ways. Appreciated these opportunities.

1:1 facilitator was great at encouraging everyone to share what they needed and they paid attention to the details that were important to the team/agency.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:48:45 UTC

There was immediate trust, cultural understanding, and no need to over-explain our context.

Encouragement, focus, and clarity about our project.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:50:28 UTC

In-language Spanish supports were available in the workshops, that was meaningful to participants.

Findings

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 02:55:29 UTC

It would be helpful to know how BSK has interpreted our findings and is there anything we can do about it, community would like to hear back how information we have collected from the community and passed along to BSK has been used. Was it useful?

Funding

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 03:03:45 UTC

On going support to develop group (the day of the workshop (self care workshop?) we saw that there's a lot that could be done. But we need funding to continue it. Our work was smaller and so we need more funding to be able to keep those new ideas alive.

Additional support for grant applications.

Support to help prevent burnout

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 03:06:55 UTC

The self care workshop especially was very supportive. Through these supports were able to create a program (Parent, Power, Pathways) parents who graduated from home visiting and were ready to work were hired to become home visitors. Then supported to become supervisors. Reduction of turnover. Honors the whole people that we are.

Post-implementation opportunities and follow-up

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 04:48:29 UTC

1 year check in would be helpful to revisit and revise. Would be helpful to see what worked and what didn't etc.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 04:49:51 UTC

Low-tech versions for families without strong literacy, such as voice notes (audio) or visual formats.

Funding

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 04:58:29 UTC

Assistance with finding funding/how to find funding opportunities to support the programs.

Multiple people requested additional funding (sustainability)

Committed technical assistance: understanding on implementation like infrastructure and building budgets)

Mentorship to get program from paper to real life

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 04:59:57 UTC

Step by step guidance

Facilitators

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:05:29 UTC

Continue utilizing folks who have been through the process as facilitators.

Continue utilizing folks who identify with the race or culture of populations we serve being facilitators (Keep doing that!)

Workshops

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:08:58 UTC

Nice to have one at the beginning of grant, but would also be helpful to have another one later which focuses on what we have learned and future goals. Would be great to come back and do knowledge sharing with other organizations.

Shared learning/workshops

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:12:42 UTC

Would be interesting to understand what challenges other programs are experiencing, what works/what doesn't work. Additional shared learning opportunities would be helpful.

Separate workshops for each tool would be helpful.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:17:50 UTC

Revisiting the program practice profile with IST would be helpful.

Folks found the TOC and Evaluation tools helpful.

Adapt TOC-request to simplify the template/make it adaptable.

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:24:37 UTC

Request for certificate that shows participant has the skills and knowledge to do this type of work.

Meetings with the facilitator monthly/b-monthly would be valuable.

Supporting supervisors and managers in building the skills that make us good supervisors and managers: Leadership, team-building, e.g., through classes, workshops, coaching

Skill building

Request

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:25:31 UTC

Request for IST to support with measuring success beyond numbers? Family trust, empowerment, etc.

Tech tools

jannahosman5 — 2025-10-14 05:27:32 UTC

Request with technical support, learning new tools to assist with submitting grants, paperwork etc.

Improve Storyboard Icons

alessandra201 — 2025-10-14 22:32:06 UTC

Add adaptive tools or other images to better represent special needs and special services.