Transforming Together: Implementation Guide
• Structural and cultural barriers : Engagement efforts are frequently designed around agency convenience rather than community access. Meetings are scheduled during working hours, materials are only in English, and expectations for participation often ignore real constraints such as transportation, child care, or digital access. In addition, agencies may lack staff who reflect the communities they serve, limiting cultural competence and trust. • Limited internal capacity and skills : Public agencies are rarely structured or resourced to support deep, sustained community engagement. Staff may lack training in participatory practices or may not have the time, tools, or authority to meaningfully involve families and community leaders in planning and decision- making. Engagement is often siloed rather than integrated into the agency’s core functions. • Power imbalances remain unaddressed : Even when agencies invite communities to the table, they may fail to examine or shift the underlying power dynamics. Authentic shared decision-making requires not just inviting input, but actively sharing authority, ceding control, and valuing lived experience alongside professional expertise. Without intentional power-sharing, engagement efforts can reinforce rather than repair inequities.
Tool Spotlight: The Examples of Community Need, Mission Statements & Evidence (ESC Toolkit) shows how other communities have elevated lived experience into formal mission statements, offering models counties can adapt to codify power distribution meaningfully. When counties center community voices— especially from historically underserved groups—in their needs assessment and priority-setting processes, they gain clearer goals, more durable support, and stronger results. Outcomes that are shaped and informed by community input can lead to: 1 Stronger measurement of impact across systems Many agencies in California track similar outcomes—such as school readiness, family stability, and youth well-being—but they do so in isolation and with different approaches. When agencies come together to compare and align their data, they can better understand how their efforts overlap, reinforce one another, and contribute to shared efforts. For example, in one county data from different agencies illuminated the finding that children at risk of entering the foster care system were more successful when enrolled in alternative, community pathways, such as those funded under the Family First Prevention Services Act (fewer children entering foster care is the goal of FFPSA); county leaders hypothesized these pathways programs, which provide support services before families and children before kindergarten, are effective at helping children become ”school-ready” and more successful learners–and they chose to expand investments in similar community programs.
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