By Alecia Murray
Why Alecia Murray stepped forward as a Parent Fellow to champion Child Care and Early Education
The path that led me to serve as a Parent Fellow reflects everyday parenting, community resilience, and the power of lived experience changed into advocacy. As the oldest of seven, a mother of four, and a former aerobics instructor who rediscovered a love for holistic health, my story is rooted in family, practical learning, and a belief that parents must be centered in policy conversations about Child Development and program design.
My earliest breakthrough as a parent advocate started when my three young boys enrolled in a home-based Head Start program. What felt like failure at home—workbooks that produced frustration instead of interest—was transformed by a teacher who demonstrated learning through play and daily routines. That experience reframed how I think about Early Education: it’s not mere preparation for school, it’s a full-spectrum process that nurtures curiosity, relationship-building, and confidence.
Concrete moments that clarified the mission
There are several vivid moments that explain why I stay engaged.
- The lightbulb moment: Seeing a child use blocks to solve a counting problem after days of struggling with worksheets.
- Community healing: The Parent Ambassador program provided a place to share hardships and solutions, turning individual stress into collective strength.
- Momentum from training: Completing year-long trainings through organizations like OPAN gave me tools and the confidence to organize others.
Each of those moments showed me that parent perspectives are not anecdotal extras; they are central evidence needed to design equitable policy. They also clarified why family voices must be at the table with policymakers and program leaders if we want truly accessible and effective child care systems.
Lessons for practitioners and families
For educators and administrators, the lesson is to create entry points for parents that are respectful, practical, and sustained. For parents, the lesson is simple: your observations are data. Over time, parental insights aggregate into patterns that reveal where programs succeed and where systems need redesign.
- Invite parents early in curriculum planning and evaluation cycles.
- Provide accessible training so parents can translate experiences into advocacy language.
- Document and share real-life examples to bridge classroom practices with policy goals.
These practices help transform individual parenting moments into organized Parent Advocacy that improves outcomes for children throughout a community. This personal-to-political trajectory is the heartbeat of my work as a Champion for family-centered systems.
Insight: When parents are positioned as partners rather than recipients, Child Care and Early Education evolve into systems that sustain families and nurture lifelong learning.
Building collective power: Parent Advocacy networks and community leadership in early learning
My experience co-founding the OPAN Alumni Group and participating in networks like UPLAN and NAFSCE taught me that sustained change requires organized communities and shared leadership. A single parent can inspire, but a coordinated group can redirect resources and reshape programs at the state and national level.
In practical terms, building collective power includes recruiting diverse parent voices, providing training that turns lived experience into strategy, and maintaining structures that keep alumni engaged beyond a single cohort. These elements ensure continuity and institutional memory.
Strategies that worked in forming and sustaining an alumni group
When our cohort finished a year-long training, many of us felt energized but needed ways to continue contributing. The alumni group formed as a solution to that energy gap.
- Maintain regular gatherings — monthly check-ins with clear agendas that include policy briefings and peer coaching.
- Create roles — leadership roles within the alumni network to distribute responsibility and build capacity.
- Partner strategically — align with organizations that can amplify parent voices and offer technical expertise.
A case in point: our alumni helped shape state-level conversations about home-based early learning supports by compiling personal stories that illustrated barriers to access. Those narratives complemented academic research and made the case more compelling to policymakers.
Partnerships also matter. For information on how education leaders in other contexts advance local change, I often point colleagues toward profiles that inspire cross-pollination of ideas, such as innovative local efforts or resources that connect health and education like pediatric care guides.
How to scale parent-led initiatives
Scaling is not just expansion; it’s the careful replication of what matters most: meaningful roles for parents, continuous capacity building, and strong feedback loops between families and decision-makers. We emphasize:
- Documentation of promising practices so other communities can adapt them.
- Coaching that equips parents with meeting facilitation, storytelling, and policy interpretation skills.
- Visibility through public events and media to elevate parent contributions.
In 2025, those tactics are even more important as policy windows shift and communities seek scalable, family-centered solutions. The alumni group model shows that when parents are supported to lead, the community gains a durable, informed force for advocacy.
Insight: Organized parent networks convert individual experience into policy leverage, creating a multiplier effect for Community Leadership and program improvement.
Translating lived experience into policy: learning policy with CLASP and practical tools for advocates
Being selected as a Parent Fellow provided a chance to deepen my understanding of how policy is made, implemented, and sustained. Policy fluency is essential if parents are to influence budgets, licensing rules, workforce supports, and program standards impacting Child Care and Early Education.
CLASP’s emphasis on demystifying policy allowed me to connect family stories with concrete policy levers. For example, instead of simply saying, “families need more access,” we learned to translate that into specific proposals: increased subsidies, home-visiting support, and incentives for family child care providers to improve quality and affordability.
Tools and tactics taught in fellowship workshops
The curriculum included a mix of workshops, peer learning, and applied assignments. These are replicable for other parent leaders interested in advocacy.
- Policy mapping — identifying which agencies and committees control funding and regulation.
- Message framing — crafting narratives that combine data and lived experience.
- Stakeholder analysis — knowing allies and opponents in a local campaign.
We practiced preparing one-page briefs that paired personal stories with research citations and budgetary asks. This kind of product is powerful when delivered to legislators or program directors and helps families translate values into actionable policy recommendations.
To expand reach, I’ve shared tools and resources with parent groups working on topics from family math engagement to digital learning practices—areas where parents can both contribute and learn. For instance, resources that examine screen time and learning provide useful evidence for conversations about technology in classrooms, such as articles on how screens affect child learning and pieces on how teachers can use tech productively like education technology guides.
From policy training to local wins
One applied example: using policy mapping and a brief, our group convinced a county advisory board to pilot stipends for home visiting kits that included math materials and books. Partnering with a local family math initiative helped demonstrate measurable increases in parent confidence and child engagement.
- Measure outcomes — collect baseline and follow-up data tied to pilot goals.
- Promote stories — combine quantitative results with qualitative testimonials.
- Build sustained support — ask for multi-year commitments where possible.
Insight: Learning how policy functions empowers families to move beyond testimony to co-creating solutions that are fundable, measurable, and scalable.
Family engagement and education support: practical strategies for caregivers, programs, and community partners
Family engagement is more than occasional events; it’s a systematic approach to inviting families into meaningful roles that support Child Development. My work on the Family Math Parent Advisory Council illustrated how subject-specific family engagement builds confidence and creates joyful learning opportunities that persist at home.
Successful family engagement strategies share common features: they are culturally responsive, resource-rich, and designed with flexible access in mind. They also recognize parents as co-teachers and co-designers of learning experiences.
Concrete strategies that programs can adopt
Programs aiming to improve family engagement might implement multiple, complementary approaches:
- Home-based coaching that models playful learning and offers take-home materials.
- Family workshops focused on specific skills like early math, literacy routines, or nutrition.
- Peer supports where experienced parents mentor newcomers, creating trust and continuity.
These strategies work together. For example, a program that offers home coaching plus monthly family math nights will likely see stronger uptake and sustained behavior change than a program that offers only workshops.
Resources to inform program design abound. For inspiration on creative family-facing program launches, including events and community partnerships, see examples like the children’s adventure grand openings that mobilize families and local partners. Programs should also be attentive to family health and well-being, connecting families to pediatric resources when needed, such as guidance found at trusted health and education intersections like pediatric care resources.
Measuring success and adapting practices
Evaluation should balance quantitative measures (attendance, developmental screen results) and qualitative indicators (parent satisfaction, anecdotal reports of confident play). Use simple tools that families can complete quickly and that staff can analyze for trends.
- Identify goals — specify what family engagement should change (e.g., increase shared reading, boost math talk at home).
- Collect baseline data — a short family survey or a few observational notes provide a starting point.
- Iterate — adjust programming based on what families report and what the data show.
Insight: When Education Support actively involves families as partners, children benefit from coherent learning environments across home and program settings.
Scaling impact: connecting local solutions to statewide and national Community Leadership strategies
Local innovations must be translated to broader systems to achieve lasting change. My experiences with Groundwork Ohio and statewide boards helped me see both the promise and challenges of scaling family-centered initiatives.
Successful scale-up requires attention to workforce, financing, and quality standards. For example, strengthening the early childhood workforce through training and compensation incentives directly affects program stability and child outcomes. Advocates must articulate how investments in workforce and family supports produce long-term returns for children and communities.
Key components to consider when scaling
There are practical levers that matter most in scale efforts.
- Workforce development — pathways for early educators and family child care providers to advance in skills and pay.
- Funding mechanisms — stable subsidy schemes and mixed revenue models that sustain quality improvements.
- Data systems — interoperable data that connect child outcomes, family engagement metrics, and program quality indicators.
One example of productive scaling is adapting a successful family-math engagement pilot to a regional model. The pilot’s instructional materials, parent coaching scripts, and evaluation templates were packaged so other communities could adopt them with minimal adaptation. That process involved training trainers, sharing budgets, and identifying local champions to lead implementation.
To build alliances across sectors, it’s useful to highlight cross-cutting projects—from health partnerships to STEM initiatives like those led by community researchers—and to learn from varied contexts such as international or crisis-affected areas. Resources that profile diverse educational hubs, including work in places like Flint or South Sudan, shed light on transferable strategies and the need for local adaptation; examples include projects featured on topics such as STEM education research and educational centers in humanitarian contexts.
Practical checklist for advocates seeking to scale
- Document fidelity — specify which elements must be preserved and which can be adapted.
- Build funding pathways — combine public, philanthropic, and local revenue to diversify risk.
- Invest in champions — support local leaders, including parents, to sustain momentum.
Insight: Scaling is most sustainable when it preserves family voice, invests in people, and ties local evidence to policy levers that secure ongoing resources and accountability.