The Mansfield Children's Blueprint

WHAT IS THIS BLUEPRINT ABOUT?
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY BLUEPRINT?
Traditionally, a blueprint is a technical drawing used by architects or engineers. However, the term “blueprint” has come to mean any plan that charts a course to accomplish something and details exactly how this goal will be accomplished. Community blueprints are plans that are developed with input from broad audiences, with the idea of allowing the community as a whole to agree upon a set of top priorities and to provide a detailed plan by which the different community entities will work together to achieve certain changes within the community.

BACKGROUND:
The Town Mansfield applied for and received a grant from the William C. Graustein Memorial Fund and the State of CT Early Childhood Cabinet to develop a community-wide blueprint to improve the lives and success of the young children in Mansfield, ages birth to eight. We are just beginning this community plan, and are eager to involve anyone in the community who would like to be involved.

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY:
This grant affords Mansfield an opportunity that is rarely available. It is an opportunity for Mansfield to have an effort that is solely dedicated to determining how we want to move forward as a community to improve the lives of our young children and make them more successful. Specifically, this community plan gives us a chance to think hard about what comprehensive and system-wide reforms we need. Rather than focusing on individual programs or schools, our efforts will work on how the community works together – across programs and departments and sectors – to improve the lives of young children. At the end of 12 months, we aim to have a comprehensive plan that the entire community agrees upon.

APPROACH:
The first step is to develop a Leadership Work Group, a group of leaders who can dive into the details and guide this plan to completion. The Mansfield Advocates for Children (MAC) is the group that will convene the planning process and serve as the champion of this initiative and recruit the Leadership Work Group. Our goal is for this Leadership Work Group is to be inclusive and capable of reaching out to and consulting with all segments of the community. Immediately after we form this Leadership Work Group, our next step is to articulate our vision for early care and education and then collect and analyze data to identify the most pressing gaps and hardships that children and families in Mansfield face that make it challenging to achieve this vision. Once we identify our proposed gaps, we will present the draft to the community to determine if these are the same gaps that everyone else is experiencing. After we as a community agree on the major gaps, we will draft specific strategies to address these gaps. For example, if we learn that there is insufficient infant and toddler care to meet the demand, a strategy might be to work with current providers to learn what is needed to expand the slots in the community. After we collectively agree on the strategies to address the gaps, we will document baseline data and set benchmarks and targets for the plan, creating a way to measure progress and to hold ourselves accountable.

TIMELINE:
How long does all of this planning take? This is a 12-month process, with the plan completed by June 30, 2009.

GETTING INVOLVED:
If you are interested in getting involved, we would love to work with you! Please contact Sandy Baxter 860-429-3338, Baxtersp@mansfieldct.org