New Hampshire Council for Thriving Children
The Opportunity: The Council for Thriving Children serves as New Hampshire's Advisory Council on Early Childhood Care and Education. Co-led by the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services, Council membership includes a cross-section of state leaders, legislators, higher education, parents, and early childhood stakeholders appointed by the Governor. As a recipient of the federal Preschool Development Grant, the Council needed to update the statewide strategic plan for early childhood, addressing needs and opportunities from prenatal through age eight.
Our Services: The Council engaged in a comprehensive, inclusive strategic planning process designed to guide the collaborative work of New Hampshire’s early childhood system over the next three years. A Steering Committee was formed to guide the work.
The process began with an analysis phase, including a scan of the early childhood system and its environmental landscape. Extensive information was gathered and analyzed about the current performance of the early childhood system.
Additionally, focus groups and interviews with stakeholders provided insights into the system’s strengths and assets, weaknesses and gaps, opportunities for enhancement, and barriers to change.
Following the Analysis Phase, GSG facilitated an interactive strategy design session with the Strategic Planning Subcommittee to craft a draft strategic plan framework, including priority outcomes, strategic themes, and objectives.
Strategy Teams were formed of Strategic Planning Subcommittee members and a variety of statewide stakeholders to recommend system-level strategic initiatives to accomplish the objectives within each strategic theme. Through a series of meetings, GSG facilitated teams to research local and national effective practices and promising approaches. This research was used as a basis for generating ideas for strategic initiatives. The initiatives deemed to be most impactful based on relevant criteria were recommended by the teams to be included in the plan. The teams documented the research, rationale, and implementation considerations for each of the recommended initiatives to support future implementation planning.
Subsequently, a series of community forums, including a statewide virtual forum, were held with early childhood stakeholders in order to ensure the strategic plan addressed their perceived needs and opportunities.
The Council voted unanimously to approve the strategic plan, including a set of performance metrics to assess progress on the priority outcomes.
Results: The complete strategic plan report, a one page overview of the strategic plan framework, and additional information on our Analysis, work of the Strategy Teams, and stakeholder engagement is available here.