Disseminating best practices

The GWDC has compiled many best practices from the Families Forward grantees and has been able to disseminate a few of those best practices to the other grantees and other service providers in Minnesota. At the same time, disseminating best practices takes time and resources. As an example, the West Central Initiative Fund's "Grow Your Own IT Professional" training program came up as a best practice while the GWDC staff were discussing public policy changes with the West Central Initiative staff. The program assists small companies in training their own staff to become IT professionals, so businesses do not have to contract out for much of their IT support work. Through the program, theory work can be done on-line, and classroom work revolves around applying that theory. Employers then pay their employees for the time they spend in the classroom, and employees spend their personal time completing the web-based portion of the training. The timing is built around working for both the employer and employee. This option is also more cost effective for the local college campus. The West Central Initiative Families Forward project has used the "Grow Your Own IT Professional" training program for some of its Families Forward participants. However, many of the people in the "Grow Your Own IT Professional" program do not need the support services provided through the Families Forward project because the program is designed so well.

As the GWDC and West Central Initiative staff were discussing this program, the question came up as to who already knows about the success of this program and how should the program be disseminated across Minnesota. The GWDC recognizes that after it completes its McKnight Families Forward work, there will not be an organization or person in Minnesota working to increase coordination and collaboration among service providers who are serving low income working parents or workforce development service providers more generally.