Children's Summit: About the Summit

About the Summit

This year's Minnesota Children's Summit, Smart Policies, Strong Families, was sponsored by the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Foundation. The Summit took place on Monday, March 28, 2005. The Summit emphasized the relation between family functioning and policy. Families are vital to the well-being of their members, including children, adolescents, adults, and elders, and so are the communities, institutions, and public life that sustain them. The focus of this Summit was on how decisions made at all levels - from the legislature to the workplace, from the church to the community center - impact diverse families and their ability to support and sustain their members. Minnesota has an opportunity to take a leadership role in responding to the needs of families and the policies that influence them.

The goals of the Summit Series includes:

Present current knowledge of the needs and strengths of Minnesota's children, youth and families;

Assess the ways we are addressing child, youth and family well-being in our communities and through our public policies;

Strengthen connections among the state's researchers, practitioners, and community leaders so that they can better collaborate in finding solutions to the challenges that face children, youth, and families; and

Develop action plans and next steps that can be taken to achieve better outcomes for children, youth and families.

This year’s Summit added to the work of previous years. In 2003, Starting Strong emphasized the early foundations of healthy development and learning – and the programs, policies, practices, and conditions that enable children and their families to thrive and succeed. Continuing a similar thread, the subsequent Summit focused on challenges and opportunities at later stages of development, again with a focus on what needs to happen in families, schools, communities and the society-at-large to promote good outcomes for children and youth. Strong Policies, Smart Families will incorporate what has been learned in the first two Summit and will also address the relation between family functioning and policy.

Minnesota Children’s Summit 2005 Program Documents

Practicing Family Impact Analysis Notes

Preamble

Thank you for your participation in the Minnesota Children’s Summit 2005: Smart Policies, Strong Families on Monday, March 28th. As part of the day you had the opportunity to practice family impact analysis in small groups. Eleven different groups used the Family Impact Checklist to assess the impact of a policy or program on families. An individual was assigned to take notes during each of these practice sessions. The summaries of the discussions that took place during each of the sessions follow below. It is important to note that the individuals who took notes did so in varied ways so a lack of consistency across the notes may be apparent. In addition, the intent of the notes is to be a summary of the discussion that took place during each of the sessions. Each discussion varied in content and format as is reflected in the notes. The notes represent the range of discussions that took place as groups practiced family impact analysis.

It is also important to note that the break out sessions were intended to provide participants with the flavor of the Family Impact Checklist, and to offer a chance to briefly practice using it. The sessions were not intended to result in a statement of family impact about the policy or program under review. Therefore, the notes below should not be used to draw conclusions about the family impact of any particular policies or programs.

Family Impact Checklist (National Council on Family Relations)

Principle 1. Family support and responsibilities
Principle 2. Family membership and stability
Principle 3. Family involvement and inter-dependence
Principle 4. Family partnership and empowerment
Principle 5. Family diversity
Principle 6. Support of vulnerable families

Notes from the Sessions:
Adoption and Safe Family Act (pdf)
All-Day Kindergarten (pdf)
Alternative Response 1 (pdf)
Alternative Response 2 (pdf)
Consumer-Directed Community Supports (pdf)
Early Childhood Family Education (pdf)
Family and Medical Leave Act (pdf)
Housing for the Long-Term Homeless (pdf)
MinnesotaCare (pdf)
State Children's Health Insurance Program (pdf)
Youth Programming (pdf)