Baby face qualitative Evaluation

Connecting and building relationships with agencies 
Parent educators worked hard to build relationships with potential referral agencies,
most successfully by visiting or attending meetings with agencies, as noted by 22 parent 
educators and eight supervisors across 13 sites. Some went directly to agency offices to make 
connections, whereas others attended community meetings to meet other agencies and share 
information, or attended resource fairs where they could get information on multiple agencies in 
one place. In many cases the referral relationship was reciprocal in that they accepted referrals 
into the Baby FACE program as well as referring Baby FACE families to the agencies.
Just actually going up to their office, telling them I am from the Baby FACE program, serving young 
mothers, [and] seeking information on what resources they have, handouts that you can give 
[parents]. 
I went out into the community. I am on the [blank] advisory board for their oral health study. I sat on 
that board and attended those meetings. We all shared numbers and emails. 
You just reach out to them. You know the people in the various departments. You just bond with 
the resources that are similar to the resources you are offering to the families. 
We have an inter-agency community committee. They invite all the resource folks that are in your 
community. Those are monthly meetings during the school year. You can make pretty good 
connections, going to those meetings.
At the beginning, one of the first things the parent educators did was spending a lot of time making 
contacts with community agencies. They have a wide range of resources in the community. There 
are inter-agency meetings monthly, which is a time when all the different agencies, different tribal 
organizations, police, IHS, all those sorts of people come. They have lunch, have speakers, and 
get to meet each other and talk. 

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