Children’s Cabinet work groups outline messaging, innovative models and website support to reduce navigation fatigue

Work groups at the Children’s Cabinet meeting summarized recent work on promotion, innovative childcare models and strategies to retain licensed providers.

Clayton reported his promotion and marketing group developed an approach to audience‑specific talking points for parents, licensed and unlicensed providers, and community members. The group is drafting language focused on care, staffing and facility information to help with provider retention and community outreach.

Jarvis and other members discussed elevating existing models — including small center pilots, childcare incubators and district‑led programs — and creating succinct one‑page explainers so communities can learn from models that have worked elsewhere. Jarvis noted potential policy tools to share, such as tax credits, and emphasized that provider wages are a core barrier to long‑term stability.

On information access, members said providers face "navigation fatigue" from many changing sources and proposed supporting a group to advise the Office of Early Childhood and KDHE websites so key information is consistent and audience‑specific. One member summarized the group’s priorities as: "transparency, user friendly language, and just, like, acknowledging there's just a lot for everybody to be, wading through when it comes to information." The group recommended revisiting an interpretive guide for providers and ensuring licensing specialists have up‑to‑date information to reduce repeated referrals.

The meeting broke into work groups for the remainder of the session; members were asked to take notes and the groups will reconvene and share summaries at the next Cabinet meeting.