The Parent Leadership Collaborative (PLC) is composed of parents and caregivers from diverse cultures, economic backgrounds, vocations, family structures, ages, and genders. Our group first started meeting in 2022 with the purpose of improving early childhood care services for children in the Greater New Orleans area. What we realized is that often parents and caregivers, who know their kids better than anyone else, are overlooked in the decision-making process for their own children.
We knew this approach needed to change.
However, rather than creating division and putting parents and caregivers at odds with service providers, we decided that building trust and collaborating with service providers would be the best path forward. With our intention firmly set, the PLC established common values, and standards, and based on these, developed a comprehensive assessment tool for evaluating early childhood care service providers. Working with a group of 10 Greater New Orleans area service providers and trained assessors, we performed an initial pilot phase to test the assessment tool.
When we released the findings of the pilot, every organization involved said the evaluations were helpful and would improve their services. Building on what we learned, PLC updated the assessment tool in 2026. Trained parent assessors now visit each program in pairs and look at four areas: Orienting Toward Parent and Family Service, Treating Parents as Collaborators, Building Partnerships, and Practicing Equity. In spring 2026, our parent assessors reviewed nine early childhood programs across Greater New Orleans. We see the PLC and this tool as a way for parents and caregivers to work with, not against, service providers, so every child in Greater New Orleans has the opportunities needed to thrive.
Below are our values that have guided the PLC and our approach.
Parents and caregivers are the experts on their own children. We give families the tools, training, and confidence to help shape the programs that serve them.
We are open and honest about our work, our results, and how decisions are made. Families and providers can count on us to do what we say.
Everyone is welcome here. We bring families together across neighborhoods, parishes, and languages, because children do better when families are connected.
We work side by side with parents, caregivers, and service providers. Lasting change happens when we build it together.
We honor every family's experience and every voice at the table. Parents are partners, never problems to fix.
