Rethinking processes helped Kitsap Community Resources half their enrollment time.

Challenge

When a parent told a family advocate at Kitsap Community Resources (KCR) that it was easier to apply for a car than enroll a kid in Head Start, staff knew they needed to rethink their enrollment processes.

At the time, parents had to handwrite numerous paper forms, many of them requesting duplicate information. Intake appointments took over an hour–or twice as long if a family had multiple children. If a child had allergies or other medical needs, it could take longer than 60 days for the child to start. Some families simply found alternative care, as they could not wait that long.

“We started asking ourselves, why is it taking so long? And how can we do it faster?” says John Hurley. (Hurley was then Family Services Manager at KCR, but he’s since been promoted to Deputy Director of Operations.)

The answer? KCR’s internal systems, including creating physical files for every child. The required paperwork was almost an inch thick.

Solution

Streamlining enrollment became KCR’s first improvement project with their QI Network coach.
Through empathy interviews with parents and staff about the current enrollment process, they learned that enrollment forms were cumbersome and repetitive.

Hurley and the family services team used process mapping to look at all of their systems and processes to find areas that could be combined. “I coded every question [from the intake forms] into an Excel spreadsheet,” he says. “I wrote down how many times we asked for date of birth, how many times do we ask for the doctor, how many times for the dentist, how many times for allergies…”

Adds Jill Brenner, KCR’s Director of Early Learning and Family Services, “John did this huge, beautiful flowchart of the process for a file from application to actual enrollment start.”

KCR also researched options for electronic forms. Based on cost and functionality, they eventually chose PandaDoc. Now, instead of parents writing the same information on multiple forms, much of the information is now autofilled. “You don’t have to write the kid’s name on every single piece of paper,” says Hurley.

To further simplify the process, they combined the health and eligibility interviews. “Now when our enrollment coordinator initially meets with families, they ask all those health questions about allergies or health concerns,” Hurley explains. If those questions spark any issues, the parent gets paperwork they can take to their doctor to create a plan. This avoids bottlenecks later in the process. The health manager Darcy Hermoso works on clearing children medically while enrollment coordinators work on income verification.

Results & Benefits

• Faster enrollment: Families can now enroll in KCR’s Head Start in as few as two days but rarely more than 30 days.
• Positive relationships with families: Under the prior enrollment process, parents knew when they heard from a KCR staff member, it meant more paperwork. “We didn’t want that to be the relationship that they’re forming,” Hurley says. “Now it’s about building relationships and having different conversations.”
• Expanded access: Initially, they rolled out the new enrollment process to English-speaking Head Start families. The rollout went so well in the first year that they’re now expanding it to Early Head Start and dual-language families.

The process took over a year from start to finish, but Brenner says it was worth it. “You need to take the time to do those tests in between and make sure you’re getting to the right solution,” she explains. KCR staff is now freed up to work on future improvement projects, too.

“[Our coaches] were our thinking partners. They helped us dive into the data we were trying to collect and they gave us ideas on what kind of improvement tools to use.”

-Jill Brenner, Director of Early Learning and Family Services, Kitsap Community Resources.  

“We were reminded that the parents are the experts. They’re the ones that have gone through the enrollment process.”

-John Hurley, Deputy Director of Operations, Kitsap Community Resources.