HARKNESS

How do we support whānau in the critical first 2,000 days of a child’s life to give them the best chance of having a healthy and productive life?

Our 2023 Harkness Fellow Aimee Hadrup set out to find answers to that question, exploring how innovative place-based initiatives underway in the US to help inform thinking around how our public service can better support communities to lead their own wellbeing responses. 

In this Q&A, Aimee reflects on her fellowship experience, which included time spent at the renowned Harvard University Center on the Developing Child.

Where and when did you complete your Harkness fellowship?

I travelled to the U.S. in October 2023 and came back early February 2024. I squeezed a lot in –  spending time in Washington D.C., Boston, Connecticut, North Carolina, New York City, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area. 

What did you set out to learn more about?

There is increasing awareness in Aotearoa that the first 2000 days of a child’s life are a critical time to lay the foundations for a positive life trajectory, but we still have a long way to go to realise the potential of this transformational time by working together across organisational and agency silos to better support tamariki and whānau wellbeing. Working at The Southern Initiative has helped me understand the power of place-based approaches to tackling complex challenges, so I focussed my Fellowship on learning from other equity-focussed place-based initiatives working to improve early childhood outcomes.

I was able to connect with a wide range of people from across the early years ecosystem in the States, including community leaders, government officials, philanthropic organisations, national networks and social innovators. I was also lucky to spend time with academics at Harvard University, Stanford University and UCLA to understand how they are supporting public sector leaders and communities to act on the science of early childhood development.

What were the key insights you gained from your time completing the fellowship in the US?

This Fellowship experience further reinforced to me that communities have the answers to many of the challenges we are facing. Finding ways to shift power and decision-making to local parents, families and communities is central to being able to reconfigure our early years system in ways that produce better and more equitable outcomes. I loved seeing examples where data and measurement was being used in ways that enabled community-led transformation. 

A concept in wide use in the States is ‘early childhood systems building’ – an approach that makes explicit the important work required to enable a coherent early years system in the places where people live their lives. I like this way of thinking as it reinforces the importance of a ‘bottom-up’, whole-of-systems approach that builds on and weaves together what is already working for families in communities, while also creating a tangible mechanism for overcoming the fragmentation created by agency silos. I really believe that the key to creating more effective and efficient public services lies in bringing decision-making closer to people and place.

Aimee and an amazing parent leader from Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYC.

Did anything particularly surprise you about how the Americans approach your subject of interest?

I was amazed at the maturity of the field of place-based approaches and the widespread understanding amongst government, philanthropy and the academic community that the infrastructure for community-led and place-based collaboration is a crucial foundation for getting things right in the early years. 

The volume of philanthropic investment into early years-focussed and place-based work was mind blowing. It was great to see the philanthropic sector taking a place-based approach to investment and partnering meaningfully with government to enable communities to lead. Things are made possible that couldn’t happen through the efforts of government alone. It’s given me a lot of food for thought.

The generosity of sharing and the calibre of people I was able to connect with was pretty overwhelming. I will forever be grateful to the amazing Joan Lombardi for graciously opening the door to so much of the early years ecosystem for me, and to James Cairns at Harvard University for supporting my Harkness Fellowship application and taking on the administrative burden associated with getting my visa sorted. 

I have to say it was also a difficult time to be in the States. The horrific images coming out of Gaza throughout my time there will haunt me for the rest of my life. I was heartened to see the movement of American Jews standing up against the killing of so many innocent children. 

Did you learn anything from your US research that you think could readily inform policy development here in Aotearoa?

There is already compelling evidence for the return on investment in the early years but we’re still grappling with how to move our effort and resources earlier in the life course. I’m interested in what a social investment approach to the early years could look like that goes beyond a focus on discrete interventions and targeting tightly defined cohorts of people, towards a more place-based approach that uses data and evidence to advance local priorities and reorientate investment around what matters and makes the biggest difference to children and their whānau.

The insights from my Fellowship have helped me get really clear on the kinds of collaboration infrastructure that can help create a coherent early years system that is responsive to the lived realities of the whānau and communities we serve. I was able to identify critical features common across the initiatives I engaged with. These are important policy considerations that provide a good basis for getting serious about how we ‘power up communities’ here in Aotearoa. In our context, this infrastructure obviously needs to be grounded in the foundation of honouring te Tiriti, and further developing our ways of working in partnership with whānau, hapū and iwi.  

What were the highlights of your trip beyond your research activities?

I was lucky to be able to bring my wee whānau with me which was amazing. My partner quit his job to be primary caregiver to our three-year-old and seven-year-old through the time. It certainly had its moments (travelling with a three year old is not for the faint hearted!) but all the adventures we had will be lifelong memories. New York City at Christmas time was particularly magical!

The opportunity to pause my day to day work responsibilities and have more time to reflect and process was pretty transformational for me. In this purpose driven work we can run ourselves pretty ragged. I am guilty of over committing myself and trying to spin too many plates at once. The Fellowship has helped me to realise that true leadership requires creating spaciousness and recognising that you can’t actually give more than 100% all the time.  When you’re in a pattern of over-working, slowing down the pace can induce feelings of guilt but I’ve come to strongly believe the ability to slow down and restore your batteries is the mark of a truly strategic leader. 

Aimee and her family check out Yosemite National Park at the end of their trip (photo courtesy of Aimee’s 7-year-old!) 

What are the next steps for you in terms of making use of the fellowship experience to inform policy or practice in our public sector?

What I’ve learned has been incredibly useful in terms of what we are currently grappling with around how to power up communities via social investment and place-based approaches. I’m starting to workshop the findings of my Fellowship with our partners and collaborators, particularly the agencies involved in our Early Years Implementation Learning Platform and the South Auckland Social Wellbeing Board. I have some more formalised sharing opportunities coming up including a webinar with the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand (IPANZ) in the next little while.

The Fellowship definitely helped to forge ongoing ties with the USA and I’m excited about ongoing learning exchange including with folks at Harvard, Stanford and UCLA. We have a session coming up soon with the team at Stanford to share some of what we’ve been learning about the connections between mātauranga Māori and western neurodevelopmental science. We did something similar with the team at the Center on the Developing Child while I was at Harvard – having some of my colleagues and collaborators join me in Boston for that was such a highlight!

Last week I had the privilege of bringing together some officials from different agencies in Wellington to connect with Colin Groth, a key leader from Strive Together – a national network that supports place-based ‘cradle to career’ work in the States who was over here on sabbatical. It was great to be able to share a bit of the love from my Fellowship and for people here to get the chance to learn from the Strive Together journey. Their work is hugely inspirational and a living example of the kind of field building ‘national backbone’ infrastructure needed to really leverage the power of community-led approaches. 

The Aotearoa learning exchange delegation with some of the Center on the Developing Child crew in Boston.

Based on your experience, who is the Harkness Fellowship most suitable for?

A fellowship like this is a rare opportunity to get a window into what your area of interest looks like in another country. It was really validating to see some of the things we are learning make a difference here in Aotearoa also reflected in a wildly different context. On the other hand, it was also refreshing to have some of my own assumptions challenged and my thinking stretched, which was just what I was looking for.

If you’ve been immersed in a particular field that you are passionate about and the time is right for an injection of fresh thinking and the opportunity to consolidate your learning you should go for it!