Child Care Site Visit Planning Guide

Hosting a site visit is a great way to engage with your congressional delegation. Senators and Representatives look for opportunities to engage with their constituents and communities, especially around key issues like child care. The following planning guide can support the organization of a site visit whether at a center, a family child care program, or in the home of a family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) provider.  

Planning Check-List: 

  • Find your congressional delegation and their contact information (2 US Senators and 1 member of theHouse of Representatives) by searching your address here. If you are hosting a site visit in your home, you can use your home address. If you are hosting at a center, you can use the address of the center. The search will provide their names and the phone number for the DC office.  
  •  Find a possible time to host the visit to offer in your initial outreach: When you reach out to your congressional delegation with an invitation for a site visit, it may be helpful to have a date or date range in mind to offer. A good place to start is reviewing the congressional calendar for recess time, when legislators are not in session and likely to go back home to their states or districts. Each year, each chamber releases its congressional calendar, which you can find here, under schedules and selecting the calendar for the current year. Keep in mind, they may not have availability ,so staying flexible for other possible dates is helpful. 
  • Determine the length of the visit and components to include: Some offices may only be able to offer one hour, while others may be interested in 90 minutes or more. Based on their availability, you can tailor the components of your visit. You can also offer the options and see what they would like to ensure is a part of the event.   
  • Notify possible participants: If you’d like to have educators or parents as part of the visit, notify them that you will be doing congressional outreach and share possible dates.  

SAMPLE Site Visit Run of Show (total time is one and a half hours and includes all components named above): 

Time 

Event 

Notes 
15 minutes prior to event start  Staff arrival and location prepared  Keep an eye on phones in case they get lost or delayed. 
[start time] 

 

Welcome remarks 

 (5 min) 

 Attendee arrival & Welcome  Arrival details + staff contact information and other prep docs sent ahead of time to attendees. 

 

Welcome remarks by child care provider/center director. 
15 minutes 

 

 Tour   Of child care center or home. 
15 minutes  Activity  For example: Play time on the playground, reading a book, participating in a lesson, etc. 
45 minutes  Q&A Panel or roundtable discussion  Provider/Director, family members, educators. 
5 minutes  Make your ask  If you have a specific request for the legislators, leave time to directly ask/hear their responses. 
5 minutes  Closing & Thanks  Thank you from hosts & next steps. 

Note: If members of Congress are attending, and it’s a press event, add time for questions from the press.  

Components of a site visit: 

  • Welcoming the Senator or Representative and their team 
  • Tour of your center or home 
  • Opportunity to observe: classroom instruction or activity 
  • Opportunity to engage: activity with the children or playground time with the children 
  • Opportunity to learn: panel or round-table discussion with educators and/or parents 
  • Opportunity to champion: uplift your specific ask/request for the legislators who visit 

SAMPLE Panel Conversation: 

Identify moderator & participants: Provider, Center Director, parents/family members, educators/Family Support Worker 

Time: 40 minutes total, 30 minutes panel +10 minutes for questions  

  • Introductions: Can you share your name, your role (parent, educator, support worker, etc), & the length of time you have been with [location]? 
    • Please keep answers as brief as possible, this question is just intended for a rapid-fire introduction before we get into the details of the work. 
  • Provider Engagement: Please provide a brief snapshot of your engagement or work with [center/home]. 
    • Educator – Today we saw a snapshot of your day as an early educator. What did we not see/learn about that you do?  
    • Family/Parents -In what ways are you as a parent involved with and/or supported by [home/center]? 
    • Support Worker if applicable – What are the goals & tasks of a family support worker? 
    • Director – What additional information or context would you add about how [home/center] supports parents, educators, and the support workers? 
  • Additional questions: an opportunity to provide additional information or nuance to your guests with targeted questions. They can be based on the areas of child care you’d like to highlight (for example, FFN care), an area of child care you know the legislator is interested in (for example, care during nontraditional hours), or related to an ask/request you have (for example, the importance of health and safety regulations for providing quality care) 
  • Final thoughts: 1-2 sentences in closing
    • Anything else you want to share, or a point you want to underscore, with attendees who work on child care and early learning policy at the federal level.   

Post-event follow-up: 

  • Thank you notes/email to attendees and participants. 
  • Follow up on items that arose as next steps.