Building Feedback Loops Between Staff, Consultants, and Leadership

A Feedback Loop for Continuous Quality Improvement

Follow these steps for sharing feedback and using that feedback for improving practice. You will need to determine the specific types of information to collect, and how often and with whom you will share it.

1. Collect information about activities and outcomes. Monitor changes.
2. Share information with others (i.e., mental health work group, supervisors).
3. Reflect on information. Does it meet expectations?
4. Develop ideas for changing practice to meet expectations.
5. Implement changes to improve activities and outcomes.
6. Return to Step 1.

One of the most important components of quality improvement efforts is establishing the appropriate mechanisms for sharing information between key individuals and groups and ensuring that feedback loops are in place for incorporating information into program practices. Your Head Start program might establish feedback loops in several different ways. As described above, regular administrative supervision meetings between the Head Start staff and the mental health consultant is one way to share information about what consultant is doing, how the program can support their work, and outcomes achieved. For more information on supervision of the mental health consultant, see Tutorial 4 on the CECMHC website.

An annual review is another opportunity to assess the quality and effectiveness of consultation. Monitoring the consultant is a role for the administrative supervisor, and generally not an appropriate role for teaching staff, families, or others. It is important for you as a program administrator to think about how to share the information (about the amounts, types, and outcomes of consultation) and to discuss it with appropriate groups of people within the program.

Your mental health work group is a logical forum for discussing whether the program is achieving short- and long-term goals related to MHC. For example, this group could review data on the number of referrals, TPITOS or TPOT, results of developmental screenings, CLASS observations, feedback from teachers or families about their experiences with the consultant, to determine if there are areas that need strengthening. It is important in doing this work, however, that concerns of a personal nature (e.g., “The consultant was rude to me”) are shared in a different forum, preferably through supervision. The mental health work group discussions of quality improvement should focus on the effectiveness of the consultation activities, program approach, and success of services.

Consultation is an interactive process and staff and families play an important role in the effectiveness of consultation services. The mental health work group should understand how others involved in the consultation services influence effectiveness. Include recommendations about the entire consultative process — not just the consultant — in any recommended practice changes.

In addition to the mental health work group, it is important to share information about what the consultants are doing and related outcomes with other stakeholders such as the program’s leadership team, staff, families, and Policy Council on a regular basis. A brief written report may suffice, although ideally the consultant or consultants would present such a report to allow face-to-face discussion of the results.

Last Updated: August 6, 2025