Thank you for looking into Policy Manager Two for your Head Start program Teresa K. Wickstrom Senior Associate Center for Community Futures Phone & Fax:

Policy Manager Two This software is designed to help your Head Start program manage program policies, operational procedures, plans, review results, and relationships with the numerous regulations and performance standards issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Association for Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF), plus requirements from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circulars, and other regulations as appropriate.

Policy Manager Two Use Policy Manager Two to create, edit, add, delete, find, link, keep track of, and print program area plans, local policies and procedures, regulations, and the results of your Federal onsite review.

What is The Policy Manager? The Policy Manager (PM2) is a database software system that makes the management of regulations, policies/procedures, program plans, and tracking of the findings of your program's Federal review as simple as possible. It is based on these principles: 1.Policies, procedures, program area plans, and review findings are based on Federal regulations, Performance Standards, and local requirements. 2.To successfully manage their relationships, associations must be made between them. 3.This centralized system lets you find, view, edit, add, delete, track the status of, print reports, and otherwise manage your program's policies, procedures, area plans, regulations, and review findings -- all in one place.

What’s Included in the Policy Manager? 1)The entire content of the Performance Standards, 2)The text of the Federal regulations that apply to Head Start, 3)The review questions from the current Monitoring Protocol, 4)350+ draft Policies and Procedures ready for editing and approval,

5) Ways to keep track of their relationships, 6) Ways to keep track of Who did What, When, 7) Search tools, 8) Reporting, and 9) Program Plan templates.

In addition to helping you keep policies and regulations, PM2 also helps you track them. For example, getting a policy from its first draft to its final approval stage can be a long process, involving several steps. PM2 helps you keep track of the status of a policy and will record the approval dates. With 3,485 performance standards, 5,552 Federal regulations that relate to Head Start, and 209 review questions, many policies are involved! With this software, you can quickly print a report, for example, that lists all the policies that have yet to be approved by the Policy Council by a specific date.

Main Window When you start Policy Manager Two, you will see the Main Window:

Policy Manager Two Main Window Main tab:Types available in drop-down list: Program Policies Program Area Plans Performance Standards Reference Library Monitoring Protocol Review Questions Clicking on a tab switches you from Documents, Regulations, and Review questions. The tab that is selected determines what is displayed in Policy Manager.

Each of the three main tabs – Documents, Regulations, and Review – work in conjunction with the Type(s) available in their drop-down lists. You must click on the appropriate tab to access the Types. The tab you click will show its contents in the tree view and in the other fields. Once you’ve clicked a tab, you can edit, copy, paste, etc. into the fields on the right.

Policies Policy Manager Two comes with hundreds of draft policies and procedures, ready for your program’s edits and approval. Each policy entered is already linked to its applicable regulations and review questions. Each policy has fields for: Subject ID Area Objective Operational Procedures

Record Tabs On the lower right-hand side of the screen are the record tabs. For each record (Policy, Regulation, Review Question, Plan), you can access: Notes History Details Related Regulations Related Reviews Related Documents (Policies and Plans)

Notes record tab Use the Notes record tab to keep notes about that record. It is a text field for typing in comments, communications, etc. A few of the records have Notes from us in them. Notes will appear in Policy Worksheet reports.

History record tab The History tab is useful for keeping track of changes, approvals, proposed effective dates, etc. – especially for policies and procedures. Use the History tab to indicate who (Who) performed the action (Type) and When (Completed). On the right side is another text area where you can enter notes about each history item.

History record tab and Who Policy Manager Two comes with these Who choices already built in: Head Start DirectorGoverning Body Area Manager Policy CouncilOther Volunteers Executive DirectorCoordinator Program Staff ConsultantNutritionist The drop-down list of Who can be edited through Edit/Types/People.

History record tab and Type The Type drop-down list can be edited through Edit/Types/History. PM Two comes with these type choices already built in: Approval Edited/Modified Deficiency/Corrective Action Proposed Effective Effective Disapproval

History record tab and When Use the Completed field to indicate the date which the action for that record happened.

Details record tab The Details tab lets you to keep more details about any document in PM2. It is designed to allow you to create program plans. You enter individual "line items" including What, Where, When and How. When you are entering details, you will notice that only one detail item is displayed at a time. It will say, for example, "(of 2)" to help you see how many detail items have been entered. When you print a Program Plan report you will be able to see all of the details in a nice format on the printed page. Create a unique ID by typing in unique numbers here

Related Regulations record tab The Related Regulations record tab shows which regulation(s) the record (policy, plan, or review item) applies to. To go to the related regulation, right-click the CFR number and click Open (or press ).

When data-entering related regulations in the Regulation ID fields: o Type in the regulation number without parentheses. For example, if this regulation is related to something else in PM2, you would type in a 1 instead of (a) (1). o You can also use the built-in drop down list to select regulation references by clicking on the down arrow.

Related Reviews record tab The Related Reviews record tab shows which review question the record (policy, plan, or regulation) applies to (if any). From here, you can go to the related regulation by right-clicking the Review ID number and Opening it.

Related Documents record tab In some cases, a record relates to other documents (policies or plans). The Related Documents tab shows you which policies or plans relate to the record shown. To enter a related document for a policy or plan, type in the Document ID and tab over and save it by clicking on the check mark.

Linking With Policy Manager Two, you can easily link: Policies to Regulations Policies to Review Questions Policies to Plans Regulations to Policies Regulations to Plans Regulations to Review Questions Review Questions to Regulations Review Questions to Policies Review Questions to Plans Policy to Policy Plan to Plan Regulation to Regulation The User’s Guide that comes with Policy Manager Two shows you how to do this, step by step.

Working with Reports With Policy Manager Two, you can modify your reports, customizing them for your program. As you make new reports, they will automatically appear in your Reports menu, ready to run. Installing a new report that you copy or receive via is as simple as putting this file in a particular folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\PolicyManager2\Reports). We expect that you will be able to change fonts and move text around using the Report Designer. Usually you will want to start with a copy of an existing report. This way you leave the original intact and can freely experiment. The reports included with Policy Manager are a good starting point. Hopefully the structure of these are similar enough for you to use them as templates for all your new reports. If there is a report style, layout, structure, etc. that we don’t include, please let us know what you want your report to look like so we can include it in the next version.

It is possible to make a new report from scratch, but we expect this to be too difficult for most users. The report writer is a third-part component that is plugged into Policy Manager. The component, Fast Reports, comes with a User Guide that we include with Policy Manager. You may find it useful, but it is also very technical and confusing! Over time we’ll expand the number of reports included with Policy Manager Two. To edit or add reports, select Edit Reports... on the Reports menu. The Edit Reports Window allows you to open the report designer to add or edit existing reports.

Edit Reports Window The Edit Reports window allows you to browse and edit your Policy Manager reports. All of the available reports are listed on the left hand side. When you select one, you see a preview of the report on the right. Use the buttons below the report list to Edit, Copy, Rename, Delete, Export, Preview, or Print.

Changing the items in the reports list will change which reports are shown in the Reports... menu. If you are not finding your report in this list, you may need to copy the file to your \PolicyManager2\Reports directory. It’s easy to add, create new, and modify anything that’s in Policy Manager Two.

Those are the basics of using Policy Manager Two to create, edit, add, delete, find, link, keep track of, and print program area plans, local policies and procedures, regulations, and the results of your Federal onsite review, and the relationships between them. We hope you find this useful. If you ever have any difficulties with Policy Manager Two, contact Teresa at or call her at

Ordering Policy Manager Two You can order Policy Manager Two for your Head Start program by visiting