Child Care Provider Education (Lea County)

A long term objective was met. A day care center director in Lea County uses the Better Kid Care series as a new employee teaching tool and believes that the school has a higher teacher retention rate because of the initial training teachers receive, versus no training at all.

Short term goals were met. 89% of participants (of counties reporting evaluation data) increased their knowledge level on the following topics: child development ages & stages; immunization & infectious diseases; reducing stress; child abuse prevention; Child & Adult Care Food Program; encouraging healthy eating and physical activity; community resources; special needs children; marketing your business, food allergies, infants & toddlers; literacy; scheduling & transitions; toys; school age programming.
These topics met state child care licensing regulation competencies.

451 child care providers from Lea, Chaves, Eddy, Otero, San Juan, McKinley, and Roosevelt counties attended workshops at 6 centers and 2 Regional Child Care Conferences. They acquired 43 continuing education credits, thus a total of 19,393 continuing education hours were provided by Cooperative Extension.

Programs and child care centers served include: the Navajo Nation Child Care & Development Program; Kidz First Child Care Center; Fort Defiance Regional Child Care Providers Agency; Connections Agency Day Care Providers; Project Success (Gallup/ McKinley County Schools Child Day Care Providers). Collaborators included local Training and Technical Assistance Programs and Regional Early Care and Education conferences.

Only one center has been using the Better Kid Care series from Penn State for new employees. Although, they may not be using the curriculum for educational certifications, the daycare center director, has been using the resource as a new employee teaching tool and has noticed that they have a better retention rate, because of the initial training they receive with the Penn State series versus no training at all.

Evaluation forms were completed by the participants and 61% of the forms were collected. The evaluations showed that 90% of the participants increased their knowledge of the sessions that they attended. Many of the comments from the evaluation forms were positive and expressed the amount of learning they gained while attending the workshops.

Within the last year, the Lea County Extension Service has provided a variety of training for 114 Childcare Providers in the surrounding area. As a result, the providers have been able to:
• Provide educational-type programs in their daycare centers and home based centers for the children of Lea County.
• Become knowledgeable of the resources, agencies and individuals available to help them in various situations.
• In working with the current agencies, 27% of the providers in the region, have returned to the annual workshop for educational credits towards their license. Providers coming from the workshop are from Lea, Chaves, Roosevelt and Eddy Counties.

One hundred four (104) providers attended the 2011 Child Caregivers Workshop. Speakers were recruited from the area to provide 13 workshops for the participants. The presentations were from five of the seven competency areas and included topics like, Special Needs Children, Marketing Your Business, Food Allergies, Infant & Toddler; Literacy; Scheduling & Transitions, Toys, Immunizations, School Age Programming; Physical Activity. An increase in participation was seen this year with only 104 participants registering for the workshop. As in past years, many of the participants were center-based providers. However, the home based providers showed an increased participation with 42% being new comers to the workshop. Generally, many of the home based providers are speak only Spanish, therefore, a separate track of Spanish-only workshops have been made available. In 2011, 32% of the participants attended a Spanish only presentation. A major drop was seen in the Spanish Only participants.