Child Care Provider Education (McKinley County)

CYFD (Children Youth and Families Department) Child Care Provider Training
Child Care providers are constantly receiving developmental training in order to be incompliance with state and federal regulation. Their credits accrue on a yearly basis and are provided by Extension Agents or a Nutrition Educator. Topics are chosen from the seven competencies listed in the introduction. The April 15th training consisted of 2 workshops nutrition and child growth and development that met medium term objectives. The nutrition portion was provided by the nutrition educator who led the group in several hands-on activities and provided the participants with 6 easy to prepare snacks using items from the creditable foods list provided by Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Food and Nutrition Manual. 32 men and women earned one hour in nutrition education and an hour in stress management. The stress management workshop provided by the Home Economist consisted of several hands-on activities, a power point, and up dated literature provided by NMSU How to publications.

Chichiltah Child Care Providers Training
Continuing education is required for child care providers who are registered with the Navajo Nation Child Care Providers & Development and Connections. Six to twelve hours of education are required for federal and state compliance. To meet the hours required, providers attend several workshops that include food safety, nutrition, child development, stress management, health & safety, classroom planning and professionalism. Child development, stress, etc., training is provided by the Home Economist and the nutrition and food safety portions are delivered by CES Nutrition Educators. We provide quality training
that meet the seven competencies and provide evaluation pre and post in all areas. 33 child care providers attended the November 4, 2010 Child Development training. Three areas were covered by the home economist: the influences of a child’s development, appropriate development, and cognitive development stages. Review and discussion time was provided after viewing the Child Development power point. Medium term objectives were met and participants concluded by sharing ideas for future training sessions and every one filled out a generic evaluation provided by NNCCPD.

McKinley County Child Care Providers
Child Care providers in McKinley County need assistance in acquiring continuing education credits in order to keep their home day care service incompliance with the state and federal program regulations and policies. Our goal is to provide quality child development, food safety, and nutrition workshops on a regular basis so that child care provider can maintain their annual 6-12 hours of continuing education needed to keep their jobs and insure the likelihood of providing daycare services for their clientele. We strive to provide high quality, informative, and educational workshops that support literacy for adult learners. Child care providers are classifies into three different groups: private household workers who care for children in the providers home, care providers who care for children at the children’s home, and child workers who work at child care centers (Head Start, preschool, and other childhood programs. Most child care providers generally take care of children from birth to age 12. To qualify for training hours a workshop needs to meet one of the seven competencies; supervision/professionalism, child growth/development and learning, health/safety and Nutrition, developmentally appropriate content, family and community collaboration, learning environment and curriculum implementation, and stress management. We provide training for several agencies including: The Navajo Nation Child Care & Development Fund Program (14 active centers), Connections (45), PAT (Parents as Teachers) (63 individuals), and Project SUCCESS (17 active centers) on a yearly basis.

Elena Bowers has signed on to support Child Care Provider Education within McKinley County.

Over the last three years 25% of the child care workshop participants have returned to the Lea County Extension Service for annual training credits toward maintaining their license.

Ten % of the Lea County providers have used the Penn State Better Kid Care training materials to provide additional training throughout the year for their employees.