Child Care Provider Education

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.

In 2010, after attending a child care provider train-the-trainer training at the Bernalillo County Extension Office, the agent began working with Kidz First child care center in Farmington to plan and implement the child care provider training to the providers at Kidz First. Five training workshops were scheduled between the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011. In September 2010, ten child care providers attended an educational workshop planned and presented by the agent consisting of two lessons; one on behavior management and one on child development. Information was presented by the agent through the use of handouts, videos, and discussion of child care topics. A comparison of pretests and post test scores showed that 100% of child care providers improved their knowledge of these two topics. Two continuing education credits have been earned by each participant. Interest in these trainings has been shown by many other child care centers home centers throughout San Juan County that need will be addressed in the coming year.

As a result of childcare education in the county, the Lea County Extension Service has become a recognized source for educational programming and training. As the home economist, I have begun networking with other county, regional and state agencies to provide training and educational opportunities for the childcare givers in the county. Some of the agencies that we are currently working with are the Lea County Family Center, Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, New Mexico Department of Health and Family Resource and Referral, Inc. In working with these agencies, 27% of the providers in the area, have returned to the annual workshop for educational credits towards their license.

In the last four years the childcare givers in Lea County have come to the extension service for training. Twenty-six percent of the providers attended two or more programs provided by the Lea County Extension Service. These programs were provided within their day care, I CAN nutrition education programs, or general programming requested by a licensing agency like Family Resource and Referral, Inc.