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Reasons for action: Child care settings provide opportunities to identify warning signs and to link children and parents with the help they need. In the absence of recognition and interventions, conditions such as depression, attachment difficulties, and post-traumatic stress undermine mothers' development of empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness to their children-often leading to poorer developmental outcomes-and the opportunity to head off more serious, long-term consequences may be missed.
Click here to view additional Rationale or Evidence of Effectiveness.
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| The Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Learning Center (Washington, DC) provides early care and education to more than 400 families from three urban neighborhoods. It emphasizes the arts, technology, and bilingualism and multiculturalism in order to nurture children’s learning and development and engage parents. The center provides prenatal home visiting, health and developmental screenings, social service referrals, school-age care and youth development activities, and family support services (e.g., workshops on parenting, abuse and neglect, domestic violence, life skills, and job skills; help with school-family relationships; and continuing education opportunities). All staff who work with families meet weekly to review families’ needs and solutions. www.centronia.org | |
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 | Providers create links among services for child care, health care, mental health, substance abuse, developmental assessment, and child protection. They are able to mobilize specialized help for individual children and families. Providers coordinate services to identify and help families who:
- Are at high risk or have social, emotional, or developmental difficulties
- Have special needs and problems such as maternal depression, substance abuse, child abuse, and domestic violence
- Need support to reduce extreme social isolation
Child care staff have access to sources of specialized help to mobilize appropriate help for individual children and families, including consultation regarding clients facing special challenges, crises, or chronic difficulties.
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| In Cleveland, the Parent Intervention Centers of the Positive Education Program, a specialized early intervention program for children with special emotional and behavioral challenges has joined forces with the local child care resource and referral agency to develop a consultation and outreach program for local child care centers. www.pepcleve.org | |
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Sources of specialized help make consultants and other professionals easily accessible to child care centers and family-based child care providers) for help with:
- Identifying, dealing with, and following up on services to children and families at high risk or those who have social, emotional, or developmental difficulties
- Identifying and referring for diagnosis and treatment (at appropriate levels of intensity and in appropriate settings) children with special needs and families with problems such as maternal depression, substance abuse, child abuse, and domestic violence
- Gaining access to services and supports that reduce extreme social isolation
Child care programs become partners of neighborhood-based child welfare services and intensive family support services in their efforts to prevent and respond to abuse and neglect.
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| Hope Street Family Center blends its early childhood programs with an array of health, education, parenting, and social services into a coherent strategy for improving child and family outcomes. Families affected by child abuse and neglect receive intensive child welfare services, including home visits by professional social workers and public health nurses, as part of the Family Center’s Community-based services. | |
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Local coalitions monitor and foster the capacity of child care providers to access consultation and specialized resources for clients facing challenges, crises, or chronic difficulties. These services include information, training, supervision, and technical assistance for all out-of-home caregivers, including "kith and kin" caregivers, family child care, and center-based providers.
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| ReadBoston reinforces its focus on the importance of early literacy by training early childhood care providers in effective reading instruction. Three literacy specialists and one resource librarian focus intensively on a small number of early child care centers in Boston to help their teachers and day care providers prepare young children to be competent readers. www.cityofboston.gov/bra/ReadBoston/JCSRB.asp | |
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Local coalitions keep funders and policymakers informed about barriers to effective action.
Funders and policymakers work to make funding sufficiently available and flexible that programs can use multiple funding streams to build consultation into their daily work and their professional development activities.
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With funding from 15 private and community foundations, two Prop 10 Commissions, the United Way, and the city and county of San Francisco, the Early Childhood Mental Health Project provides mental health consultation to 46 low-income child care centers. In helping teachers develop awareness and understanding of their interactions with children, the model seeks to improve overall care while targeting the developmental needs of individual children.
www.jfcs.org/Services/Children,_Youth,_and_Families/Parents_Place/Early_
Childhood_Mental_Health_Consultation/ChildCareCenterConsultationinAction.pdf
Healthy Child Care America (HCCA) uses federal funds, managed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, in efforts to ensure that all children experience child care within a nurturing environment and have a medical home. Its principles are based on the fact that families, child care providers, and health professionals in partnership can promote the healthy development of young children in child care settings and can increase access to preventive health services and safe physical environments. www.healthychildcare.org/ | |
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