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Health Consultation to Child Care Providers
Over the last several years, Connecticut has recognized the correlation between health and child care. This recognition is reflected in legislation, regulations and the growth of initiatives such as Healthy Child Care CT (HCCCT), MAPS to Inclusive Child Care and the Early Care and Education Alliance. As these initiatives progress, it is clear that the role of the child care health consultant needs to be strengthened. Creating a network of health consultants who can support and provide technical assistance to child care sites—as well as ancillary support from mental health, nutrition, social work and literacy consultants—will greatly enhance the overall well-being of children.
To more fully develop this network, the Training Resource Academy, in partnership with HCCCT and the United Way of CT, sponsored a five-day training for health consultants to child care. The training was based on a model developed by the National Training Institute (NTI) at the University of North Carolina (which has already been replicated with success in several states) to provide a greater emphasis on health issues of families and children. Those among the 30 participants were from both day care centers and family daycare homes, and included several teams of health care consultants with day care center directors, as well as Department of Public Health regulators.
NEXT STEPS:
- A working conference on consultancy to child care (Spring, 2003)
- Development of a strand in Charts-a-Course (Connecticut’s early childhood professional development system) on working with consultants
- Hosting a faculty institute for faculty of nursing schools to infuse early childhood health consultancy into the curriculum in schools of nursing throughout state (April, 2003)
- Hosting a faculty institute for faculty of other related disciplines at UConn’s School of Family Studies (Spring, 2003)
- Publication of a "Guide to Health and Safety for Young Children for use of child care providers and health consultants (Summer, 2003)
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