Guest Blogger – Ruth A. Harvey, Executive Director – Chemung County Child Care Council, Inc.- Elmira, New York

Vroom provides interactive tools and resources that highlight the science behind early brain development, showing parents how they can turn everyday activities like bath time and meal time into opportunities that build their children’s brains. The Vroom Partnership at Child Care Aware® of America is made up of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies who educate and provide Vroom resources to families, providers, and organizations in their communities so they too understand the importance of brain development during the first five years of life. Learn more about Vroom here.

Child Care Aware® of America Releases 2019 Funding State Snapshots

Licensed child care is in short supply, but Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies can help

Did you know that there are approximately 12.5 million children in some sort of regular child care arrangement? Yet there are communities across the country where the supply of child care doesn’t meet the need for child care. Child Care Aware® of America helped states quantify families’ child care needs through our Mapping the Gap™ project, and learned a lot about child care gaps across the US:  

In 2017, Early Learning Indiana (ELI), with the support of the Lilly Endowment, launched the Family Engagement Prize Competition. Recently completing their second year, this statewide prize competition highlights family engagement innovation and excellence in early care and education (ECE) programs. The Prize Competition celebrates the exemplary actions of ECE professionals to empower families’ in their role as their children’s first teachers! Over the past two years programs have been recognized for practices like, offering parenting classes, job placement, housing, and food and fuel assistance, as well as parent-child engagement materials to use at home.

Most child care providers have an on-site parking lot or driveway. This is a huge benefit for families and staff, making drop-off and pick-up a lot easier. But that benefit comes with some potentially big costs. Parking lots and driveways can present some serious risks to children’s health.  

When we think about health and safety in child care, it’s often related to hazards we can see. For instance, are providers and children washing their hands properly? Have cleaners and medications been locked away? Are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors present and functional? These are things that can affect children’s wellbeing right now. 

At Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA), we’ve been thinking about health and safety in a new way. To create safe and healthy child care programs, we need to consider both hazards we can see and those we cannot. That means thinking about children’s health and wellness right now and in the future.