This year, Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) will host our first Child Care Works (CCW) Summit in Washington, DC on April 3-4. The summit is an abridged version of our regular biannual Symposium and will welcome Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agency staff, child care providers, family advocates and other partners for a full day of trainings and sessions followed by our annual Day on the Hill event.

Numerous studies show the foundation for lifelong learning is established during the first five years of brain development. Parents, child care providers and other adults providing care to children are instrumental in encouraging minds to grow healthy and strong. In fact, during these early years, more than one million new neural connections form every second. Thanks to new technology, neuroscientists have even been able to capture images that show how a child’s brain “lights up” during positive interactions with responsive caregivers.

This story begins in 2008, with Romilia Schlueter—a respected leader in the Dane County, Wisconsin Latina/o community, with decades of experience in the family support and early childhood fields. At the time, she was working at a family resource center that was a member of Supporting Families Together Association (SFTA), Wisconsin’s statewide child care resource and referral agency. The center had a long list of Spanish-speaking families waiting to be accepted into their early childhood home visitation program. Seeing an opportunity to help meet that need, Romilia came up with the idea of delivering early childhood information to families and caregivers via a weekly Spanish-language radio program. Before long Romilia and La Movida, a popular Spanish radio station in Madison, launched Aprendiendo Juntos Fortalecemos la Familia (Learning Together We Strengthen the Family), with Romilia as the host. This initial program evolved into Apoyando Familias, Aprendiendo Juntos (Supporting Families, Learning Together) when Romilia took a position with SFTA in 2011. The radio program was reformatted and its website added a blog, where audio recordings and scripts of more than 300 programs are archived.

In 2018, families joined Child Care Aware® of America in a shared mission to move the needle on quality and affordable child care forward. Several issues topped their list of concerns: 

Deployments, trainings, frequent moves, new schools…our nation’s military families endure a high amount of stress and change. Finding child care is yet another challenge that military families face. Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) partners with the Armed Forces and other Department of Defense (DoD) Agencies to make life a little easier for these families and their children by administering child care fee assistance programs.

Deployments, trainings, frequent moves, new schools…our nation’s military families endure a high amount of stress and change. Finding child care is yet another challenge that military families face. Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) partners with the Armed Forces and other Department of Defense (DoD) Agencies to make life a little easier for these families and their children by administering child care fee assistance programs.