Sharing Web Resources National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies http://www.naccrra.org/(Newsletter: http://capwiz.com/naccrra/mlm/signup/ )

·         Follow some of the outside links that you have not yet explored. Where do they lead? Some of the outside links of the “Child Aware America” website that I chose to follow was the Crisis and Disaster resource segment. These two links led me to information about resources that can be used to help parents, caregivers, school professional, and referral agencies during traumatic events. I was happy to find many of the informational links were in Spanish and French.  Children, The, Kid power: Helping Children Regain their Emotional Safety After a Tragedy, and Mental Health America: Talking to Kids about School Safety were other links that offered further early child education support.

• If you receive an e-newsletter, follow a link related to one of the issues you have been studying. What new information is available?  One of the issues that I’ve been following is the lack of infant and toddler programs in our country. Over the last three weeks I’ve been following the Office of Administrating for children and Families to see if any changes were in place to improve this issue. I’m excited to report that Tuesday 2/11/14, The Administration for Children and Families has begin its webpage for Early Head Start and Childcare partnerships.  As an infant teacher this is exciting to me because it will expand high quality early learning programs to over 100,000 infants and toddler.

The following items are found on this website

• overview of the Early Head Start – Child Care Partnerships Initiative
• Learn more about the President’s Early Learning Initiative
• Learn how to apply for ACF Grants
• Explore resources to develop successful partnerships between Early Head Start (EHS) grantees and family child care
• View a toolkit on blending and braiding early childhood program funding streams

·         The issue this week concerned overcoming barriers such as awareness, accessibility, and responsiveness with in the early childhood field.  The newsletter featured an article that talked running a high quality early childhood center. Some off the key components were encouraging family involvement, maintaining an enriching curriculum, and promoting safety in and outside of the child care facility.  Under the article was links to different ways a teacher can promote each of these standards.

·         Equity and Excellence was reflected in the “Cost of Childcare “segment. An article comparing childcare costs to college tuition was found in the newsletter. Marcikrivean states 12,000 is spent annually on an infant’s childcare expense.  It turns out that the monthly average of childcare for an infant costs more food for a family of 4.   The expensive cost of quality childcare explains why middle income families lose out. They don’t qualify for state and federal funded programs like Head Start but they can’t afford 12-17,000 childcare expense. In many cases families have to decide work or childcare.   Childcare in the United States is by no means equal and many times the level of excellence depends on the how much the families can afford.

·         All parents want to know that their child is safe while they are at work. I ran across an article on the website that explained parent’s frustration on the difficulty of finding quality daycares because of waiting Lists, lack of online information and overloaded inspectors.   When trying to find a quality early child care center it’s recommended that  parents stop by unannounced, for random visits and inspections, volunteer in the day care to get to know the staff and watch them interact with her children and call state of  licensing department to see if there were any complaints lodged against the day care. The unfortunate fact is even with doing all of this, children can still be at risk and many times the parents won’t know until something traumatic happens. This article made me realize the importance of background checks and accountability in early child development centers.