SEARCH FOR RESOURCES
On December 6, 2024 the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment and the National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance hosted a webinar highlighting tips and resources to help school-age child care providers build or enhance their business practices and create sustainable Out-of-School Time programs. Attendees had the opportunity to explore budgeting, marketing, and staffing considerations for OST programs; along with materials including the NCASE Business Practices Tips for Out-of-School Time Child Care tip sheet.
Child care providers are often at the forefront of offering social-emotional learning and universal mental health support for school-age children. This tip sheet is a supplemental resource for direct service providers and offers simple strategies to successfully engage families, address youth development, and enhance staff progress while centering SEL and mental health services. For more information on targeted resources to elevate system and program initiatives, access the NCASE Social-Emotional Learning and Mental Health Toolkit: Support for Systems and Programs Toolkit.
On September 21, 2023, the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment hosted the webinar, “Back to School—and Afterschool—Refresh: Updated Resources for System- and Program-Level Staff” to re-introduce the NCASE Resource Library, along with NCASE developed and recently updated toolkits. Resources highlighted in the webinar included:
NCASE Resource Library
https://childcareta.acf.hhs.gov/ncase-resource-library
School-Age Consumer Education Toolkit
https://childcareta.acf.hhs.gov/ncase-resource-library/school-age-consumer-education-toolkit
OST Professional Development System Building Toolkit
OST Emergency Preparedness Recovery and Response Toolkit
On June 29, 2023, the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment hosted the webinar “Social-Emotional Learning and Mental Health Supports for Out-of-School Time: A Conversation on Strategies and Systems” to address the topic of building SEL and mental health capacity for Out-of-School Time programming. The event included a facilitated discussion with system leaders on the best strategies to equitably address the SEL and mental health needs of children and families, along with consideration for culture, ethnicity, linguistic needs, income, historical context, and other factors.
The National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment emphasizes that OST programs provide measurable benefits to youth and families, demonstrably improving academic and developmental outcomes along with other results such as positive youth-adult relationships and social-emotional learning. The Out-of-School Time Social-Emotional Learning and Mental Health Toolkit (Toolkit) was developed to support OST/school-age child care system leaders, technical assistance associates, and program providers.
This toolkit provides readers with a general command of:
• Key Terms
• Social-Emotional Learning and Mental Health
The toolkit also provides targeted relevance and resources for system and program leaders on the following topics:
• Trauma
• Social-Emotional Learning and Mental Health Support
• Family Engagement Strategies
We encourage readers to utilize this toolkit as a supplement for OST programming and curricula or as a standalone resource to clarify your
SEL and mental health learning practices and supports.
This profile of innovation is part of a series of innovative initiatives in Child Care Development Fund lead agencies to support social-emotional and mental health as part of pandemic recovery. It includes examples from CO, KY, and SC on expanding mental health consultation and training, provider and director cafes for peer support on stress and trauma, and well-being coaches that help centers establish a well-being plan. An additional profile of innovation, Idaho Community Program Grant, highlights a grant opportunity for programs to receive funding to address student learning loss and behavioral health supports for ages 5-13; it can be found here. https://childcareta.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/new-occ/resource/files/id_profile.pdf. This resource supports resiliency.
This tool is designed to assist states and territories with calculating the annual and monthly State Median Income (SMI) and Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG) used to determine income eligibility and family co-payments for child care subsidy programs. Included are related resources and the tool connects to a Microsoft excel spreadsheet to calculate the SMI; the file is available by emailing [email protected]
Out-of-School Time (OST) plays a critical role in supporting working families and in providing children and youth with meaningful relationships, enrichment activities, and social and emotional learning (SEL), which lead to positive developmental outcomes. Additionally, there is a greater-than-ever focus on the potential for OST to support pandemic recovery efforts. To achieve that potential, there needs to be a new investment in the OST workforce.
This brief from the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment provides information, research, and examples of equitable strategies to support recruitment, retention, and rejuvenation of the Out-of-School Time (OST) workforce, a top concern for OST programs.
Child care providers must view their meaningful work as a business and plan and prepare for its sustainability and growth. This tip sheet will provide ideas and resources to support sustainable, quality school-age care. Readers will gain a fundamental understanding of budgeting, marketing, and staffing business practices. Additionally, this tip sheet provides a resource that aids in writing survey questions that will accurately measure the opinions, experiences, and behaviors of the communities providers serve.
On March 23, 2023, the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment hosted “Using Data to Support Equity in Out-of-School Time” webinar to introduce a new NCASE brief designed to support CCDF lead agencies and partners in their collaborative work to expand equitable access to school-age child care for families using child care subsidies. Participants also learned about and shared examples of the types of data that can be used to promote equitable access to school-age care, and gained an understanding of promising practices shared by statewide afterschool leads and the National Workforce Registry Alliance.