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.
This Better Kid Care site from Penn State Extension offers research-based online training modules on a range of topics relevant to working with school-age children such as positive youth development and guidance, career preparation for youth, financial planning, and cultural competency and responsiveness. The modules include a combination of slides, video clips, research summaries, practical tips, and worksheets. Most are geared to practitioners. The trainings are free; a professional development certification of completion is $5-10. Some modules are available in Spanish.
The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Reauthorization of 2016 includes requirements for health and safety training. This resource from Better Kid Care at Penn State Extension provides information on health and safety professional training for Out-of-School Time (OST) providers, as required by states. Topics covered are: (1) safe spaces, (2) transportation safety, (3) handling and storage of hazardous materials, (4) emergency preparedness, (5) prevention and control of infectious disease, (6) food and allergic reactions and how to respond, (7) administration of medication, (8) shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma, and (9) safe sleep and SUIDS prevention. The course is 6 hours long and is free; $15 if you need a professional development certification of completion. This resource is available in Spanish.
Home-based Child Care Networks are seen as a promising strategy for supporting regulated family child care and legally-exempt family, friend, and neighbor caregivers. Home Grown and Erikson Institute created this evidence-based framework with 11 benchmarks to provide guidance to high-quality networks. BUILD provided a related webinar on Embedding Wellness in Home-based Child Care Systems through Strengthening Home-based Child Care Networks.
This self-paced module by You for Youth provides steps and strategies for program leaders to recruit, train, and retain program staff. It includes many resources such as sample job descriptions, human resource policies and staff manuals, and ideas for interview questions and reference checks. It can assist a program leader in creating a plan for improving staff recruitment and retention. Unless you need a certificate of completion, you do not need to log in to the Y4Y portal to do the module--just click "cancel" when asked to log in and proceed.
This case study highlights the historical context behind the Pay Equity Fund, the vision and goals of the fund, early implementation successes and challenges, and future goals based on interviews with key informants, parents and guardians, center directors, and home-based providers. The goal of the Pay Equity Fund is to improve staff recruitment, retention, and morale and mental health, as well as program quality improvement and child outcomes. These findings can inform jurisdictions across the country as they design and implement compensation improvements for the child care workforce.
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 report offers practical guidance for out-of-school-time (OST) programs and intermediaries that wish to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) activities into their programming for youth. The lessons are derived from RAND’s study over four years of more than 100 afterschool programs across six communities participating in the Wallace Foundation’s Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative (PSELI). The cities are Boston, Dallas, Denver, Palm Beach County, Tacoma, and Tulsa.
This toolkit is a research-based resource for OST leaders, staff, and teams who want to make data-driven decisions as they prepare to implement or change an initiative. Toolkit sections include: (1) learning about readiness; (2) assessing readiness; and (3) using resources aligned to your readiness. It may help to also listen to the February 23, 2023 webinar that is a conversation with field leaders from 4-H, YMCA, and Playworks who have integrated tools into their work. See: https://www.air.org/event/getting-ready-change-out-school-time-new-tools-resources-and-conversation-field-leaders
These briefs summarize research on changes in licensing requirements and policies in every state for child care centers, family child care homes, and group child care homes. They compare 2020 data to that of 2017. Topics covered include staff and provider qualifications and training requirements, child-staff ratios and group sizes, requirements for the care of children, and health and safety requirements for child care facilities. They also include requirements for training licensing staff.