CCTAN - The Child Care Technical Assistance Network, a service of the Office of Child Care

To mark Summer Learning Day, the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE) hosted a webinar, Discoveries and Innovations with Summer Learning, to explore the most current developments in summer learning, highlight success strategies from states and programs and share successes and challenges, and identify technical assistance to support.

This webinar is designed to prepare afterschool providers for gaining an understanding of trauma and trauma-informed practice. It defines trauma, explores its prevalence, and shows the impact of trauma on brain development. It shares best practices for trauma-informed practice and positive outcomes that can result.

On Thursday, March 29, 2018 the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE) hosted a webinar introducing a first ever series of national and state/territory data profiles with information about school-age children served through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). The profiles present a detailed picture of how federal investments and state policies can support the needs of school-age children, who represent nearly half of all children served through CCDF subsidies. 

On February 22, 2018 the National Center on Afterschool and Summer (NCASE) hosted a webinar to introduce a new product, the School-Age Consumer Education Toolkit.  The Toolkit includes state examples and resources on physical health and development; social and emotional health and development and parent and family engagement.  It also includes a video that shows the importance of afterschool and summer care for families through data and details about the experiences of children served through federal subsidies.  The Toolkit is available in the NCASE Resource Library,

This powerpoint presentation highlights information about criminal background check requirements for Child Care Development Fund. It reviews what national, in-state and inter-state background checks are mandatory. It also spells out what types of staff positions require the checks, which must be conducted prior to employment and at least every 5 years afterwards.

This webinar defines child care deserts and explores how two organizations have developed data-driven analyses to identify where there is persistent undersupply. The data demonstrate that lack of child care disproportionately impacts rural communities, low-income communities, and Latino and American Indian and Alaska Native families. It features how states are using child care desert maps to drive advocacy and increase the supply and quality of care in these targeted areas.

On September 14, 2017 the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE) and the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning (NCECDTL) facilitated a webinar where participants explored the unique attributes of school-age and summer workforces; identified ways to strengthen professional development systems and build internal capacity for continuous quality improvement (CQI), and learned about promising, sustainable, system-building practices from two states that align sectors to provide pathways to quality improvement.

On October 19, 2017 the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE) hosted a webinar facilitated by colleagues from the National Center on Child Care Subsidy Innovation and Accountability and the Child Care State Capacity Building Center.  During this interactive session, participants had the opportunity to explore requirements in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act regarding services to families experiencing/at risk for homelessness; share innovative state strategies to implement requirements and identify resources available to states and child care

On March 21, 2017 NCASE hosted a webinar as part of the National Afterschool Alliance (NAA) Conference in Dallas, Texas.  The event was broadcast live.  Attendees learned about the history of efforts to professionalize the field and the current state of affairs, and heard from state representatives on how they are addressing key OST workforce issues, such as core competencies, professional development, and compensation.  Presenters shared both national lessons learned and examples from state level efforts. 

Topics for discussion included: Data on the OST workforce and efforts to professionalize the field; the role of higher education and efforts to advance credentials or certification and building a system that spans the continuum of care, from early childhood to school-age and beyond.

On December 1, 2016 the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE) facilitated a 20-minute virtual tour of its Resource Library. Participants learned how this curated collection of tools, information, and examples of promising practices can inform and support efforts to increase access and to improve the quality of programs for school-age children.