ZERO TO THREE
September 20, 2011
3:00 pm EDT

(Sherrie): Okay, well, this is (Sherrie). Welcome everybody. We’re going to head on to the welcome screen. And here we are. And as Kate said, taking the words right out of my mouth, this is our fourth and final update webinar. And we’re using the format that we’ve used for the other three. So welcome and introductions. We’ll talk about where we’ve been, where we’re going probably at the end, have team sharing and some questions and answers.

So just to let you know in the introduction, all of the Early Head Start for Family Childcare Project staff is here either in our conference room or in their home offices. And we are being joined for this webinar by our two federal project officers, Angie Godfrey from the office if Head Start and ((Dawn) Ramsburg) from the office of Childcare.

Once we get going, (Betsi Closter) will do some general observations. (Tricia) will–(DelGrosso) from Mathematica will provide our evaluation update. We’ll have 6 teams; the final 6 teams do their team sharing. We’ll talk about where we’re going in the remaining few months of the project and have some time for questions and answers.

So now, I’m delighted to turn it over to Angie and to (Dawn).

Angie Godfrey: Hi, everyone, this is Angie Godfrey from the Office of Head Start. And I just want to thank you for doing this today and having me here. I think these have been wonderful opportunities for me to learn personally and for all of you to learn from each other. So I’m just going to sit back and listen. And thank you very much for what we’re about to hear. And I’ll turn it over to you, (Dawn).

(Dawn) had a meeting. So yes, she will definitely–she’s joining us just a few minutes late, but on behalf of (Dawn), I will also welcome all of you. And thank you all for the work you’ve put into this. And I’ll be talking to you. We’ll be saying good-bye to you at the end after we listen. So thank you all.

(Betsi Closter): Well, this is (Betsi). And I have some general observations. But before I start with the general observations, I want to be very–

(Dawn Ramsburg): This is (Dawn). I’m actually here. I guess I was muted.

(Betsi Closter): Hi, (Dawn).

(Dawn Ramsburg): Hi. So and I don’t–I won’t take that much time. But I just want to, again, echo what Angie said. We’d like to sit and listen. It gives us a chance not only to hear what all you’ve been doing, but it gives us a chance to use your words to talk about you of when we’re asked questions. And so, again, thank you all so much. And I’ll sit back and listen and get muted again.

Female: Okay, thanks, (Dawn), and thanks, Angie. I just want to–before I give general observations, get a little specific and thank you, each and every one of you for all of the hard work that you’ve done. When we started this project in January, many of you and many of us were very unsure where this would go and how it would unfold. And I am delighted to be able to share with you some of the results and really be able to tell you that in every community that’s been working on this project, there had been such change in communities, that it’s almost hard not to talk about sustainability and be able to say that in these particular places and across the country, these partnerships between child care and Early Head Start have really taken hold.

And I really am very honored to have been part of this project. We’re not done yet, although this is one of the last times that we’ll be using this format to all come together. For some of the general observations that I wanted to a share, as of August 30th, many of the programs were providing some kind of professional development. And this professional development took place in many different ways and in many different places. Some of you had a lot of T and TA. A lot of you had onsite opportunities for direct service providers. Some of you offered large workshop sessions.

But in–as of August 30, there were 25 different opportunities offered through this project. Seven hundred and twenty-three providers attended. And the greatest number, I think, is when you looked at the number of providers and you look at how many children they’re licensed to care for, and looking across states in terms of how they license or register people. We have determined that over 4922 children have benefited from the professional development opportunities that you have all offered across the country. And that’s quite remarkable.

I also know that there’s a lot going on right now. And between now and November, we probably will see that number just really grow much larger. So when we think about that large goal of providing quality care for more low income children, I think this number really tells a wonderful story.

All of you have submitted your final work plans and budgets. And those are the ones that we are going to be looking at for the evaluation and the final report. And we also are going to be looking to see that you spend all the money in your budget. So that will be happening between now and the next couple of weeks.

I just wanted to let you know that many of you have decided to create resource libraries for family child care providers in the community. And those libraries are being housed in many at the Early Head Start site. So family child care providers are being given an opportunity to come to Early

Head Start to be able to check out. Many of you are doing long-term loans for books, materials, and equipment.

And the kinds of materials that we’re seeing programs purchasing really do make it look like a resource library. We’re seeing a lot of manipulative growth motor things, like balls and trikes and early walking materials. We’re also seeing some equipment, car seats, some power sized furniture that people are buying. We’ve had an interesting sort of aha moment as DVD players and CD players are being requested, and realizing that for many people, they don’t even use CD players and DVDs any more. It’s all done on a computer and through iPhones and lots of different ways. So we are changing the way that we’re looking at equipment that professionals are using to support child development in their programs.

So those are some wonderful outcomes of how budgets are being fed. And this resource library will be sustainable. We know that. We know that they’re–they will continue to be available for loans and borrowing, and that providers will now have an opportunity to really increase the quality of care in their homes just based on what you’re offering to them. So that’s a wonderful outcome.

(Tricia) had some evaluation updates. And (Tricia), I’ll turn it over to you.

(Tricia Del Grosso): Great, thank you, (Betsi). Well I want to thank everyone and to a good afternoon.

So I just wanted to sort of give you an update on where things are. Thus far, we have collected a lot of rich information from each of you. And I want to thank you for that. We’ve reviewed your applications that you submitted for the project to get some information about your projects and the communities you’ve lived in.

We’ve reviewed all of the work plans, including work plan updates and final work plans that we’ve been receiving to get a handle on the type of strategies that you’re planning to implement and are implementing.

We’re also looking at the administrative data on monthly activities and on stipends from February to August at this point. We will be adding the September data, you know after in October to our analysis.

We’re reviewing notes that from telephone interviews that the (Mathematica) team conducted with 13 teams. I also want to acknowledge the nine other teams that participated in interviews this year of the 3. And those interviews were used to explore programmatic issues and provide some feedback directly to the Zero to Three.

And then we’re getting some information about providers from teams that are already implementing Early Head Start and familiar child care. And that’s through some questionnaires that we sent around, as well as PIR data that we’ll be accessing in the next couple of weeks.

So we have a lot of information. And just like you, we are now trying to sort of crunch it all and find the story there. So that’s always my favorite part. In the next couple of weeks, what we’ll be doing is collecting any missing data. So we might be following up with you if we haven’t received the questionnaire on provider characteristics. And you’ll know cause you’ll have heard from me. We’ll have been following up a couple of CCPCs on some questions we have about the administrative data. You might be hearing about that.

And we’re also checking the accuracy of the information that we’ve been able to gather. So we created team profiles. And we’ve already sent 14–we’ve already sent the profiles for 14 teams. And we’ll be sending the remaining eight of their profiles this week.

And what we’re asking you to do is to take a look at that, those profiles, and let us know if everything on there is accurate, fill in any gaps of information that we might be missing, and send that back to (Mathematica). And we’re having Natalie collect those. So she’s the one who sent you the email. And you can return it directly to her.

Next slide. So what are we going to do with all this information? Well, we’re planning to create an evaluation report. Our draft report is due at the end of October. And this will be a public document that will be available to you later in the fall or winter. The purpose of the report is to provide feedback to Zero to Three and the Offices of Child Care and Head Start on the project on the implementation of the framework, and as well as to provide the field with information about strategies that you, the partnership team used to implement the framework at the local and state levels.

We want this evaluation to contribute to the growing bodies of research on approaches to supporting quality and family child care. We’re doing so much work in that area. We think there’s a lot to learn from that, as well as initiatives designed to facilitate collaboration among organizations and systems with common goals.

We’re hearing a lot these days about combining systems and streamlining systems and greater collaboration. And the work that you’ve been doing is just so rich in experience that we can share with those beyond the Early Head Start and family child care world, but who are trying to create similar seamless systems.

So just in the audience for the report will be you, certainly. We hope that you’ll take this report and be able to share it with your stakeholders and let them know about the project that you’ve been involved in. We hope our clients at the office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care will be able to use this information in thinking about future efforts. And we’re also hoping the field in general will be able to take away some of lessons that we’re learning from the work that you’ve been doing.

I’ll also–(Sherrie) will mention this later, but we’ll also be presenting our findings at the–at NTI, the National Training Institute. Both during the showcase, we’ll be sharing the findings with you and then, during a general panel session that’ll be open to anyone attending the conference.

All right. And mostly, I just want to thank you for sharing all these little–all the little bits of information that you have been able to give us. It’s so rich in detail. And we’ll hopefully create a report that really captures all the work you’ve been doing. So thank you. Okay, I’ll turn back.

Sherrie: Back to me. Thank you, (Betsi) and thank you (Tricia) as well. And so now we have the highlights from me at least of this presentation, which is our team sharing. And when these six teams have finished presenting all 22 of the teams that have participated in the project, we’ll have had a time to share during one of these webinars.

So we’re delighted that ((inaudible)) San Luis Obispo ((inaudible)) health care in Los Angeles, California and ((inaudible)) Minnesota and Ohio Franklin County Community Action, and the Community Action Program of Huntsville and several other counties in Alabama, Madison County among them, and Children’s Therapy Institute in (Sedalia), Missouri are with us today.

And now I’m going to invite (Kim Stice) who will introduce the people from the three teams in her cohort who are going to participate today.

(Kim Stice): Thank you, (Sherrie) and hello everyone. I hope you’re having a lovely fall day. We are here. We’re having a lovely little rain. That’s so nice. The first team that I would like to introduce you today is the action partnership of San Luis Obispo in San Luis Obispo, California. The PCPC is (Judy Brummel). And on her team is (Bill Castellanos) and (Shana Paulson). (Judy), I’d like to hand it over to you now.

(Judy Brummel): Good afternoon from California. You can–can you hear us?

Female: Yes, we can hear you.

(Judy Brummel): Okay, good. You can send some rain our way. We’d like to just share with you what we’ve been doing over the last several months in terms of our project. This project takes part in the Community Action Agency, the community action partnership of San Luis Obispo, or child care partner has been the community action agency partnership of San Luis Obispo’s child care resource center connection. It is a migrant seasonal Head Start program. And it serves several rural communities throughout California.

And if you go to the next slide, Bill’s going to talk a little bit more about the migrant seasonal Head Start service area. And then, our specific focus on the three counties in California that this project was developed for.

(Bill Castellanos): And good afternoon, everybody. First of all, just to let you know that this has been a sort of exciting project for us. It’s been a pleasure working with Sharon and also with (Judy Brummel). One of the things about the Community Action Agency, we have been around for about 40 some years. Started 1964 during the Johnson administration. And basically, the–we– the focus of this particular project was on the migrant seasonal Head Start. We do serve approximately nine counties throughout California. And of the nine, we serve eight of the counties we serve migrant seasonal Head Start.

We have approximately about 155 providers that we currently use in eight counties. And we’ve served as of last–this year 590 children. And we have for this particular year of 2010, 2011. The pilot project basically focus on three counties. That would be the San Luis Obispo County, Monterrey, and Santa Barbara.

(Judy Brummel): Thank you again. So when we wanted to share our vision with you is that we really wanted parents and communities in these three counties to be able embrace the family child care as a good option for serving infants and toddlers. And we wanted to ensure that there was a provision of quality and comprehensive services to all the children and their families that were enrolled in designated family child care homes with the migrant seasonal program.

And move to the next slide.

Shana: Okay, so within our target communities of Monterrey, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo County, we’ve been working to build support for the idea that family child care is a good option for infants and toddlers, as (Judy) said. So we began by designing and distributing ((inaudible)). It describes the benefits of the migrant seasonal Early Head Start family child care setting, the benefits to infants and toddlers, the benefits to families, benefits to community as a whole, and then of course, the opportunities for family child care providers who are interested in contracting with the migrant seasonal Early Head Start program.

So the brochure is in English and Spanish. And it’s been distributed through various community meetings and the information booths we’ve had at the different infant and toddler related community outreach events.

We also developed a DVD. And we’re using it as a tool for showing what migrant seasonal Early Head Start family child care programs look like, describing why a parent might choose one of these programs for their children, and why a family child care provider may choose to partner with our migrant seasonal Early Head Start program.

And the resource and referral agencies will also be helping us share this within each of our individually targeted communities.

Another thing we’ve been working on, or we had worked on was our Powerpoint was developed to be used in the presentation with the resources and referral agencies that were attending our information forum that was in April. We were able to convene a group of 22 people, representing staff from the resource and referral agencies in each of the three targeted communities, as well as migrant seasonal Early Head Start staff.

And so as a group, we were working together, talking about this project and talking about how we can garner support for our efforts to inform the community that the migrant seasonal Early Head Start family child care programs are good options for young children.

We know or I know because I work for resource and ((inaudible)) agency, but research and referral agencies are uniquely poised to help with recruitment of families, as well as providers. And then, we’re also working to assist still the educational skills, and increase our community’s capacity for quality care within the target community. So it was a real easy sell for the group that attended with us.

During the meeting, we had the opportunity to meet a larger group, and share our interests in working together, but also, we broke out into small groups for each county. This spread some of our community aspects and opportunities within our communities, and work for conceiving of ways in which we might partner together in the future. And we hope that’ll lay the foundation for an (Emily), which we’re working to develop right now in each of the three communities.

It was clear from that meeting that the Santa Barbara resource and referral had a real interest in learning more. And so, we met in their offices in June. And as a result, we were able to identify a shared interest on the part of the resource and referral agencies to learn more about CDA and CDA advising. The resource and referral agencies could be a part of the continuum of education and support. And this is real important in California. We do often emphasize the child development permit over the CDA. And so, it was a good opportunity for us to develop a shared

language and for the resource and referral agencies to train those new providers to move through a process that would make them eligible to be providers through our migrant seasonal Early Head Start program.

And so, because of this interest, we’re able to organize a CDA adviser training on September 9th, and have 27 people attend that training, including representatives from the Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Monterrey County resource and referrals.

So as you know, resource and referral is always working hard to build accessible, quality child care environments for children. And so, it’s been such a treat to be able to work with other programs, who are similarly dedicated, and push forward the message that family child care programs can provide appropriate, quality experiences for young children.

And so, you’ll see on the next few slides–oh, you already went through the slides. So we just show pictures of what our brochure look like and the DVD. And there’s the bulletin board that was based on the brochure. We take to our community outreach events. And then,finally, the picture of all of us together at our informational meeting in April.

You can go to the next one.

Bill: The second indicator, indicator 2, is basically like me, Action partnership of San Luis Obispo, specifically the migrant seasonal Early Head Start program designated family child care providers that we wanted to make sure that they’re able to articulate the continuous improvement of services provided to children and families. We really wanted to hear from them if the fact that we’ve been working with them for numerous years, have that really made a difference in terms of their care with children and their lives, and also, the way they see their world.

So one of the things that we did, we conducted a survey, and we focused not only our target area, the three colonies, we basically submitted and conducted the survey of all our 155 providers. And we’re very happy with the results in terms of the 155, 127 providers responded to our survey.

And one of the incentives that we had come up with is that anyone who had provided or submitted their survey back, we gave them a token–a small children’s book. And that, I think, it was a really nice incentive. And I think what happened also when we’ve conducted other meetings, there was always some type of award or recognition or some type of incentive to make sure that we draw people. And also they were taking their time. We felt that we needed to at least thank them for their time and their effort, because we really stressed the importance of this project, and the fact that they were going to be using some of the information that we’re gathering to help other agencies in–who are thinking or even dealing with the family child care provider model that we might be able ((inaudible)) information to them.

Interesting enough the two top topics that came out, the things that we–they felt that they learned is in terms of child development practices is individualization and observation. Those are the things they felt that they have learned more about, and they have been able to really focus more on.

The other 83 percent of the individuals that submitted for survey, they perceived themselves as early child educators, as opposed to babysitters. And to me, that was a really a real eye opener, because we talked about that, and the fact that they’re able then to repeat and give us the information is the fact that we see them as small business, and also, the fact that we see them as professional. And we provide the training to get them to that level.

One of the things we also ((inaudible)), we conducted three focus groups just–and it was sort of a random. There was all based on they volunteered. We had approximately 36 providers that volunteered their time. And we wanted just, again, this was another way of obtaining information from the providers, and using it to conform ((inaudible)). There was other providers. And we had a set of questions. And we were able to obtain from the three crews various information, I think, is very important to us. And some of it was very surprising, things that we who have been in the field in child development for numerous years, have been taking classes in child development.

There’s things that we feel that there are very obvious, like when the providers were basically saying that, you know, the importance of reading to children, observing children, monitoring, making sure they–the children that come to the center, that or to their home, that they’re in good health.

Keeping dangerous items out of children’s reach. Again, we think this is sort of a given, but the fact when they’re basically saying these are some things that they’ve learned. So the lessons learned by being involved with our program, that’s in the–also demonstrate the importance and the effect that we have with our specialists, who are well trained, and the fact that they’re providing regular, monthly training to these providers. And again, it just increase their awareness of the things that they’re currently doing, and also, looking at best practice.

The other thing that we are also–came out of these meetings are things that they need. They also felt that there’s also areas they would like to see more classes. They would like to see how we can be able to work with community colleges in getting units. They were very interested in the CDA training. Most of our providers are mono lingual Spanish or CDA for family child care provider in Spanish, it’s actually it’s a very nice match.

And also, one of the things that also came out of the, not the survey, but most of the focus group was the fact that they really would like to work and obtain more information on working with special needs children.

(Judy Brummel): You can go to the next slide. So that just gives you two of the areas that we’ve working on in this project. And we’re really looking forward to sharing our DVD with you, when we are all together in Washington in December.

Male: Okay.

Kim Stice: We’re looking forward to that, too, (Judy). It’s a great video. I can’t wait for everyone to see it. Thank you all so much for sharing with us. Does anyone have questions for (Judy), (Bill), or (Shana)?

If not, I will thank the Capsule program for sharing all the great things that they’ve been doing, and move down the coast just a bit to Los Angeles to the Catholic Culture West team, which (Elizabeth Broyles) of the CCPC, (Alejandra Berrio) and (Veronica Medrano).

(Elizabeth), are you there?

(Elizabeth Broyles): I am.

Kim: Okay, I will hand it over to you.

(Elizabeth Broyles): Thank you. Thanks so much. It’s my pleasure to introduce the team that I’ve been working with and share a little bit about California Hospital. California Hospital Medical Center is a nonprofit inner city teaching hospital and major birth center that serves the needs of central Los Angeles and downtown Los Angeles.

In 1992, the hospital partnered with UCLA to expand its prevention and early intervention services for low income young families, and establish the Hope Street Family Center, who’s service area includes some of the highest population densities, lowest income and adult education levels, highest rates of child abuse and domestic violence, and some of the highest unemployment rates within Los Angeles.

We saw this project as a great opportunity to really look at some unique ways to meet that service need. And it aligned really well with the philosophy of the hospital, which was really one that’s based on mutual respect and partnership, and then understanding that in order for an agency to truly serve its community, it must not only listen, but allow itself to be actively guided by the voices within that. The two team members that have partnered in this are (Veronica), who represents the family child care home education network, and (Alexandra), who represents Hope Street Family Centers Early Head Start program.

The team’s been working on some wonderful overall activities that I’ll just briefly mention. And then I’ll turn it over to the team to share a little more in detail. There’s been a lot of activity around expanding the professional capacity of providers, as well as exploring and piloting some unique ways to bridge services between Early Head Start and those of our Early Head Start families, who receive their child care in the network with a real strong focus on building the relationship between the child’s two primary caregivers, the parent and the provider. There’s been some wonderful opportunities to build relationships between the Early Head Start staff with a stronger understanding of the family child care provider network, as well as some opportunities to reach out to the community.

I’m very, very pleased and proud now to introduce the rest of the team, so that they can share a little bit more about our vision and some of the activities that they’ve been involved with. (Veronica) and (Alejandra)?

(Veronica Medrano): Thank you, Elizabeth.

(Alejandra Berrio): Hello, it’s (Alejandra).

(Veronica Maedrano): This is (Veronica Medrano). And this is–I’m the child care partner. I just wanted to go briefly over. I know this is talked about what makes up our service area, but I did want to say that the majority of our population are Latino. And they’re between the ages of 25 and 54 years of age, which I’m just pointing that out, because that makes up our, you know, that age range is child bearing and of working population. And they are–our group does tend to have less than 9th grade education, and do come from a predominantly Spanish speaking home, and are blue collar workers.

So our family child care network did start in spring of 1998, but we are actually starting our 13th year of the network. There are three child care arrangements that our parents prefer. And the number one being, of course, they prefer a family member or a friend. And then, the second and third option go hand in hand, which is either the license–the child care sites, or licensed family child care home.

So we know that the demand is out there. But unfortunately, there’s not enough spaces in the child care home. I’m sorry, in the child care centers. So we do know that we have to strengthen the family child care home. So California Hospital knew that back in 1998, and has been trying to improve the quality of family child care homes within its service area. But this kind of contract has enabled us to reach out to other community family child care providers that do not currently work with us.

So right now, you know, I just wanted to give you a brief description, before we went into it. So ours, as compared to other agencies, just like San Luis Obispo talked about, theirs is pretty large. Ours is fairly small compared to others. We have 12 providers. So I’ll actually hand it over to (Alejandra) and she’ll talk a little bit about our Early Head Start program.

(Alejandra Berrio): Hello, everyone. I just wanted to give you a brief introduction on what the different options that we currently hold in our Early Head Start program, and how many families we’re currently serving.

We have 270 pregnant women and children for services in our Early Head Start program. Forty- eight of these children are receiving what we call combination, which means the parent is onsite. We have a collaboration of one of the adult education schools around the area. So 48 of these children, their parents are either working on their GD onsite, while they’re receiving child care, or receiving English language skills.

92 of these children are served in one of our three centers. And they’re all located right in the heart of downtown L.A. And the remaining 132 children are home based. So they’re receiving weekly home visits by what we call a family service coordinator, which is equivalent to a home visitor.

(Veronica Medrano): So that only goes to the second slide what our vision was at–participating in this.

And I think we’re on the second one, where it says vision. Yes. So our–what we wanted to do in participating in this pilot when it has enabled us to do is to expand and reach out to other community partners and providers that don’t currently work with us.

As I stated, our network only consists of 12 providers. So we do know that our Early Head Start children are placed with other family child care providers in the community that are not always ready to be part of the network. But again, as is–this pilot has allowed us to invite other community family child care providers to our training. And that way, they get to know who we are, what our requirements are. And they’re able to hear from other providers that are their friends, that are working with us about the requirements. And yes, although they are a little more than what they’re probably used to, they’re also able to hear from their friends how that helps them as a provider and move to professionalizing that role up at provider.

So, again, it helped us in the way–in terms of working with the other providers in the community, and really getting them to see who we are, and possibly ((inaudible)) our network in the future.

(Alejandra Berrio): The other thing that we also had in our vision was that we wanted to provide Early Head Start families placed within the family child care home comprehensive services. So we knew that some of these families were being served in a family child care site and community, but wasn’t clear as what services were they receiving.

And we made that was what comprehensives? Were they getting social support services? We know that the families in our area have a lot of social needs. We didn’t have a clear understanding of what agencies or what support services were being offered to these families.

So one of our goals was to learn more about what support services these families were receiving and what support services the family child care providers were also aware of, that were in the community. And most of all, we also wanted to develop a home visitation protocol for home visitors, when they would go into these family child care provider sites.

(Veronica Medrano): Okay, so that ((inaudible)) the slides. The next slide? So which, again, a part of the pilot project, we were able to review the performance standards with providers, and with DHA staff. So I just want to go ahead and tell a story. It’s actually; we thought it was rather funny. We do have monthly provider meetings. And at one of these back in May, we had a–and our provider name, we did ((inaudible)) a Jeopardy type game with our providers. But it actually led, and ((inaudible)) discussion about the performance standards.

And a lot of our providers were actually shocked to find out that they were not–that we were not an EHS SCC option, and that they were not PHS providers. So they thought that because we were already implementing a lot of the performance standards that they–that meant that they were or that we were EHS SCC option.

So it started a really good conversation around that. But I think how we also have that whole conversation with EHS staff here, and just clarify what does happen in an SCC home.

(Alejandra Berrio): We’re also able through this pilot program to hire a family service coordinator to work collaborative with parents and family child care providers. So we hired a home visitor, who has a dedicated case load of 10 to 12 Early Head Start families. All of these families aren’t considered home based families. And what I mean by this is that they do receive three visits per month are held in the home. And the visits are 90 minutes long. And the last visit per month is held at the provider’s home. And that is also 90 minutes long.

At that meeting, the parent, the provider, and the home visitor are present. And what we did to develop this protocol is we met with the providers at one of our meetings and asked them what is it that you want to see from this home visitor? How long can you dedicate? You know, what’s your time span that you’re able to do a one on one with the parent, the home visitor, to work on the same goals that the parent may have at home.

We’ve seen that through this protocol develop; we have seen a higher parent involvement. Just for example in our last parent meeting, we had a participation rate of 87 percent of parents participating. And most of these parents who participated in our monthly parent family child care meeting were Early Head Start parents.

And we’ve also seen that past and present parents are also telling others about the Early Head Start program, and about the benefits of the family child care option, and why they recommend it. So we have seen through this pilot, and through this protocol enhanced services of Early Head Start children within a family child care option–services, sorry.

I think we’re on the next slide. We were also able, as one of our indicators; we wanted to collaborate with our community partners. And one of the things that we did this year is we invited programs that serve families within our service area or around our service area, who have FCC programs, to come together and kind of talk to us about how they’re running their programs, and also introduce them to our Early Head Start program. Although many of them have heard of Early Head Start, they really didn’t know sort of what–they didn’t know, first of all, that we had home visitors visiting FCC.

And we were able to meet with them and sort of get some feedback on how they run their programs and what things they would like to see, or what support they needed, as well as what supports we needed.

One of our goals for our providers within our service area was to also provide them with resources for national training, as well as local training. And this was an outcome of this meeting that we had. We all agreed that we would come up with a training calendar, and we would have each other’s training sessions, whether it would be on the sectors or whatever; we would collaborate and sort of share these trainings with all of our providers that we all worked with.

We are–have to say that in the last two trainings we did have community providers participate. And we are going to be holding another training next week, in two weeks, I believe, on the sectors. And we’ve already gotten many calls from providers in the community, wanting to participate in these trainings.

(Veronica Medrano): And then, I just wanted to talk about how we came to our training calendar. It was based on the needs that the providers expressed. So part of–what came out of this pilot project for us as well is that we created provider recertification process that now entails them filling out and working on their individual professional development plan. So based on that, we were able to create a training calendar. So the providers told us this is–these are the areas that I feel I need to learn more about, or need more support. So based on that came, you know, the health and safety, the curriculum, the family child care environmental rating scale, and the desired results 2010.

And so, again, back to our challenger, so we’re working with our other community agencies. And one of the things that we started to explore was well, that we wanted to see if we can collaborate in working with training calendars so that we’re not all providing the same training to our providers, because our providers are not only working with us, but they’re also working with these other community agencies.

So often what I hear is, you know, well, they’re having a training next month on this as well. So it’s like really not duplicating the professional development opportunities, but working together with the other agencies as well.

And I will say that part of the professional development plan, one of the things I’m always asking our providers is, you know, just clarifying to them that they are small business owner as the previous site also discussed. But one of the things that I started to ask them is that, okay, so we know that this is moving toward, you know, asking providers to really be able to apply for permits, and obtaining minimum NAA, but we are encouraging them to continue. But it’s interesting because I started to ask them, okay, well, how can you as a provider–what are you going to do to market yourself? So it’s interesting, because they are starting to ask themselves that as well and are seeking, you know, the ((inaudible)) community colleges to find out how can they enroll, because they need to be able to keep up with the requirements.

So all in all, I mean, we’ve had a great experience working with this pilot project, and really look forward to continuing even after it’s done. So we appreciate the opportunity to be able to share with you all. And we’ll see you in December.

I actually wanted just to mention that you guys will have the opportunity to meet our home visitor, who’s been working with the family child care providers in December, because unfortunately, I will not be able to attend, cause I’ll be around 8.5 months pregnant by then. So I’ll miss you guys.

And I’m leaving you guys in good hands with (Giselle), our home visitor.

Kim: And we thank you so much. We understand. A new baby on the way is certainly a justification for not coming. Thank you, Elizabeth, (Alejandra), and (Veronica) for sharing about your unique option that you’re implementing in Los Angeles.

And because we’re tight on time, I’m going to go ahead and move forward to the ((inaudible)) program. So if anyone does have questions for the Catholic Health Care program, you can just email your cohort leader or me. I’m going to go ahead and move it into the ((inaudible)) program, where we have (David Allen Wroblewski) as the CCPC, (Lee Turney), and Becky Littlewolf. (David), are you there?

(David Allen Wroblewsi): Hello, this is (David), the CCPC. The Leech Lake band of Ojubwe two partners that I work with are the Early Head Start program, and the tribal child care program. Leech Lake band of Ojibwe is a sovereign tribal nation located in the northern half of Minnesota.

It’s approximately 1,000 square miles with several massive lakes. My partners, Mr. (Lee Turney), who’s a director of the tribes early childhood education department, and Becky Littlewolf, the administrator of tribal child care program. Both wear other hats within the tribal community, and have been incredibly helpful to me.

One of the things I’d like to mention before they take over is that throughout all their activities, there’s been a common thread of increasing e-knowledge, understanding in skills of providers an or Head Start staff in all of their activities.

So there, (Lee) and Becky?

Becky Littlewolf: Good afternoon, this is Becky Little Wolf, and I run the tribal child care program for the (Leech Lake) band of Ojibwe.

(Lee Turney): And I’m (Lee Turney). I’m the early childhood development program director. And Becky and I have worked in concert with each other within the early childhood program.

So what I’d like to do at this point is, again, is thank (David) for all of your assistance and help and your patience. I appreciate it every moment. And I know that Becky also appreciated the exchanges and the interactions that we’ve had during this process.

Becky’s been intimately involved with this project right from the get go. And so, she’s going to be our primary spokesperson today.

Becky Littlewolf: And we’ll begin with our vision. Our vision was to look for and extending quality care for infants and toddlers, incorporating the high standards and regulations of Early Head Start within the (Ojibwe) tribal community and its service area. So an effective Early Head Start and child care partnership.

Our first indicator was number one. And it was to build the awareness of the varied experiences of family to child care providers. And how we did that is we held an infant toddler fair. And it introduced the family child care Early Head Start project to our child care providers. We brought in our family child care providers, our Early Head Start staff, and several area service agencies that provide care to Zero to Three. We pulled together a demographic survey. It collected our data, some of the needs of our family child care providers and our Early Head Start staff. And it was presented by Sue (Heisler), our consult–one of our consultants. And it showed a lot of our–a lot of the similarities between family child care providers and our Early Head Start staff. It also showed some of the differences in how we may be able to work together.

We had a presentation by a Mark Driscoll on brain development for Zero to Three. And it provided our information on how important it is, what our family child care providers and Early Head Start staff, what they do day to day is so important to our children.

It also introduced our train and technical assistance survey, which will–we will implement annually with our family child care providers and our Early Head Start staff.

And if we move to the next page, indicator 2 is the motivation to provide comprehensive services to more infants and toddlers through the Early Head Start family childcare option. We brought in a nationally recognized consultant, Dr. Terry Rose. And she provided a presentation to our Early Head Start staff and our family child care on the importance of comprehensive services to our children.

We also brought in (Sue Heisler), who provided a training on our licensing regulations for not only (Leech Lake), because we have our own child care regulations, but also the county, and the Head Start performance standards. And it showed a lot of the differences, some of the similarities. It started to–family child care providers started to ask questions on how they would be able to make this happen in their homes if they choose to implement that service.

The other part of that training was to build on a more in-depth training of the performance standards to assure that family child care providers have the skills and the knowledge to implement those Head Start performance standards in their programs.

Male: I think the strength now as we went through this process, we went in and where we had relationships with family child care, we didn’t have the same relationships with our Early Head

Start ((inaudible)). And so, through this whole process, they got to know each other a lot better. And what at the end, what it showed was that there was a lot of interest by our family child care homes and providers to, you know, to step up and take this challenge.

So we’re excited about, you know, where we’re at through this whole process. And it’s been–give us a slow, but sure process. And I think that we’ve done I think an excellent job in educating and informing the audience, so that they didn’t feel like they were being thrust down a road and, you know, and couldn’t turn back.

And so, it’s turned into a really positive relationship. And I think there’s going to be some really good things happening around it.

(Kim): Thank you, (Lee) and (David) and Becky. Thanks so much for sharing some of the activities that you’ve been doing as part of this project. Now I’m going to hand it over to Angela (Fisher), who will introduce her programs who are going to share some information.

(Angela Fisher): Thank you so much, (Kim). Good afternoon everyone. I’m very excited to introduce the team that is going to–is joining us from Columbus, Ohio. I will introduce the CCPC, Deborah Griffin. And her team partners consist of (Bernice Hagler Cody), who is the director of education and also (Becky Sheridan), who is the child care partner, but she is not able to join us today. And we’re very fortunate because this Ohio team has several other supporting team members that were able to join us, which I will let Debra go into more detail about. Debra?

Debra Griffin: Greetings. Thank you, (Angela). I just want to first start off saying we like to thank Zero to Three and the Office of Child Care for giving us an opportunity to enrich our family child care providers. And we would be remiss without saying thank you to Angela, who has done just an excellent job of supporting us, when we’ve had many changes in personnel.

So after–all right, thank you. We’d like to talk about three of our team members that have also given a tremendous support to the team. (Kara Bryant) and he’s our infant toddler specialist from EHS, (Victoria Beasley) is an educational specialist, and (Kristen Speck) is an infant toddler coordinator.

Before they start with our vision, I’d just like to give a little bit of information about our community. We’ve got over 400 providers in Franklin County. And a large part of our providers provide care for our state. And so, they have either CDA or have an associates in the field of early child care, which we feel very proud about.

We were also able to pack into our family child care providers association. And our providers also have–they have a union for themselves. So we’ve made a lot of strides in regard to our family child care providers, very professional, have a business attitude.

So we felt like the next step for them would be accreditation. And so, that’s where our direction landed. We were able to secure 11 providers to go through the accreditation process. And our team will be following them for a whole year. So even after their project ends.

So I’m going to give it to (Kristen Speck). And she’s going to talk about our vision.

Female: Just remember that to unmute yourself, it’s star six. So (Kristen), if you are there, press star six on your phone to unmute yourself. Thank you,

Debra Griffin: Can you hear us?

Female: Yes, we can hear you.

Debra Griffin: Sorry.

Female: Okay, thank you.

(Kristen Speck): Our vision was to impact the quality of family child care homes by ((inaudible)) and becoming a nationally accredited home through the National Association for Family Child Care.

Female: Indicator 1?

Female: We have a SCC provider population to develop criteria for entry into the project, and the need that potential providers regarding accreditation. Activities regarding Action for Children and Franklin County use the data to identify family child care providers in Franklin County.

We held three meetings to share information about the project and to interview family child care providers.

Female: Indicator 2? SCC providers will be made aware of Head Start program performance standards and state child care regulations. Our activities were a lunch, a networking meeting held, which the presentations from Ohio Department of Education, Action for Children, Franklin County Children Services, Child Development Council of Franklin County, Head Start, and Franklin County Childcare Union. And also a family child care video was presented that was created that captured the providers in their homes and also with their children.

Female: Next? Indicator 3?

Female: Family child care providers received the NAFCC accreditation materials. They will be shared directly to their home. In that process, we were able to ((inaudible)) activities included participation in that initial meeting with Early Head Start and Action for Children to talk about the vision and to share information and to guide whether or not they were interested in the NAFCC accreditation. The next activity was working with Action for Children to develop mentoring partnerships between providers. Our thought is that if they work together through 11, we have two individuals who are going for ((inaudible)) accreditation. And I believe the other 9 are new to the process, are very eager to do so, that with a little support, that they will ultimately achieve that accreditation.

The next activity was invite providers to infant toddler curriculum training. At our lunch meeting, where we went over the Head Start performance standards at our presentation, many of the providers came up and said how can we get infants and toddler–create a curriculum training? And so, we’d like to begin that process of inviting them to infant toddler creative curriculum training probably in October.

And then lastly, enabling providers to have access to CDCFC Head Start media and materials resource room, and to develop our Early Head Start lending library. The materials have been ordered. We just have to get everything catalogued and in our media and materials research room. We have laminators and ((inaudible)) prep machines and other items that our staff use, that have started a lot in our Early Head Start staff. So hopefully with the 11 providers, we would be able to offer them the use of our media and materials room.

And that’s–I think that’s it.

Female: Thank you so much to both–all of you, actually. Debra, Bernice, Victoria, Kara and Kristen. And we really appreciate all of your hard work and just the strides you’ve made with your providers.

And I’m sure they are going to really appreciate, you know, you mentoring them and continuing that mentorship throughout the sustainability, even when this project concludes. So we, again, from Zero to Three, we definitely appreciate your support and just your hard work in this project.

Are there any questions for the Ohio team? Okay, if there are no questions for the Ohio team, I will turn it over to my counterpart, (Renee Joiner). (Renee)?

(Renee Joiner): Good afternoon, everyone. I’m (Renee Joiner) and I’m the proud cohort leader for the next two programs. Both of them are very diverse programs in very diverse places. And I’m real proud of the work that they’ve done. So we’ll start with Huntsville, Alabama and the CCPC in this particular place is (Cathy Miller). And her team consists of Anita (Humphrey), who is the Head Start–Early Head Start director, and (Earlene Powell), who is both the provider, child care provider in Huntsville, and is the child care partner in this particular situation.

(Cathy), are you there?

(Cathy Miller): I am.

(Renee Joiner): Yes.

(Cathy Miller): I just had to take the mute off. I’m sorry.

(Renee Joiner): It’s up to you, (Cathy). Go for it.

(Cathy Miller): Okay. And I also will clarify. I believe (Earlene) was going to join us. (Earlene), are you there? If you will star, six to make sure you’re off of the mute if you are there.

(Earlene Mitchell): I’m here.

(Cathy Miller): Yes, okay and–

(Earlene Mitchell): The last name is Mitchell.

(Cathy Miller): Right, I was going to correct that for you. We have–what we did was merge two wonderful people in this project together. Theresa Powell is our Early Head Start nutrition person. And so, (Earlene Mitchell) is our team member. And also, I believe that there may also be someone in Ms. Humphrey’s stead on the line. Is that true? Or is it Anita herself?

Female: I don’t know.

(Cathy Miller): Okay, All right, it’s just you and me, (Earlene). So we’re going to go for it.

(Earlene Mitchell): Okay.

(Cathy Miller): I want to also really compliment the national organizations that have come together, collaboration is the term today. We know they’re working in an isolated way. We cannot get nearly as far as we work together. So I applaud the Office of Child Care and Zero to Three and Early Head Start for coming together on this. And also, we thank (Renee) very much, because we feel like we have been running behind since our snowstorm at the beginning of this process when we couldn’t come and see the rest of you face to face in Washington, but we will be there in December, cause I think it’s too early to snow here when we get together there.

But I want to jump right in, so we make the best use of our time. We are fortunate in that the Community Action Partnership of Huntsville, that’s a city, Madison, which is the County for Huntsville, and Limestone, a neighboring county, are all together under one umbrella. And in fact, have been practicing Head Start here for a long time. The Early Head Start is very new to them.

We also are very fortunate to have one of our providers, who’s actually working with Families and Children all the time, providing care in our home, (Earlene), is also a key person in our local family child care association. So she initially on the very front end was very helpful in getting us introduced to family child care providers who might be interested in joining her as an EHS FCC provider.

So all of that has come together. And we also have a mix of rural and urban, primarily most of the sites and we’re at nine providers right now, are in the urban Huntsville city area. But we have picked up a new provider out in Harvest, which is a very rural area north. So we’re excited about that progress. And that’s really a picture of our team.

So we can go to the next slide there. And our vision, we’re so proud. This actual picture here, I could brag, is two of the children that (Earlene) cared for in her particular home. And our vision was that every child in our community will have the opportunity to grow and blossom to his or her potential. And that the Early Head Start and Family Child Care settings would be viewed as one of the many high quality options available, both for families of poverty and families with limited resources in our communities.

And that was particularly important for us because quite frankly, and I think (Earlene) will back me up on this, in our lovely state of Alabama, our family child care providers, although many of them have a great number of years of experience and lots of training, and in some cases, certifications, have been seen somewhat as the stepchild of the early childhood world. Would you agree with that, (Earlene)?

(Earlene Mitchell): Yes, that’s true.

(Cathy Miller): Yes. But hopefully, between providers like (Earlene) and some of our other high quality providers who really are being growing in how they can raise quality, we’re beginning, and I will underline that word beginning, to perhaps change that viewpoint in our world. And that was really a big part for us, because we knew we were in such an infancy in that area.

Oh, you didn’t change the fly in. Okay. Now did we miss something here? Let’s see. There we go, okay. So now (Earlene), did I just cover this slide I wanted you to cover?

(Earlene Mitchell): I don’t think so. You told me indicator, the slide 2.

(Cathy Miller): Good, okay. All right. So our first indicator was family child care providers will participate in quality improvement trainings and support services. And like many of our sister programs, the very first thing we did was survey our providers to say what do you need, because here in Alabama, we have probably providers getting more hours than they are required by their–the legal entities. But we just weren’t sure they were getting the hours that were helping them grow the most professionally. And so, that’s one thing that was kind of uncovered. And drove our education person on the team, (Diane Wallen) to then create a database and resources and places where the providers could go to see what else might be out there in terms of training, that they might not have been aware of.

And so, our stakeholders meetings as we started building relationships with those stakeholders helped us identify even more. And we actually found some online resources that we didn’t know were available, which we think may be of particular benefit to home providers who often have trouble closing down for a whole day to go off to training somewhere, or to find a substitute and those sorts of things.

So discovering our provider’s needs was an important piece of that. And then, increasing the targeted training. We also are very excited because we have, as many of you have built a library of resources that we’re going to be lending out to our families, because they have limited space in their homes. And in some cases, have not been able to afford some of the items that we’ve selected. And we were careful with our criteria not to have too many little pieces that could easily get lost, and have to be replaced. But we think that’s going to be a very exciting long term resource available to our providers.

And in fact, we’re negotiating right now with our new CCR and R. We got a new one just about a month ago to see if we might be able to house those lending materials in their facility to help our providers get familiar with them and drive some traffic as they’re moving new into the community to learn more about the resources that those family child care and center child care can find at that particular CCR and R facility.

So October 10th, we have a family child care conference that is happening here in Huntsville. And as I mentioned on other calls, we’re very fortunate to have Dr. Calvin Moore, who is a national expert in family child care, coming to be our keynote. And I understand (Renee) cannot come. So (Sherrie) is coming. And we’re very excited about having her come to visit Alabama.

And we also have several local partners that are coming together to offer some training in areas that our providers have told us they would like more information. One of them particularly is called Move in and Grooving. And it’s going to be about helping children develop those large and small motor skills that we don’t always pay much attention to in this heavy, on the academic preparation arena that we live in in early childhood these days.

So on our second indicator; I’m going to let (Earlene) kind of cover that a little bit. And I’ll jump in when she needs me.

(Earlene Mitchell): Okay, the ((inaudible)) decided to reach out to create new relationship with the child care providers and other representatives here in the county and agencies to support infants and toddlers of families of low income. And the areas in which to do that, we held stakeholders meetings.

We have increased the number of EHS and FCC providers from seven to 10.

(Cathy Miller): And I think that’s down to nine now, because we lost one. Isn’t it, (Earlene)?

(Earlene Mitchell): Yes, we did.

(Cathy Miller): Okay, okay.

(Earlene Mitchell): And the leadership in–to people that’s come in the community; we also looked at having some open houses. And that happened in the month of September. We had probably about six, I think, of the nine providers had open houses for the community. Mine in particular was mainly opening for my–for the families of the child care children that I keep and also for other agencies that wanted to participate.

(Cathy Miller): And we had–we combined our stakeholder meetings, we actually had, I believe, the total of, if I remember correctly, about 25 stakeholders come. And we created a little checklist for them, that said yes, I want to partner. And then we gave them some options of how they might partner, so that they could pull on their strengths and offer that to us. And we have a combination of some new partners, as well as some that had been in a relationship with Head Start for a long time. And I love the pictures here, cause I want to tell you that our picture in the left was one of those stakeholder meetings of when we had some folks there learning. And we had provided everybody that came to those with a flash drive that has our Power Point of introduction to what family child care looks like with Early Head Start standards. And so that was a kind of fun giveaway that we had for everybody that was there. And we actually have a few that were still kind of spreading around the community.

And then that very next picture in the center is from one of the families who attended one of our open houses. You may–I don’t know if you can read that or not, it says welcome family and friends in the top. And then, this beautiful lady with the little boy in her arms is (Earlene)’s daughter. We wanted to–because she works as her assistant in her home. And they were exploring something together. We got that snapshot. And of course, we have a dancing teacher over there, which was lots of fun. And we have a very strong health and nutrition team on the Early Head Start group. And so, we always want to include something new there.

And I think–(Earlene), help me with this, but I believe we have at least two new babies in the process of this project, right?

(Earlene Mitchell): Yes, we do.

(Cathy Miller): Yes.

(Earlene Mitchell): I happen to have one of those new babies. And I think we have another that’s coming on.

(Cathy Miller): Yes, yes. So that’s been an exciting part for us is that we have also–we’ve had as many as four or five pregnant moms in our Early Head Start program, not just infants and toddlers. And so, we’ve been able to graduate a few of those through the pregnancy with our family services support, and then right away, as soon as they’re ready for that, place that child into the Early Head Start family home. And so, that’s been kind of an exciting thing.

I would just run through real quick, cause we have kind of a big team on the Early Head Start staff. And so, I just want to mention them really quickly. (Anita Humphrey), of course, as (Renee) mentioned, is the Head Start and Early Head Start director. (Tanisha Wright) is our Early Head Start Family Services manager. And she’s assisted by (Latoya Stowe), who just got married.

And we also have a brand new person on board, that’s just been hired to be another family service person.

In addition to that, we have (Diane Wallen), who’s the Early Head Start Education manager; Theresa Powell, who is Early Head Start and Head Start Health Services Manager. And working with her are two terrific people, (Geraldine Remiss), who is Early Head Start and Head Start Nutrition Services Manager, who brought wonderful food for our stakeholder meetings and Brenda Simpson, who is Early Head Start Mental Health and Disabilities.

And so, all of those folks, as you can see, almost exclusively are split between our new Early Head Start Program, and our Head Start Program. And that gives them a lot of advantages, knowing the community also is a great challenge for them, that I think will be something that our particular group is going–is sharing and helping learn from for the national project. It’s just that, you know, how do you structure your early childhood staff and those sorts of things?

So that’s kind of where we are. We’re closing with a boom when we have our conference coming up.

Female: (Cathy), we want to thank you and (Earlene Mitchell). And (Earlene), please forgive me for my faux pas.

(Earlene Mitchell): Yes.

(Renee Joiner): And are there any questions for my Huntsville, Alabama team? Okay, then moving on, we’ll move on to Missouri, the state of Missouri and (Sedalia), Missouri and Children’s Therapy, where the CCPC is Laura Brook. And the program person in this particular case is Nancy Davidson, who’s the Education Director. And they do have a child care partner, but she won’t be with us this afternoon, but I’ll turn it over to–is it Nancy or Laura’s going to take it over? Star, six? Nancy? Well, I’ll go on and start, and maybe either Laura or Nancy will figure out how to star, six and come on. (Sedalia) is in the northeastern part of the–northwestern part of the state. It is a

local family child care provider association that’s a partner with supervised services in the (Sedalia), Missouri, which is a rural area of the state. And the children’s therapy program is a non-profit program offering services.

Next? And the team in (Sedalia), which also includes (Lolita), who is the director there, has a really great vision. And they wanted to raise the awareness of the Early Head Start and Head Start program standards, as they relate to delivering those services to the young children in the (Sedalia) and outlying, what they call (Pedes) County areas. And what they wanted to do was to bring the family care providers, who are both licensed and unlicensed in that part of the state into that association activity for future clock hours for training, mentoring, and hopefully getting them interested enough to become partners with the children’s therapy program as they go forth in trying to get family child care in the different counties that are there.

And their overall vision in that was then to enhance the environments of the child care providers, and participate with them in projects that include a lot of training, several months of training, and then offering them resource materials, discussion groups, follow through, make and take, all the kinds of things that they would do to show providers the work that they can do within their own homes at their own pace.

Next? Indicator 1, the Early Head Start program has a plan in place to provide ongoing support to family child care providers. So out of that vision, that was the first thing they came up with on their plan. And of the activities, the first thing they did was to contact every single provider, help them identify what training needs they might have had, and then invite them into an informational meeting about this project, and how this project could help stimulate, promote, and show them a new way to approach the work that they were doing.

They also then got together and developed a training calendar. And it included topics, dates. And they contracted with a trainer. And these are those monthly trainings that they had. And they gave things like curriculum right along with gross motor or language or literacy. And they made things with them. And they occurred on the last, I think, Monday or Tuesday in every month, well attended by the people who signed up.

They conducted monthly training–oh, here we go, on language and literacy, music and movement, dramatic play, physical development, science. They did the Head Start performance standards. They talked about strategies for formal partnering. And then they had discussions within that. And they had a wonderful trainer out of Kansas to do that for them.

They distributed the resource materials. And then, they scheduled–they have scheduled a celebration event for October. And at that time, they’re going to include a schedule for continuing the opportunities for the family child care providers to meet, to talk, to plan, and to strategize well beyond the project’s closing.

Next? An indicator, too, that as a collaborative, they wanted a well-articulated documented partnership with state and local child care administrators. So this team met with a state special (quest), a leadership team. They met with Missouri State Collab. Office for Head Start. They met with the state early childhood comprehensive system team. They had stakeholders, administrators, First Step, all to share the vision.

And they’ve maintained that ongoing partnership, ongoing teamwork and that ongoing discussions to the point that on this Thursday, they will train all of the (Educare) providers and all of the state funded, Early Head Start programs on this project, how it has gone, how it has been implemented, how it will affect them, how they can actually produce it for themselves.

So I think Nancy is on. So if Nancy wants to finish up with anything that has to do with the (Sedalia) program, Nancy, I’m sure we’d like to hear what you got to say? Well, if not, we’ll go to the next slide.

And so, I just told you, they’re going to host a meeting on Thursday. And they will have probably 35 to 50 people across the state of Missouri who will come. It will be an interactive discussion about the next steps for this project, how they can take this project back as an example in their communities, and begin to implement family child care and other communities across the state. Is that Nancy? I keep wanting it to be Nancy. I guess not.

Okay, I think that’s all that I have for you. Are there any questions for me about the Missouri project? Okay. Being that, I want to thank both my Alabama team and my Missouri team for the work that you have done. And it has been a yeoman’s job, I know, but you’ve done remarkably well, and you’ve shown a lot of support within your communities, and your discussions, and your participants, and your stakeholders, and everything else about you. I appreciate your work and your effort.

And now, I’m going to turn it over to (Sherrie).

(Sherrie): Thank you, (Renee). Then I’ll lend my thanks to all of the teams and to (Renee) for pinch hitting here. I always really appreciate hearing from you. I know your voices and your presentation just conveys such enthusiasm for the project. And what you say just reflects all of the hard work and dedication that you have.

And most especially, I’m always excited about the sort of promise that this project will live on in the future, that you all bring to what you talk about. So thank you.

I’m just going to sum up or at least do the sort of where we’re going in the few months that are left to us in this project. We still have things to do. And so, the first thing that we want to talk about, and (Tricia) mentioned this a little actually at one point, we had three slides about this in the Power Point. So we’re totally excited about it. And we think it’s so important.

So on December 8, we will see almost all of you, I’m delighted to say, at the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel in–actually, right outside of Washington, D.C. We’ll be there presenting our project from 12:30 to 4:30. It’s a pre-conference session at ((inaudible)) 26th Annual National Training Institute. We’ll have some information coming out to you in the near future that will tell you how we’re going to invite you to share about each of your projects.

So far, we are thrilled that we have out of our 22 teams, 21 out of the 22 coming in. We’re hoping that that last project will join us as well. So that’s December 8th. As part of the National Training Institute, on December 12th, (Betsi) and (Tricia) will be doing a presentation for the whole National Training Institute from 3:15 to 3:45 for anybody who is staying. We hope you’ll join them.

And then, we wanted to mention that the CFR team in New Jersey is actually going to be doing a presentation at the NAYC annual conference in Orlando, I believe, in November. So anybody’s who’s going to that NAYC conference, be sure to look for that on the program, and go support the CFR team.

We have one more opportunity to get together via technology. And that will take place Tuesday, September 27th. And that will be a partnership call that that’s different from these webinars in that all team members are invited to join us for that call. Do you remember we did one a couple of months ago? It’s less formal than the webinar. No formal presentations, but conversation with all the team members about what they’re–they’ve been doing, and any questions that they might have, and some sharing that goes on.

So I know that the invitations have gone out ((inaudible)) as many people as possible, who will join us for that from 3:30 to 5:00 on Tuesday, the 27th.

And finally, I did want to let you know that we still have some more resources that are coming your way. The next tip sheet is working its way through the process; it’s called “Making Legislation Working for You.” And it talks about federal and state policies and regulations, about family child care, and Early Head Start partnering, and what you as administrators need to know, and useful information as well for family child care providers about what they need to know about the legislation.

And then, the last tip sheet that will come out will be about Early Head Start and family child care models that will help, again, sort of people who want to do this kind of work in the future. And two more issues of “News and Views.” The practices one is done. It should be coming your way right away, I would day. And the last one is on policies. And in the others, we’ll be inviting several teams to write sections of that newsletter.

So that’s where we’re going, where ((inaudible)) the next couple of months. And we have a very brief time for questions. And then I know that Angie and (Dawn) would like to say good-bye to you. So Angie or (Dawn)?

Angie Godfrey: Hi, this is Angie. Thank you, (Sherrie). And did (Dawn) come on, too? I would defer to her. She came first.

(Dawn Ramsburg): I’m here, Angie. Can you hear me?

Angie Godfrey: Oh, good. Okay, hi, (Dawn). Do you want to–it doesn’t matter. We both can talk, but I don’t know, John and I have talked many times. And I just love to see the work of this project come to life and your presentations. It’s really for me being on these webinars or listening to your updates, really gives meaning to the work of the project. And I really appreciate it. And (Dawn), I’ll turn it over to you because I know it’s 4:30.

(Dawn Ramsburg): Yes, I mean, again, I always–I feel the same way, Angie. And, you know, actually, I was thinking–I think it was to Alabama and the (Sedalia), Missouri teams that were the last ones. And I think, you know, someone earlier pointed out the difficulties getting to our initial kickoff in January because of the snowstorm, but I know that our Alabama team and our Missouri team also had to deal with some natural disasters of their own throughout the course of this project.

And so, I was really excited to hear what all you all have done, cause I know that that was an unexpected occurrence. And so, we really appreciate that you were able to keep things going, and move ahead. And I was really pleased to hear everything that was going on in those two communities, especially.

So I mean, it’s great to hear everyone, but I know that they had some difficulties as well just that we’re, you know, beyond all of our control. So, again, I just like hearing everything come to life, and to thank all of you.

Female: Okay, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us today. We will talk to you all soon. Good bye.

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