Tag Archives: Staff

Hiring and Retaining Qualified Staff Is Not Mission Impossible

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Katherine Falon
Senior State Training and Technical Assistance Specialist
National Center for Early Childhood Development, Teaching,& Learning

Are you having trouble finding and keeping dedicated, enthusiastic, and well-prepared staff members? Do you feel stumped about how to find great teachers, and what you can do to keep them? In this webinar, Katherine Falen will provide walk with you through an overview of some of your biggest staffing challenges, and some ideas for overcoming those challenges. This webinar will unique approaches to recruitment, screening, and retention practices that will help improve your odds of making what seems impossible possible.

You will leave this session empowered with new strategies for:

• Recruiting, screening, and hiring.
• Keeping staff members engaged and invested in their jobs
• Discovering valuable staff development resources

All sessions are 1.5 hours long, and include a brief announcement from our sponsor.

Helping Families and Staff Maximize Tax Credits

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Thursday 26 January 2017, 03:00 PM – 04:15 PM

Tax credits for the working poor lift more families out of poverty annually than any other poverty-reduction effort. Join us for a discussion about tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and how to help ensure families claim all tax credits and deductions for which they are eligible. Learn how to connect families with free tax services This webinar is part of the Building Foundations for Economic Mobility Webinar SeriesTopics Include:

  • Locating local free tax preparation services in your program’s area
  • Exploring available resources for beginning partnerships or delivering tax preparation services on-site
  • Using effective approaches for tax preparation to encourage financial goal-setting with families and staff

                    Register Now                       

Source: National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement

Available at: https://events-na11.adobeconnect.com/content/connect/c1/1092484587/en/events/event/shared/1578361213/event_landing.html?sco-id=1578386297

 

Parents’ and Providers’ Views of Important Aspects of Child Care Quality 

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3/2015

Understanding the match – or mismatch – of parents’ and providers’ perceptions of quality can inform efforts to improve quality, to strengthen family-provider relationships, and to assist parents in selecting child care that fits their child’s and family’s needs. As part of a larger project examining factors that shape parental decision-making, 92 QRIS providers in two states (46 in Maryland and 46 in Minnesota) and 19 parents of young children (ages zero to six) in Minnesota who recently applied for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program were asked their views on what is important to the overall quality of a child care arrangement.

Source: Child Trends

Available at: http://www.childtrends.org/?publications=parents-and-providers-views-of-important-aspects-of-child-care-quality

Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study

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November, 2014

By Marcy Whitebook, Deborah Phillips, and Carollee Howes

“Good quality care requires an environment that values adults as well as children.”
– National Child Care Staffing Study, 1989

The National Child Care Staffing Study (NCCSS) released in 1989, brought national attention for the first time to poverty-level wages and high turnover among early childhood teaching staff, and to the adverse consequences for children. In the succeeding 25 years, combined developments in science, practice, and policy have dramatically shifted the context for discussions about the status of early childhood teaching jobs, and the importance of attracting and retaining a well-prepared workforce that is capable of promoting young children’s learning, health and development.

Today, the explosion of knowledge about what is at stake when early childhood development goes awry has coincided with powerful economic arguments for investments in high-quality early care and education. New evidence about the ways in which stress and economic insecurity challenge teachers’ capacity to provide developmentally supportive care and education is lending scientific support to the claim that child well-being depends on adult well-being not only at home but in out-of-home settings. And, serious debate at the federal level, echoed in virtually every state, is underway about the vital importance of improving the quality of early education, and the most productive strategies for ensuring that young children’s critical early experiences will promote, not undermine, their lifelong learning and healthy development.

Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages compiles evidence from multiple sources to provide a portrait of the early childhood teaching workforce today in comparison to 25 years ago. The need to rely on a variety of data sources to obtain this portrait reveals the absence of a comprehensive, regularly updated database on the status and characteristics of the early childhood workforce. In addition to examining trends in center-based teachers’ education, wages and turnover, the report includes new evidence examining economic insecurity and use of public benefits among this predominantly female, ethnically diverse workforce. The report also appraises state and national efforts to improve early childhood teaching jobs, and offers recommendations aimed at reinvigorating a national conversation about the status and working conditions of the more than two million teaching staff who work in our nation’s early care and education settings.

Source: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

Available at: http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/cscce/2014/report-worthy-work-still-unlivable-wages/