Alabama Child Care Consortium
Archive and Reference of Activities October 1999 - September 2000

Click here to read about the Consortium's  Accomplishments
(full page version for easy printing)

Advisory
Committees Archive
Links to reports,and photos of committee members. Committees are no longer active.
Forums Archive
Online discussion archive.

More than 300 attend AALECE conference at Gulf Shores. Click here to read story..

Downloads
RFP Archive Download Site

Reports
and Summaries

Early Education and Care: Overlap Indicates Need to Assess Crosscutting Programs

Short Stories" ...Click the preceding link for the latest brief news items added to this site.

State and Regional Child Care Quality Links

Special Reports
Click here to read a special report: "Getting to Positive Outcomes for Children in Child Care." This article is an overview of a recent workshop on child care performance measures held in Washington, DC.

America's Child Care Crisis: A Crime Prevention Tragedy: This report on the Administration on Children and Families web site, released on April 28, 2000, by First Lady Hillary Clinton, urges greater investments in quality child care. Based on ground-breaking research, and prepared by leading child care and crime experts, the report concludes that children who receive high quality child care early in life are much less likely to engage in violent and criminal activity as adolescents and adults.

More News and Online Resources

Consortium Brochure
The mission and other details of the Alabama Child Care Consortium are detailed in our latest online brochure which is available by clicking here. The brochure is best viewed or printed using the free Adobe Acrobat 4.0 reader program.

Child Care Glossary

Accessible training is goal of conference sponsored by the Alabama Head Start Association and the Alabama Child Care Consortium.

Birmingham News article discusses lifelong benefits of quality child care.

Take a look at our Big List of Child Care Acronyms.

Re-visit our archived story on this year's SECA Conference by clicking here.

Online Map of Alabama CMAs.

Internet Resources
A recently updated list of national links with information for child care professionals and parents.

High Priority Information:
Article Discusses NICHD Study on Early Child Care Outcomes

An important article related to the goals of the Consortium is available in the American Journal of Public Health. Based on a study of children at 10 sites across the country, the results clearly document that the quality of early child care (in the first few years of life) relates to children's development and their competencies.

Indicators of high quality care included: the age of the group; the staff; the size of the group; caregiver training; and caregiver education.

Sadly, the vast majority of center classrooms did not meet recommended standards. School readiness and language comprehension scores were better, and behavior problems were fewer, in child care settings that met more of the standards.

For full details see: NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, "Child outcomes when child care center classes meet recommended standards for quality" American Journal of Public Health, vol. 89 (no.7), July 1999, pages 1072-1077.

If you do not have access to the journal, call the Consortium at (334)-353-1006.

Contributed by
Sharon Ramey

Editor's Note: Click here for an online summary of the complete NICHD study on the NICHD from web site.

Four Dimensions of Quality

The Alabama Child Care Consortium has created a conceptual model that focuses upon four dimensions of child care to define quality. Click here to read this informative article by Amanda Deason.

DHR Receives Award Recognizing Consortium's Proposals

The Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR) has received an award in recognition of the statewide collaborative efforts of the Alabama Child Care Consortium from the Region IV Administration for Children and Families. The award specifically recognizes the Consortium's proposals for improving child care quality throughout the state by offering comprehensive, community-oriented supports to child care providers and families.

W. Kenneth Jackson, Acting Southeast Regional Hub Director, announcing the award in a letter to Tony Petelos, DHR Commissioner, stated: "Alabama's success so far and future plans are commendable. Congratulations to you and your staff on Alabama's accomplishments with this and other initiatives to improve the lives of Alabama Families." The Alabama Child Care Consortium's programs are administered through a contract with the UAB Civitan Research Center.

Photos:
Click here for new Data Training Collector Training photos.

Click here to meet Teresa Woods Jones and 18 other scholarship recipients who attended the SECA conference in Birmingham.

Feedback:
If you have problems with files or pages on this web site, please email willett@uab.edu.

Site last updated:
12/07/2000 04:43 PM

The Alabama Child Care Consortium, coordinated by the Civitan International Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has awarded more than $5 million in competitive contracts to 11 child care management agencies in Alabama for fiscal year 2000-2001, beginning Oct. 1. Additionally, the Consortium is awarding more than $500,000 to 5 other applicants for projects designed to improve the quality of child care. Contracts awarded by the Consortium are funded by the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR). Click here for more information and a list of the contracts awarded.

Consortium Awards 53 Scholarships to Enhance Alabama Child Care Quality

The Educational and Leadership Advisory Committee of the Alabama Child Care Consortium has announced the new scholarship recipients for Fall Term 2000. There are a total of 53 new scholarship recipients that will be attending 14 community colleges throughout the state beginning in August 2000. The scholarship provides tuition assistance for an associate degree in child development, a certificate in child development, or a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential. Click here for a complete list of scholarship recipients and colleges.

Nationally Known Educators Led Kith and Kin Workshop in Montgomery

Voices for Alabama's Children in conjunction with the Consortium's Kith and Kin Initiative held a training workshop in Montgomery August 15-17 focusing on relative child care in Alabama. Educators from Bank Street College led the training sessions.  Click here for photos and more.

Child Care News 

The Incremental Accreditation Advisory Committee's August 17th meeting minutes are now online at the committee's web site. Click here to read.

The Training Initiative Advisory Committee's June 20th meeting minutes are now online at the committee's web site. Click here to read.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is the focus of a recently released report published in the August issue of Pediatrics. Click here to learn more.

Lucent Technologies Foundation is supporting early education efforts in several states including Lee County in Alabama. Click here to read the full story. The Lucent Foundation has made grant awards totaling more than $1-million.

Statewide Themes Emerge From Focus Groups
By Carolyn Bern
VOICES for Alabama's Children

There are more than 1,000 kith and kin, or relative care providers in Alabama. In an effort to learn more about and support these caregivers, the Consortium has subcontracted with VOICES for Alabama's Children (VOICES) to identify these providers throughout the state and find out their needs and how to best support their caregiving efforts. To this end, VOICES has begun to conduct focus groups of kith and kin providers around the state.

The first two focus groups brought together a total of 24 grandmothers and 4 aunts. These caregivers, who provide care for a total of 79 children ages birth to age-13, gathered to share their experiences as relative care providers with VOICES and each other. Although the focus groups were conducted in two separate areas of the state, common themes did emerge.

Most of the relative care providers felt that as family members they provided better care than formal child care programs could. Although their role as a "surrogate" parent is very rewarding, many expressed the need to take time out for themselves. Caregivers described "time out" as possibly a day in the park for the children with helpers and planned activities, or if they had access to quality substitute care, even a day to themselves.

Important concerns of the relative care providers included nutrition, health and safety, substitute care, availability of counseling services for the children, medical and food assistance programs, and availability of toys and supplies. Requests were made for training and continuing education programs focusing on CPR certification, anger and stress management, nutrition, age appropriate play activities, and help with parent/ caregiver relationships. Caregiver support groups were also suggested.

You Can Participate

Additional focus groups are planned for August and September. If you or anyone you know keeps a relative or friend's child and would like to participate in a focus group, please do not hesitate to contact Lydia Clifton or Carolyn Bern at 1-800-444-5437.

Here Now!

Click here or the image above to open or download your copy in the Adobe Acrobat format. You must have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the document. Depending on your Internet access, the file which is 717k in size, could take from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to fully load.

Consortium Connection

For questions and comments concerning the Consortium Connection, email Maria Dacus, or call her at (334) 353-1006.

Soaring To Excellence!

Click on photo to enlarge and display names of participants.

Janice Cotton, Ph.D., from the UAB Civitan Center, reviewed the specific procedures of the Soaring to Excellence program. Valerie Mattern, Training Coordinator from Child Care Resources, reviewed life stages and teacher development and offered specific suggestions on how to be a mentor. Delyne Hicks, from the UAB Civitan Center, conducted training on parent education and developmentally appropriate activities. Training for the Resource Coordinators will be ongoing, as they meet the challenges of helping each of their centers 'soar to excellence'.

Nine students enrolled in a Trends in Early Care and Education class at Trenholm State Technical College in Montgomery, AL decided to do more than just talk and study about advocacy work as a means of celebrating the Month of the Young Child in April. Instead they established an Early Care and Education Scholarship Foundation at the college. In order to jump-start the scholarship, the students produced a mass mailing to area businesses and child care centers in the city requesting funding.

The Consortium congratulates them for their time and efforts towards making a difference in Alabama child care!

Welfare Reform Affects Children
By Janice Cotton, Ph.D.
UAB Civitan Research Center

Many children of mothers moving from welfare to work are in child care settings of poor quality and are parented by mothers experiencing severe depression. These and other findings emerged from a recent three-site study examining how children are affected as their mothers move from welfare to work.

The study was conducted in California, Connecticut, and Florida, and was headed by Dr. Bruce Fuller of the University of California at Berkeley and Dr. Sharon Lynn Kagan of Yale University. Researchers interviewed almost 1000 mothers, visited child care settings to assess quality, and assessed children’s language and social development.

Key findings from this study include:

• Child care centers used by the families in the study were of lower quality than those found in other national studies;
• Most children were enrolled in family child care homes or in relative care. These settings are poorer quality than child care centers;
• Mothers were more likely to select a child care center than relative or family care if spaces in a center were available;
• Levels of maternal depression were 3 times higher than the national average;
• The higher the mother’s educational level, the more positive were their parenting practices, and;
• Even though more mothers are now working, wages are low and household incomes are still poverty level.

Accomplishments of the Alabama Child Care Consortium

• Created a new scholarship program that has awarded scholarships to 93 child care directors who are now enrolled in 10 state community colleges where they are working on an Associate degree in child development. Their professional development has had a direct impact on approximately 4000 children and families and approximately 1200 child care center staff. (Future plans are to expand this.)

• Launched a first-ever statewide voluntary "Incremental Accreditation Program" in which 92 child care centers (selected thorough a competitive selection process) are now receiving intensive "hands-on" mentoring, training, and assistance so that they can meet national accreditation standards. Alabama currently has one of the lowest rates of nationally accredited providers in the country (only 3% of the centers in Alabama are nationally accredited). The 11 full-time mentors (referred to as "Resource Coordinators") hired by the Consortium all have college degrees with majors in child development and/or early childhood education plus extensive experience working in child care. This program is touching the lives and healthy growth and development of about 7000 children. (Plans are for the mentors to work about 12 – 24 months with each program, depending on their current level of quality. If the evaluation confirmed success, the plans were to expand to at least another 100 centers.)

• Developed and launched in collaboration with Auburn University an innovative outreach program for family child care providers. More than 20 early childhood professionals have been hired and trained to work directly with 167 family child care providers across the state. There is an urgent need to improve the quality of care in home-based settings. (Plans are that the mentoring will take a minimum of 6 months per family child care home. If outcome data indicate the program’s goals are achieved, plans are to expand to at least another 150 providers. Community networks and support groups are also being promoted through the Consortium. Plans are underway to seek national accreditation for these providers as well.)

• Funded, via a sub-contract with VOICES for Alabama’s Children, a major initiative to enhance the quality of child care provided by 1700 relatives (who receive federal subsidies for the regular child care they provide to low income families). This form of care is now completely unregulated and training and technical assistance to these providers has been limited in the past. This initiative is now enrolling relative providers, completing a needs assessment, conducting focus groups with relative providers, and hired and trained 12 child care workers (called "Partners" in this initiative) to do hands-on training and provide support for individual relative providers. National alerts about dangers to infants and toddler who are in the care of relatives, especially in the South, are being addressed in this Consortium initiative. (Plans are to continue funding for at least two years and develop ways to provide incentives for additional relative providers to participate.)

• The Consortium has actively collaborated with other groups and associations to provide training and participation in workshops and conferences. Examples include: over 40 child care workers received scholarships to attend the Head Start state conference (which otherwise would have been inaccessible to them); the Consortium offered special training on care for infants and toddlers; provided travel scholarships and registration fees for more than 30 individuals to attend a regional early childhood conference for 3 days; the Consortium co-sponsored the nationally-recognized and research-based parent education program "Baby Talk" where approximately 40 people from community agencies attended so they could bring the program back to their home communities (using a "train the trainer" model); funded two family child care providers who attended, for the first time, a national Family Child Care Conference in order to help them set up a new statewide network of family child care providers. (Plans are to continue many co-sponsoring and expansion activities of this type in the coming year. Calendars are widely distributed to providers and parents to encourage participation)

• Convened several large, interdisciplinary, and diverse groups that are in the process of designing new initiatives, solving problems that have impeded collaboration and policy development; defining new standards for both training of child care workers and evaluation of "quality" child care, and reviewing the urgent needs of parents and families in Alabama. All of these committee meetings are publicly announced and have recorded minutes of who attends and the key decisions and follow-up activities planned. Each of these is staffed by a faculty or staff member from the Civitan Center at UAB. More than 300 advisory committee members have been participating on a regular basis to guide and provide direction for 10 Consortium initiatives.

• For all funded Consortium initiatives, there are planned evaluations with clearly stated outcome and accountability measures being gathered. These evaluations are designed to provide timely and objective indicators of the impact of these initiatives funded by the federal monies given to the Department of Human Resources.

• In response to a request from DHR, the Civitan Center accepted responsibility for funding and monitoring 12 sub-contracts with 12 Child Care Management Agencies throughout the state to provide "quality enhancement activities." Starting in January 2000, approximately $4.5 million was awarded to the CCMAs by the Consortium to provide training, outreach, technical assistance, and resource and referral. In the past, these activities were directly handled by contracts with DHR.

• The Consortium set up a website (www.circ.uab.edu/childcare) to help disseminate practically useful information to Consortium members, to better inform the general public of key child care issues in Alabama, and to encourage timely exchange of information. More than 1,500 "hits" per month are documented for this relatively new website. The site has served as a distribution tool for the Consortium newsletter and RFP.

• Consortium membership as of August 31 is 1092. Membership in the Consortium is free and open to all persons committed to improving child care quality. Individuals complete an application to join the Consortium and make a commitment to work to advance the quality of child care. This list is available upon request.

• At the request of DHR, the Consortium held a first-ever statewide open competition for funding the regional quality enhancement programs (historically administered by the 12 CCMAs) and also invited innovative quality enhancement applications from a broad array of community agencies and providers. These applications were submitted August 1 and reviewed August 16 by two teams of peer reviewers who rated each proposal according to pre-specified criteria. Based on the committee recommendations and in consultation with CHR, the Consortium notified 12 CCMAs and 5 community agencies of intent to fund over $5.5 million in new quality enhancement programs for the October 2000 – September 2001 period.

• The DOL Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training’s State office, in partnership with the Alabama Child Care Consortium, initiated the first-ever child care apprenticeship and training project in the state. The child care apprenticeship project is a federal initiative through the Department of Labor to encourage people to receive on-the-job training in a registered child care center. Coupled with on-the-job training is a requirement to attend college classes and work towards an associate degree in child development. The state Department of Labor office has registered the UAW Chrysler/Daimler child development center in Huntsville, which is NAEYC accredited, as the first child care center to be part of this initiative. In partnership with the Alabama Child Care Consortium, two individuals were selected by the Chrysler/Daimler child development center to become child care apprentices. Both individuals are receiving scholarships through the Alabama Child Care Consortium to attend Calhoun Community College as part of their collegiate requirement in this program. The partnership expanded to Tuscaloosa this summer. A graduate of the Center for Technology’s child development program in the Tuscaloosa County school system is registered as a child care apprentice and is attending college classes at Shelton State Community College through a scholarship with the Alabama Child Care Consortium.

Report Makes a Case for Investing in Quality

A recently released report, Child Care Quality: Does It Matter and Does It Need to be Improved, addresses questions such as:

• Does the quality of child care have a meaningful impact on children's development?
• What is the quality of care in the United States?
• Is there justification for use of public funds to improve child care quality?
• And what would be the best use of quality improvement funds?

The report, from Deborah Lowe Vandell and Barbara Wolfe, of the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison, reviews recent research on both the effect of child care quality on children's long and short term outcomes and the level of quality which now exists. The report uses this research evidence in combination with economic and market theory to shed light on difficult policy questions regarding public investment in improving child care quality.

The full report (51 pages) discusses in some detail how quality is measured and does a thorough review and critique of recent research. The full report includes tables, charts, and graphs. There is an executive summary (13 pages), which conveys the same information in condensed form.

Scholarship Recipients Excited About Learning Opportunities
By Amanda Whiddon,
Alabama Child Care Consortium

From left to right are scholarship recipients Connie Parks, Carol Burton, Jacquelyn Adams, Rita Green, and Nancy Clark-Jackson.

In January 2000, the Consortium, in collaboration with the Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education, began an initiative to give scholarships to child care center directors who want to earn a credential, certificate or degree in child development or early childhood education from one of Alabama’s two-year institutions. Currently, nine different colleges from around the state have enrolled 40 Consortium scholarship recipients in their programs.

Connie Parks, Carol Burton, Jacquelyn Adams, Rita Green, and Nancy Clark-Jackson, pictured above are five of seven recipients, all child care center directors, attending Trenholm State Technical College in Montgomery, Alabama. Jo Anna Middlebrooks, Early Care and Education instructor at Trenholm, invited recipients to a luncheon on March 8, 2000 at the King’s Table restaurant in Montgomery to celebrate their recent accomplishments, and meet with Sallye Longshore and Amanda Whiddon of the Civitan Montgomery office.

When asked how the scholarship has benefited them, Connie Parks replied, "The scholarship has been the best thing for me. I was telling the staff that I had to go back to college, and then the door was opened right before me. It’s been just a short while since the semester began, but I am learning tons of information. I want to thank you all for this opportunity."

Jacquelyn Adams responded with, "I am blessed to have been chosen to receive a scholarship to continue my education. I find myself already correcting my staff with new techniques and procedures. I am learning the whys of what I have been doing for so many years in my child care center. It makes a difference, because now I can put what I was accustomed to doing into words. I am able to share what I am learning and help my staff."

Nancy Clark-Jackson states, "The more I go, the more excited I get! I have been in child care since 1977 and now I am more enthusiastic than ever."