Alabama Child Care Consortium
Brief Overview of Major Accomplishments
11/1999 - 8/2000Click here to go to the Consortium's web site.
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.
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