Child care gets leg up

Better Beginnings Initiative emphasizes quality

Mary Nolan reads to children Friday in the Siloam Springs Children’s Center. The Helen Walton Child Care Enrichment Center and the United Way of Northwest Arkansas are working with three child care centers in Northwest Arkansas on a study of barriers that the centers face in earning accreditation through the state’s voluntary Better Beginnings program.
Mary Nolan reads to children Friday in the Siloam Springs Children’s Center. The Helen Walton Child Care Enrichment Center and the United Way of Northwest Arkansas are working with three child care centers in Northwest Arkansas on a study of barriers that the centers face in earning accreditation through the state’s voluntary Better Beginnings program.

A quality child care program does more than make sure children are diapered, fed and put down for naps, it also helps children develop the skills they will need to start kindergarten.

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NWA Media

Caleb Braschler, 4, and Kate Pearson, 4, work on tablet computers Friday at the Siloam Springs Children’s Center.

The state Department of Human Services created the Better Beginnings initiative in 2010 as a voluntary program to help child care providers augment their basic care-giving.

Since then, just under 45 percent of the 2,413 licensed child care centers statewide have obtained at least the first level of accreditation through Better Beginnings. In Benton and Washington counties, about 42 percent of the 494 licensed child care providers have at least a Level 1 rating.

State officials and a group in Northwest Arkansas are working to increase participation in Better Beginnings.

"It's important that we start a child on the right footing for our state from Day 1," said Michelle Barnes, executive director of Helen R. Walton Children's Center in Bentonville and a member of the state's Early Childhood Commission.

"When children enter school well-prepared, they need less school remediation, they're more likely to graduate, they're less likely to need social service programs," Barnes said.

They also are more likely to continue their educations after high school, she said.

All child care providers must meet state minimum licensing standards, said Tonya Williams, director of the DHS Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education.

Those standards are intended to guarantee a basic level of health and safety for children, she said.

Better Beginnings is a tiered accreditation system that recognizes programs that go beyond the minimum licensing standards, she said.

"It gives people steppingstones to quality," Williams said.

Level 1 focuses on training so that child care workers have a better understanding of their roles in children's development, Williams said. Level 2 requires additional training and adopted practices that are based on the training. In Level 3, providers are rated on their implementation of quality standards, such as in the classrooms for infants, babies, toddlers and preschoolers.

A Level 1 classroom would have a daily program schedule, with times for learning, lunch and naps, and written plans for daily activities, such as learning about shapes or numbers.

A Level 2 classroom must have written daily plans for all areas of early childhood development as defined by the state, including for children's social, physical and cognitive development.

At Level 3, classrooms must have written curriculum plans and daily plans that include learning goals for children.

As Better Beginnings matures and more child care providers participate, Williams hopes to see more stability in the providers' workforces, she said.

"It really starts to professionalize our field," she said. "We see a lot of turnover in our provider field. People get excited, open and then close in a year."

Better Beginnings also provides training on how to operate a business. Efforts range from creating budgets and business plans to writing personnel policies and establishing hiring practices, Williams said.

By 2016, all child care providers that receive federal child care subsidies must attain at least a Level 1 rating, which already is a requirement for providers awarded grants through the Arkansas Better Chance program, Williams said.

Common barriers to participation in Better Beginnings include a lack of understanding about the program and difficulty accessing training, Williams said.

For the past two years, the state division has worked with more than 150 providers across the state that serve large numbers of children who qualify for federal child care subsidies, Williams said. The project to help them achieve Better Beginnings accreditation has provided a team from Arkansas State University to coach and mentor the providers, guide them through the process, find resources and provide training.

The state offers higher reimbursement rates to providers that have higher levels of accreditation and enroll children who receive federal child care subsidies, she said. The division also offers grants to Better Beginnings participants, as well as free training and professional development programs, free books and resources for child care classrooms.

Focus on quality

United Way of Northwest Arkansas for years provided child care scholarships, but the organization's leadership decided in 2013 that providing funding to improve child care programs would have more of an impact, said the organization's president, Jill Darling.

United Way committed to two years of funding for a project with the Helen Walton center to work with three child care centers on achieving or raising their Better Beginnings accreditations, Darling said.

"Our hope is once these child care centers finish, we can take on new ones to help them do the same thing," Darling said. "People moving here are looking for quality centers for their children."

For the United Way project, Barnes studied three child care centers to evaluate their strengths and what they need to do to become Better Beginnings providers or to increase their levels of accreditation.

The next stage of the project begins in January when the centers will receive assistance in identifying three to five goals to work on for the next three years in pursuit of a Level 1 or higher rating, Barnes said.

Results of the project will be shared, Barnes said.

Mary Nolan became director of the Siloam Springs Children's Center two years ago. The center enrolls 80 children.

Nolan previously worked in parks and recreation departments for municipalities and had experience with personnel management, budgets and facilities.

She had read about Better Beginnings and was interested in the program. The project with the Helen Walton center and United Way helped her get started in it.

"It was really overwhelming to realize all the different facets of the whole thing," Nolan said. "It's not glorified baby-sitting. It's really learning. The emphasis is to get them school-ready."

An evaluation found that the center excelled in communication with parents and providing a warm and welcoming environment, she said, but it lacked staff training.

She has learned that accreditation will require her to document dozens of aspects involved in managing the Children's Center.

Nolan has started to make improvements, including in facility maintenance, she said. She has also purchased educational programs and four iPads that allow 3- and 4-year-olds to play games to learn math, language and science.

Barriers include cost

A study will help the Peace Kids Learning Center & Preschool in Rogers, now a Level 2 provider, become a Level 3, Director Roseann Bowlin said. The center has 59 children.

"Going into Better Beginnings is kind of a daunting process if there's no guidance," Bowlin said.

The first part of the study validates efforts the staff already had made to provide a quality early childhood program, she said.

The biggest barrier to improving the center's rating has been the cost. Low-cost activities that increase quality include printing and laminating pictures to label shelves to aid in language development, and buying toys and educational materials that contribute to multiple areas of child development, she said.

Paying for staff members to attend training also comes with a cost, Bowlin said. She works with her schedule to minimize overtime and maintain child-to-staff ratios when staff members are away for training.

Bowlin anticipates that one area of focus will be continuing to train more staff members on disciplinary techniques designed to calm frustrated children and help them learn to articulate their needs, such as asking for a turn with a toy, she said.

United Way provided $17,200 for three centers involved in the project, for the initial study, planning and assistance in implementing the plan, said Sunny Lane, development manager for the Helen Walton center.

The centers will face additional long-term costs that will require either community donations, grants or increases in tuition, Barnes said. Tuition averages between $150 for preschoolers to $180 for infants per week.

"Quality accreditation is a pretty significant undertaking," Barnes said. "We will help them overcome any of the barriers or hurdles they may face during that process."

NW News on 11/23/2014

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