Supporting Families Together Association Inc

Programs: Quality early care and education is composed of licensing preparation services, child care resource and referral, training and technical assistance, race to the top coaching and mentoring and youngstar, wisconsin's child care quality rating and improvement system. The shared goal of these programs is to increase access to high quality early education programs. In 2017, 290 potential providers completed the licensing preparation process. A total of 511 began the process. Sfta and contracted ccr&rs deliver onsite technical assistance, a policy review, and additional support via email and telephone to potential licensed child care providers. A total of 1,750 phone technical consultations, 310 policy reviews and 295 site visits were delivered. In delivering these services, sfta also provides contract management, quality assurance, and professional development to our regional ccr&r partners. The long-term objective of this program is to create and sustain a field of professionals that are qualified and prepared to provide licensed child care. The short-term objective is to support qualified and committed potential child care professionals in preparing for the licensing process by ensuring safe and healthy environments are arranged and appropriate policies are in place. Including both components of administration and operations, in 2017, sfta and ccr&rs successfully provided 6,790 unique families with a child care referral. With new definitions of technical assistance and data collection processes implemented in april, 3,300 instances of technical assistance to families and over 13,300 instances of technical assistance to current or potential child care professionals occurred. Sfta provides contract management, oversight, and programmatic as well as organizational technical assistance to the 10 community-based ccr&rs. These local and regional organizations are funded to systematically support high quality early care and education through focused service to families, early care and education professionals, and communities. From best practices in service delivery, board and organizational development, to data collection, management, evaluation, and reporting, sfta supports the ccr&rs in meeting or exceeding quality measures, grant assurances, and purchasing standards. The long-term objective of this program is for every child in need of care outside the home to be in high quality child care. This is achieved by supporting families in becoming informed consumers of child care, so that they can select high quality child care that meets their family's needs. The short-term objective is to support families in the process of finding child care by collecting accurate information from the field, creating smooth processes for families to access information regarding care in their community, and to provide technical assistance to both families and child care professionals so that these adults are working together towards the best possible outcomes for all of wisconsin's children. In 2017, sfta and ccr&rs revamped the work plan for training and technical assistance so that local community needs could be prioritized. Each ccr&r generated their own customized work plan based upon eight options for services: training, technical assistance, online course conversion, recruitment and retention of regulated providers, engagement of automated 2 star and providers not participating in youngstar, customized supports for 4 and 5 star providers, scholarships and stipends for training and cohort models. The long-term objective of this program is to address the systemic barriers regarding access to and quality of early care and education settings across wisconsin. The short-term objective is to inspire, develop and implement innovative strategies for improving the quality of early care and education in wisconsin in ways that complement and optimize other quality improvement initiatives, such as youngstar. From december 2016 to december 2017, the percentage of programs with a 3, 4 or 5 star rating increased from 50% to 53%. Efforts from sfta, ccr&rs and other partners to create these outcomes included over 11,250 technical consultation site visits for a total of 21,800 onsite hours and the receipt of nearly 2,400 micro-grant requests in 2017. In collaboration, sfta and ccr&rs deliver a package of services including training and professional development, technical assistance, rating, and micro-grants to support the quality improvement efforts of child care programs. The long-term objective of this program is to ensure that all of wisconsin's children are receiving quality early care and education services. Current areas of focus are to encourage providers who have taken automated ratings to actively participate in quality improvement efforts and to move programs up in star levels. Due to its administrative role in wisconsin's child care quality rating & improvement system, sfta and partners receive funding through race to the top-early learning challenge to deliver additional training and consultation to wisconsin's early educators. With the project ending in the fall of 2017, program-to-date, more than 3,500 hours of onsite technical consultation was delivered to 385 child care programs. Two hundred and seventeen trainings were delivered to over 3,800 participants. In addition, seven cohorts were implemented across the state to engage programs in quality improvement efforts and increase star ratings of programs currently participating in youngstar. Sfta is responsible for contracting with the ccr&rs to deliver training and consultation, which are related to the youngstar evaluation criteria and focus upon three primary initiatives: the wisconsin model early learning standards, the pyramid model of social emotional competence and the ages and stages questionnaire. Additionally, sfta supported the race to the top inclusion institute, challenge awards and development of training regarding complex trauma in school-agers.

strong families is composed of parent cafes and family engagement training and technical assistance. Sfta launched its parent cafe initiative through funding from the wi department of children and families, race to the top-early learning challenge in 2015. Through the end of 2017, 146 parent cafe sessions were held, reaching 809 parents. Two hundred and seventeen of those parents were recruited to become table hosts for future sessions with 149 now trained. The model of be strong families parent cafes is being implemented by a local team comprised of the ccr&r, a family support agency and another community partner in 11 counties. These counties were selected based upon their higher prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (aces). The short and long term objectives of this initiative are to increase the protective factors in families attending the cafes and to foster parent leadership in local communities throughout wisconsin. To support the implementation of new standards related to family engagement in youngstar, sfta and partners were contracted to deliver training and technical assistance specific to this quality indicator. Through the end of the program in june of 2017, 76 trainings were delivered to a total of 1,225 participants. A total of 1,157 hours of onsite technical assistance regarding family engagement was provided to 290 providers.

the responsive systems program includes tribal training and technical assistance, as well as the tribal rural project. This contract supports the efforts and priorities of the wisconsin inter-tribal child care association (witcca) in the form of hosting collaborative meetings, responding to salient issues via conference calls, building trainer and consultant capacity among first nations, delivering professional development, and continuing processes to plan, refine and evaluate efforts. In 2017, witcca convened in person 4 times, 3 train the trainers were held, and 65 participants engaged in the annual conference. The long-term goal of this project is to ensure that child care related needs, identified by first nations in wisconsin, are responded to in culturally-relevant and responsive ways. The short-term goal is to provide culturally relevant resources, training and technical assistance and other support to first nations. The tribal-rural project is funded by the wisconsin department of children and families with the goals of supporting tribal and rural child care providers in their business practices, credit-based education attainment, pursuit of accreditation, and engaging in training and technical consultation. In 2017, 7 programs were served a total of 15. 5 hours of technical consultation. In 2017, 36 hours of training were held for a total of 222 participants. In addition, 58 programs were contacted in outreach efforts for youngstar engagement. Partners in this work included northwest connection family resources, child care partnership, family & childcare resources of n. E. W. And the wisconsin family child care association.

sfta engages in other activities designed to advance the mission and vision of the organization, as funded by private foundations and public entities. In 2017, this included race to the top asq developmental screening supports. Through funding from the wisconsin department of health services, race to the top-early learning challenge, sfta provided support for asq practices with a two-pronged approach. In 2017, sfta contracted with 5 ccr&rs to provide 30 hours of asq-3 training to child care providers. Additionally, selected training participants received onsite consultation for a statewide total of 25 hours. The second approach was to support asq trainers through a mentorship process that included learning training curriculum, practice of training skills, and practice using the tool with coaches and fellow mentees. Eight trainers from ccr&rs received 30 hours each of coaching from leadership and through the asq community of practice. The objective of this project was to build capacity of ccr&r asq trainers, increase access to the training, and increase use of the tool by child care providers to ensure families have access to developmental screening for their children. Sfta also provides direct training, consulting, materials translation, and other supports and resources to early care and education professionals, other child and family serving organizations, non-profit organizations and public agencies on a fee-for-service basis.