Early Childhood Development Profiles
H.A.P.P.Y. HOMES SEEKS TO PROFEESIONALIZE DAY CARE IN AREA
The founding members of H.A.P.P.Y. Homes, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of care for young children in family day care settings in Trumbull County, are determined to implement emerging state and national standards in their day care homes.
Barb McVicker, Mara Mathy and Mary Beth Bush, the top three officers of the 12-year-old organization, started the group after attending a county-sponsored training program in 1998. The county meetings were mandatory for day care providers who wanted to earn the Child Development Associate credential. All three received their CDA’s in September 1998.
Each of the women had been caring for children in their homes for years and viewed their work as far more than just babysitting.
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The first year of the Warren SPARK program has brought such success that efforts are now underway to try to broaden the reach of the innovative program that pairs 4 year-olds and their parents with a "parent partner" to help ready the children for Kindergarten.
Kathie Marando remembers the moment when a withdrawn 4 year-old, who used to cling to her father and rarely look at anyone else, decided that she didn’t want to miss out on any more fun. “Gradually, the dad started moving away from her and pretty soon, he was on the other side of the room and she stayed at the table with the others and was laughing and smiling.”
Marando, director of Warren Spark, Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids, has become an evangelist for the two-year-old program which pairs 4 year-olds and their parents with “parent partners” to help ready the children for Kindergarten.Marando recalled that the breakthrough moment for the particularly shy 4 year-old came during one of the special evenings that Warren Spark holds at the elementary schools. The children enrolled in the program, their parents and their “parent partners” from SPARK come to the school to play games, read and socialize.“The dad was desperate. You could see the look on his face. She wouldn’t partake in any of the activities until all of a sudden, she changed her mind,” Marando said.
Warren Spark, now serving children from two city elementary school areas, is a 12-month program where parent partners visit the 4 year-olds at their homes and work with them and their parents on a different lesson each month.
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Millcreek Children's Center
Wean grants help children’s center earn quality center status
Between providing educational programs for children, operating on a small budget, seeking qualified teachers and looking for donors, Mary Danus understands that the task of applying for grants can be a daunting but necessary one.
Danus is the Coordinator and Co-Administrator of the Millcreek Children’s Center. When The Wean Foundation offered to help the Center earn designation from the state as a quality center, Danus was grateful.
“One of the things that is phenomenal about The Wean
Foundation is that their applications are reasonable,” she said.
The Foundation awarded two grants to the Children’s Center— one to apply for a star rating and a second to help the Center acquire more qualified teachers.
The Step Up to Quality program is a new initiative in the state of Ohio that identifies early care and education centers by awarding star ratings.
The Millcreek Children’s Center is one of only two centers in the city with a Star 1 rating and only one of four in the county. The grant from The Wean Foundation allowed for the Center to have a consultant assist with the rating application.
“The Wean Foundation has helped us greatly to get that designation,” Danus said, noting that the amount of time it would have taken without the consultant and grant would have been overwhelming.
The second grant from The Wean Foundation allowed the Center to be more competitive when seeking qualified teachers. The money was used for salary increases for the teachers to avoid losing quality teachers to more attractive jobs.
A longstanding focus of the Foundation is to make sure the youngest residents of Youngstown and Warren are healthy and well prepared when they enter school. The Early Childhood Development grants program provides grants to achieve this goal.
“It is nice to know that they are focusing on early childhood education. That’s an area that falls between the cracks,” Danus said.
Project Kind
Agency develops one of a kind curriculum for students
Community Solutions Association saw a need in Warren schools and responded. The school system was well aware that some children arrived at kindergarten without the necessary social and behavioral skills needed for academic success. Community Solutions Association explored available curriculums. Finding none that met both the time constraints in the schools and the specific needs, the agency took the initiative to develop a new curriculum.
Project KIND (Keys to Improvement for Necessary Development) was developed to prepare kindergarten students for the classroom setting by reinforcing good behavior through respect, manners and cooperation skills.
Kathie Marando, Director of Prevention and Community Services at Community Solutions Association, said the Foundation took a chance on the program because the feedback about the program from the schools was very positive.
Project KIND is a six-week curriculum with 12 lessons built around key concepts including kindness, manners, respect, smart choices and getting along with students and teachers. Lessons are 30 minutes and involve energetic and varied student interaction.
Kathy LaMarco, Prevention Program Supervisor at Community Solutions Association, said, “It really is an early intervention.” The program teaches the children school-readiness skills that better prepare them for academic classroom learning.
This program started with a small pilot in one Warren city elementary school during the 2003-2004 academic year. The following year the program was launched in all Warren City Schools. Thanks to continued support from the Foundation, Project KIND has also spread to early care programs at Head Start Centers in Warren, helping preschool children for the last two years.
Every kindergarten student in Warren participates in the program. Project KIND has taught 450 students each year in Warren City Schools as well as an additional 175 preschool children in Head Start programs in Warren.
The popularity of the curriculum with kindergarten teachers, parents and students has far surpassed projections. Program facilitators are frequently stopped by children in stores. Their parents are typically familiar with the project due to its parental involvement component.
Local Project KIND developers aligned the curriculum with state educational standards, which makes the program very attractive to educators. Other school districts have contacted Marando to bring the program into their classrooms.
The Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services presented their Exemplary Prevention Program Award to Community Solution Association’s Project KIND in 2006. Project KIND represented the state of Ohio as its most promising locally developed curriculum.
Presently, Community Solutions Association is developing Project KIND as a nationally-recognized evidence-based curriculum for inclusion on the federal registry for the Department of Health and Human Services’ SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) website.
Marando said the intent of Project KIND meshes very well with the mission of the Foundation and its support of early childhood development.