Mentoring Family Child Care Providers to Support School Readiness

Thanks to the support of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation Early Care and Education Collaborative, with an additional grant from Wells Fargo, Fairfax Futures collaborated with Fairfax County Office for Children to mentor a cohort of 15 family child care providers committed to the school readiness of the children in their care.

The program had several components, including:

• Introduction to the use of the Creative Curriculum for Family Child Care to help educators create a routine, implement developmentally appropriate practices and better plan individual experiences for each child in their care
• Administration of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) and the ASQ-Social Emotional tool for each three- and four-year old child in the family child care educator’s program to help identify typical developmental milestones and identify potential developmental delays
• Administration of vision and hearing assessments for each three- and four-year old child in the program to determine if follow-on services were needed
• Shared learning experiences with other members in the cohort, related to mindfulness, self-regulation and nurturing children’s creativity, designed to build connections with other family child care educators
• Regular visits from each educator’s mentor to provide on-site technical assistance and support, modeling appropriate practices and providing hands-on guidance on ways to enrich the early learning environment.

In addition, each member of the cohort received educational resources to use to support the school readiness of the young children in her program.