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Child Care Work Group Goals

The purpose of the Child Care Work Group is to assist child care educators in early care and education settings provide safe environments in which children grow and thrive. Working primarily with children from birth to Kindergarten entry, child care educators are supported in creating policies and enacting processes based on best practices in nutrition and physical activity for young children. This is achieved by providing child care educators with access to training, technical assistance, model policies, and resources.

Goal
Promote training offered by work group members’ initiatives to increase child care educator and early childhood stakeholder participation in nutrition and physical activity training by 10% annually through December 2024.
Objectives
  • Establish a baseline measure of promotion of training by work group members in 2022.
  • Work group members will notify group of all scheduled training/events annually.
  • Training event sponsors will provide members with marketing collateral (social media posts, fliers, email language, etc.) to disseminate in promotion of the event.
  • Encourage sponsors of training/event to intentionally build registration information about ethnicity, geography, and socioeconomic aspects into events, when possible, and share these with the work group as a measure of diversity and inclusion.
  • Members will commit to promoting the training/event through specific actions and report on their efforts.
Goal
Participate in the creation, planning and promotion of a Farm to Early Childhood Education DHSS task force by December 2024.
Objectives
  • Officially present Farm to Early Childhood Education information to work group.
  • Members commit to being on the task force.
  • Work group member participation providing input, participating in the initiatives and assisting in promotion of the work.
Goal
Provide input to the Compliance Section at the DESE Office of Childhood in review of child care licensing regulations, once initiated by DESE, by December 2024.
Objectives
  • Work with the Compliance Section at DESE Office of Childhood to designate work group member(s) (and possibly new lead for Child Care Health Consultants).
  • Identify opportunities to inform licensing regulation revision specific to increased nutrition and physical activity standards.
  • Seek opportunities to attend meetings about licensing regulation revision, once scheduled, to offer input with at least 10% of work group members involved.
Goal
Engage other MOCAN work groups to promote at least one health-related issue (nutrition and physical activity) to child care settings and young children, when applicable, through December 2024.
Objectives
  • Create and send to other MOCAN work groups a survey about what they are doing and how the Child Care Work Group could partner/collaborate with them.
  • Based on survey results, invite other MOCAN work group members to present and discuss how we can collaborate or at least promote events/initiatives between work groups.
  • Identify initiatives and develop a plan to collaborate and launch work.
  • Create and distribute the Child Care Work Group plans and goals to other MOCAN work groups to further and enhance collaboration.

Contact the Child Care Work Group chairs to learn more:

Child Care Work Group contacts