Press Room

Professional Development, Family Child Care Style
by Diane Mitchell

When our network was one of the groups selected to pilot test Level One of the Family Child Care Training Program, we never imagined the benefits our network would gain. As the facilitator for the Home Child Care Network in Thunder Bay, Ontario, I had investigated many training courses but had never found a course that met all of our needs. Many of the training courses I investigated promoted methods to handle situations that work very well in a centre-based child care situation where co-workers and other people are around to help, but lacked the understanding of home child care.

Home child care is a very unique profession. Until you have done this job, it is hard to appreciate the situations that occur during the course of a day. Home child care providers tend to work in isolation. When diapers need changing or meals need to be made, there is generally only one person to do it. The Family Child Care Training Project offered the best understanding of how to handle home child care situations and many practical ideas that can make the life of a home child care provider easier.

I had been warned that home child care providers will not attend training courses. However, in our case, we proved this to be wrong. Providers were more than willing to take training, particularly a course led by people who actually provided home child care themselves, and a course based on the premise that they and their job were important. A second incentive was that we provided the training free of charge. After all, it is hard to encourage someone who makes less than minimum wage, after expenses, to pay hundreds of dollars for a course that does not lead to any chance of promotion or recognition. Third, we provided a certificate to anyone who attended all of the classes and passed all the unit tests or assignments.

Within this framework, 22 of the 52 providers in our Home Child Care Network took and successfully completed the training. Three home child care providers from our network took on the task of leading the course. Although they had no special training, drawing on their personal experiences and their passion for caregiving enabled them to successfully disseminate the information. Level One is a basic level course. I was concerned that providers with over five years experience (½ the group) would be bored and would not get any new information. But I was very wrong! Every caregiver in the course learned something. Sometimes it was a practical hint like using wax paper for a diaper change area. Other times, participants rediscovered their original reason for choosing to care for children. After years of providing care, we tend to forget.

From the start, we tried to cultivate an atmosphere that led to trust and openness between the caregivers and the trainers. Confidentiality was a basic premise. Because the project provides information that provokes discussion among the caregivers-in-training, some nights it was hard to end the discussion even after three hours. This course showed us the importance of getting home child care providers together so we can support and educate each other. Caregivers started to build relationships with each other based on the trust and openness that was generated.

Many participants in our course found other caregivers in their neighbourhood to share outings and concerns about their day. These connections extended into an organized schedule of outings during the summer months. As the caregivers became more comfortable with each other and more sure about their abilities, they became more active in the network, participating on committees and on the executive.

It became very clear during the training that isolation was a common feeling. Our biggest accomplishment was a mentoring program that a caregiver who completed the training started for our network. The mentoring program is based on the sharing of information between caregivers, much like in the training process. The program hopes to alleviate the problem of isolation that is so common among many home child care providers. Now any caregiver that joins our network is immediately given the name of a caregiver in their area they can contact with questions or concerns, or just someone they can talk to about their day. This program has proven very beneficial both to our members and to the executive, since we now have more people sharing the work load.

At the start of the training course, many child care providers were unsure of what they should be doing with the children in their care. By the end of the course their self esteem and knowledge had increased to the point where they felt much more comfortable dealing with the parents and children. It was wonderful to see a provider who could hardly stand in front of the group at the beginning of the course, present an assignment by its end and feel they had enough strength to have parents sign contracts for the child care they needed.

Home child care is sometimes thought of as “babysitting.” We do not often have a curriculum or a schedule, so it can seem we do nothing to stimulate the children. The Level One Family Child Care Training reinforced the fact that we do offer the stimulating environment children need to grow and develop to their full potential. We simply do it in a less formal, more family-like setting.

I encourage any network coordinator or facilitator to offer the Level One Family Child Care Training to your members. You will be amazed by how your group grows. As individuals, as a network and as a community, we have benefited from this opportunity and we are eagerly looking forward to providing Levels Two and Three training in the near future.