Grantee Profile: SCAEYC Improving the Quality of Child CareDecember 10, 2007 |
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 After a three-year effort to improve everything from programming to facilities at her child care center, Mayarin Barrietos happily surveys her 10 brightly decorated classrooms and the 103 children busy at work. The site supervisor at the Salvation Army L.A. Child Care Center, Barrietos says, the Center has been "transformed." And she has the Accreditation Facilitation Project (AFP) to thank for it. "It has helped us really understand what we needed to improve, and how to make those improvements."Barrietos represents just one of more than 100 child care programs that have participated in the First 5 LA-funded AFP through the Southern California Association for the Education of Young Children (SCAYEC). Barrietos' center has improved so much that the state recognized the achievements and provided it with enough funding to allow them to waive attendance fees for all participating children. The SCAYEC AFP, headed by Project Coordinator Golnaz Kooklanfar, was funded by First 5 LA in 2003 in an attempt to increase the quality of family and center-based child care programs to a level where they would be considered for accreditation by the National Association of Education for Young Children (NAEYC) or the National Association for Family Childcare (NAFC). Now in its fourth year, the AFP has helped more than 100 child care programs with quality improvement; 48 family child care providers and 10 centers, including the Salvation Army L.A. Child Care Center, have become accredited with the help of the AFP Developed by child development and early education experts, NAEYC has set standards that define a quality child care center. To attain a NAYEC accreditation, a child care program must go through a vigorous application "self-study" process, followed by an assessment by a NAEYC assessor, to show that it meets or exceed those standards. The NAFC process is similar. The NAYEC and the NAFC accreditation systems are two of the few accreditation systems recognized by the state of California as an indicator of the quality of a child care program. Support from AFP to help meet the NAYEC or NAFC standards includes regular observations, a jointly created improvement plan, support groups for Family Day Care providers, and, for the larger centers, in-services. This year support groups are in English, Spanish, and Chinese. To learn more about the SCAYEC AFP, call program staff at (818) 781-9355 or e-mail her at scaeyc@sbcglobal.net. Click here to learn more about NAYEC Accreditation. Click here to learn more about NAFC Accreditation. |
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