1-024 - Building A Better Workforce: What Supports are Needed for Effective Early Childhood Practice?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Promotion of child health, development and well-being is increasingly at the forefront of policy and service initiatives, particularly in early childhood. As has been noted in an influential 2015 joint report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Research Council (NRC), there is a serious need to better understand and transform the early childhood workforce in order to support innovative and effective interventions for families with young children. This symposium will focus on emerging areas of focus in early childhood workforce development, particularly in terms of service providers’ interactions with and engagement of families. The first presentation will focus on Early Head Start (EHS) home visitors’ experience working with high-risk families and the impact it has on the home visitors’ own well-being. The second presentation will present a study focused on support to nurse home visitors through training and on-going consultation with mental health professionals. The third presentation will examine coaching provided to early childhood educators designed to foster parent engagement and support parent-educator partnerships in preschool programming, examining specifically how coaching actions relate to strategies used by the early childhood educators in a family engagement intervention. The discussant will place the findings from the presentations in the context of the IOM/NRC report, note both similarities and differences in the needs of the workforce in services focused on birth-to-three family support compared to early childhood education settings, and suggest next steps for supporting providers in both service sectors.

Sub Unit

• Prevention and Interventions

Chair

• Allison West, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Discussant

• Jon Korfmacher, Erikson Institute

Individual Presentations

• The Benefits and Costs of Caring: A Mixed Methods Study of EHS Home Visitors - Presenting Author: Allison West, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health; Lisa Berlin, University of Maryland; Brenda Jones Harden, University of Maryland

• When the Problem is Mental Health: Supporting Home Visitors Who Support Vulnerable Families - Presenting Author: Paula Zeanah, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

• Coaching to Support Skill Development in Early Childhood Educators: Promoting Child Learning via Parent Engagement - Presenting Author: Lisa Knoche, Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools