By Teri Banas

TRAVERSE CITY – Pam Ward and her staff at the Great Start Regional Child Care Resource Center for Northwest Michigan go above and beyond to help improve the quality of child care in the region, and thus the future of young children.

They have to. The agency’s 10-county region is not only large – it’s roughly the size of Connecticut – but culturally and economically diverse.

Being effective, therefore, takes drive, energy, a good car … and sometimes some creativity:

• In July, for instance, staff child care specialist Candice Case traveled to a local migrant camp with a Spanish-speaking interpreter to train providers in first aid, CPR and health and safety.

• When local child care providers couldn’t make it to a mandatory health and safety class, resource center trainers took the class to the providers’ homes.

• Because the area is a tourism hotbed, the center has discussed with the area Chamber of Commerce a way to develop a group of caregivers available for out-of-town parents.

The center has even helped a local hotel locate child care to help out a wedding party that included 13 children.

It’s all in a day’s work for the center.

“We are providing the support many of the child care programs in our region want and need … to assist them in gaining the knowledge and resources to move their programs and staff forward,” says Pam Ward, executive director of Traverse City-based Child Care Connections – Northwest, a Great Start Regional Resource Center. “We know the value of quality child care and we appreciate the opportunity to make a difference.”

Making a difference this year brought new challenges.

When the state mandated health and safety training for all “relative and aide” child care providers receiving a small subsidy from the state, Ward’s staff suddenly had 273 people to train, which was no small task.

Nevertheless, child care specialist and trainer Candice Case said the new requirement turned into an invaluable experience for building relationships.

“I taught one relative provider who cried during the training because I had thanked her and told her how fortunate the children in her care were,” Case said. “She had felt as though no one appreciated what she did for the children.”

The Northwest Region also has unique challenges, owing to its diversity, among them finding ways to provide training to working migrant families.

Identifying and locating family caregivers for the children of migrant workers has been challenging but the center has made progress. Its first migrant camp training sessions for caregivers took place last summer.

The regional staff has made inroads with another important local group, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in Leelanau County.

The band, which operates a full-day child care center and Head Start program in Peshawbestown, has seen a high turnover among its caregivers in the child care center. Typically, workers leave for higher paying jobs in local casinos or even within the federally subsidized Head Start program. Ward’s group has been enlisted to find ways to empower staff members, strengthen its team and help with classroom management.

“We want to help them become as successful with their child care program as they are with Head Start,” she said.

Ward also directs the only RRC in Michigan to run a food program.

The Child and Adult Care Food Program started in 1968 as an extension of the National School Lunch Program. Today, it serves hundreds of child care providers in the region by showing ways to encourage good eating habits in children.

The staff helps create healthful meal and snack plans for kids. Then they monitor what group homes, family homes and relative providers are feeding the children to ensure they’re following USDA guidelines.

To make it easier for providers to keep on offering nutritious meals, the center offers an “organizer box” with hanging files to store recipes that kids like.

The boxes fit in with one of the center’s goals of being a resource provider.

To that end, the center hosts an extensive library of teacher resource books, educational materials, musical instruments, age-appropriate toys and “theme boxes,” filling 36 bookshelves. They also have a stock of 270 “literacy backpacks” with cool learning supplies in them that kids can take home from their child care centers.

The staff wants to make these materials accessible on-line. To do so, they’ve contracted with a company that catalogs materials for local libraries. Soon providers will be able to log into the center’s website and scroll through itemized lists of activities and books of interest to them and their children.

Rebuilding the lending library has also raised questions for distributing the materials. Currently, the Traverse City-based center has two satellite offices in the Petoskey and Cadillac areas. Ward is working on a plan to tap the transportation services of the three area intermediate school districts in order to get library materials in the hands of providers where they live.

Recently, staff members have started by-request site visits at providers’ homes and centers in a new practice meant to improve the quality of care by building relationships and creating mentoring opportunities. In some cases, a provider might ask for a home visit to follow up on ways to implement what’s learned in their Great Start training.

Case, for example, is working with one center on best practices for classroom management - creating daily schedules, choosing developmentally appropriate activities for children and improving provider-infant interactions. Instructors also have the option to take a series of training classes to a specific program, center or home.

Child Care Connections – Northwest, the area’s Great Start Regional Resource Center, has been a fixture in the area for the past 31 years. Today, it’s still the place where parents seek resources and contacts for child care providers, now through Great Start CONNECT, the Great Start online database. It’s still where providers get training and help with improving the quality of their child care with training, scholarships and advocacy.

Ward says more people today recognize the importance of early education and care on a child’s growth and development, and that bodes well for the future.

“More people understand why this area of our society is so important,” she said. “The ECIC (Early Childhood Investment Corporation) and Great Start Collaboratives are working to make the message heard by everyone because it is everyone’s responsibility to positively impact the future.”

Beth Fryer is a licensed provider of 26 years, and operates Teddy Bear Daycare and Preschool in Traverse City. She served on a 24-member provider panel last year to help develop a “wish list” of services and supports for building the regional resource operation. She said she’s thrilled to see some of the panel’s suggestions materialize. Among those: Greatly improved communication through newsletters and the Great Start CONNECT online service, enabling providers to more readily find information about upcoming training classes.

“In this profession, it’s so important to attend as many training (classes) as you can. The field changes so much and you need to stay on top of things,” Fryer said. “Training keeps your knowledge fresh.”

Likewise, she loves the revamped “toy lending library,” which was unveiled at a recent appreciation night hosted by staff for regional providers. “We were all really excited about it. It’s going to be a great asset. It’s going to be so excellent. I got my nose in there, digging around to see what’s available.” Her favorite finds: a child-size shopping cart, woodland animal puppets and some cool, new “manipulatives” for infants.

A new program that’s been well received has made locally grown fruits and vegetables available to providers and their families. Through arrangements with local farmers, providers can pick up locally grown fruits and vegetables at discounted prices. To encourage healthful eating, Ward’s staff has even made tasty recipes available online and in print.

By supporting parents as they search for appropriate child care, and by supporting the child care providers who provide this community service, the center can make a positive impact on the development of today’s children as they grow into successful, productive members of society, Ward said.

“Over the years we always knew the quality of care could use some help … that we can do more,” she added. “And now we’re being able to go in and work one-on-one with providers and see changes that we could make together to improve quality training and hopefully boost self-esteem (of providers). That’s exciting.”

Fryer said the work of the regional center has been like a build-in “safety net” for providers.

“A lot of times you feel like you’re really out there on your own. They’re (Ward’s staff) not only friends, colleagues, but they’re also people to call to bounce around developmental ideas and discuss problems. They are a really big asset for professionals in our area.”

About Pam Ward

Pam Ward was a child care provider before she moved to Traverse City from Mt. Pleasant to become the executive director of the then 4C office 16 years ago. 

“This was a natural career change for me as I was interested in training, advocating and supporting child care providers. I could relate to their struggles,” she said.

To find out more about the work Child Care Connections – Northwest and the Great Start Regional Resource Center in Traverse City, watch their video on YouTube.