Child Care Health Consultation

More children than ever are cared for, starting at an early age, in out-of-home settings. Child care and education professionals need specialized support and access to resources to deal with a wide variety of health conditions and health risks.

What You Should Do

Child care health consultation is available to all licensed child care professionals working in family child care homes and center-based programs. If you have a license from the Department of Children, Youth, and Families and are interested in learning more, call the HEALTH Information Line at 401-222-5960 or complete an application form. Once we receive your information, we will call to enroll you in the Child Care Support Network program. Then, we will assign someone from our team to work with you to determine your strengths and needs and to coordinate a plan of support.

What We Do

We can help early childhood programs recognize and promote the health and safety of children, families, and staff. We do this by employing specially-trained health and early childhood professionals to offer consultation, technical assistance, and training to child care providers (including family homes). Child care health consultants can give assistance over the phone, during onsite visits, and through trainings. Depending on the child care provider's needs, consultants can:

• Provide onsite nursing services to children and staff.
• Provide onsite assessments of the health and safety practices of child care staff.
• Provide onsite assessments of indoor and outdoor environments, such as classrooms and playgrounds.
• Help child care and education providers include children with special needs into their programs.
• Promote developmentally-appropriate environments and practices.
• Review and assess health records of children and staff.
• Help develop health and safety policies and procedures.
• Help develop partnerships between child care centers, families, and healthcare providers.
• Link children, families, and child care staff to community health resources.
• Train child care staff to reduce rates of infectious diseases and injury.

Funding

We are supported by funding provided by the Department of Human Services and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children Program.