Did you know that 60% of children spend 35-50 hours (about 4 days) a week in a child care setting?
A family’s chosen child care setting is quite literally an extension of their home, this is why it is so important that caregivers are educated and equipped with the tools and resources needed to meet the needs of the children in their care.
Take Nakeisha Hill for example. With support and motivation from her family, Nakeisha decided to pursue her dream of becoming a provider of high-quality child care for families in her community and opened her center, Daycare on the Hill.
Over the last three years, Daycare on the Hill has seen remarkable success, and as the center continued to grow, the opportunity for partnerships and professional development also began to open.
One of United 4 Children’s (U4C) Coaching Specialists stepped in and began providing support. “She basically showed me all the resources that were available to me, from the grants, to the training classes, to even helping me understand how to deal with the different personalities of the kids in my care. I would recommend United 4 Children’s services to anybody who has a child care facility.”
Missouri’s child care providers work tirelessly, and often thanklessly, to nurture and support the children and parents in our communities, but who can they turn to when they need support themselves? One of the ways United 4 Children supports children and child care providers is through no-cost trainings. Twelve hours of training is required for licensed caregivers in Missouri, yet it is difficult for caregivers to attend in person. Online trainings allow for an increased level of convenience for these already busy educators. Online lessons help lessen the burden of caregivers’ travel time, ensure they don’t need to find a substitute to cover their absence, and increase the precious time these caregivers are allowed to spend with their own families.
Sarah Hill, Lead Coaching Specialist at U4C, had this to say about the impact of online trainings: “Having a virtual option allows us to expand our reach and meet so many educators where they are. With virtual trainings, educators are also provided more options for training topics that could be more valuable and relevant to the knowledge they are seeking, rather than the limited options of trainings that are within the location, date and time that meets that educator’s needs.”
Only $10,000 is needed to provide 125 hours of online training at no cost in 2025. This will allow U4C to provide 45 trainings to over 2,000 child care providers, in turn 13,000 children in the state of Missouri will have high quality education from these child care providers in 2025.
Your support will allow child care providers to grow their skills, their confidence, and their knowledge. Best of all? By supporting them, you are supporting our youngest learners. Giving them the strong, healthy, stable foundation that is so critical from birth to age 5.
