Child Care Working Groups

Vision: All Children will have access to affordable, quality child care.

To that purpose, three objectives were developed:

     1.  To identify barriers to quality and generate responses to these barriers;
     2.  To increase the general level of knowledge about what constitutes quality early care and education and
     3.  To expand resources to support quality.

Children's Services Collaborative

The Children's Services Collaborative (CSC) is a consortium of over sixty (60) partnering agencies and organizations. Their goal is to develop and implement strategies that will redesign the ways that systems and services respond to the needs of children, youth and families. This means services will be linked so that gaps no longer exist in meeting the needs of families. Working groups of the collaborative focus on specific issues related to the well being of families. The current work groups are: Child care, child welfare/ juvenile justice, health / mental health, and education. Activities of the CSC in the past three years include regional planning meetings for the 7 parish metro area, parenting forums, Fair housing information sessions and development of Book Partners, a scholarship program for early child hood centers.

Monthly Meetings bring together parents, providers, social service agencies, educators, media representatives--people concerned with the care, education, nurture and health of young children--to promote quality early care and education. All are welcome to attend.

For information on any of these initiatives, contact us at: Phone: 504-586-8506 ext. 26

BookPartners

BookPartners matches businesses and other partners with child care and early education programs to provide young children with high quality books. The single most important activity for building understanding and skills for reading appears to be reading aloud to children.

Juvenile Justice / Child Safety

Child Welfare / Juvenile Justice Group - the working group of the CSC seeks to link the issues between child abuse, violence prevention and the juvenile justice system. Through the exploration and consensus process the working group has developed a direction of working towards emphasis on more alternatives to incarceration, and on more re - entry services for young people who have been incarcerated.

Agenda for Children's Project SHIELD is a school-based child abuse prevention program.

Early Care and Learning: Information Central     (E-CLIC)

Early Care and Learning: Information Central (E-CLIC) collects, compiles and disseminates up-to-date information about policies, programs, publications and research related to early care and education. It is a clearinghouse of information for parents, professionals, media and other interested parties.