Healthy Child Care Texas is a state initiative dedicated to promoting optimal health, safety, nutrition, and development for children in out-of-home child care programs while training Child Care Health Consultants and offering other means of support.
Child Care Health Consultant Program
Early Childhood Professionals with knowledge and experience in the early childhood learning programs complete the requirements of the Child Care Health Consultant Certification to provide training and consultation to directors and educators to improve child safety and to improve the quality of care and learning in early learning programs.
Healthy Child Care Texas (HCCT) - Social Emotional Development (SED) Project
The HCCT-SED Project is a 5-year grant to support early learning programs to implement developmental screening programs for the children enrolled in their programs. In designated areas, 50 licensed child care centers are selected to have a Child Care Health Consultant assist them in developmental screening at their sites.
The designated county for 2020-2021 is Bexar County. Contact HCCT Program Specialist Cheryl Carey for more information cheryl@texasaeyc.org.
Texas Healthy Building Blocks
Texas Healthy Building Blocks is an obesity prevention program funded by the Department of State Health Services and designed to recognize ECE facilities that demonstrate a commitment to children’s lifelong health.
Participating facilities will work with a Technical Assistance Consultant to self-assess their current practices in areas like physical activity, screen time, nutrition, outdoor play and learning, breastfeeding and infant feeding, oral health, and farm-to-school using the research-based Go NAPSACC self-assessment tool.
The pilot program in Harris County is currently underway. Contact HCCT Program Manager Erica Sanchez for more information erica@texasaeyc.org.
OLE! Texas Partner Spotlight: Texas Children in Nature (TCiN)
Spotlighting partners and organizations that help centers find resources to help with their outdoor learning environments.
Texas Children in Nature (TCiN) is working to ensure equitable access and connection to nature for all children in Texas. 2020 has been quite the year for TCiN, starting with a visioning workshop to begin the transition to becoming our own private non-profit organization. Part of the visioning workshop was a renewed focus on equity in the outdoors for children in Texas
Another response to the changing times of 2020 has been the advent of a series of TCiN hosted virtual teacher workshops to help teachers use the green spaces on their campuses. These workshops have focused on engaging teachers in best practices for taking their students outdoors during the school day and creating engaging virtual lessons using nature outside their students' homes.
You can join in the exciting work TCiN is doing by joining one of our eight regional collaboratives across the state. These groups meet regularly to discuss how to promote children spending time in nature and their own projects to create a network of professionals focused on facilitating children to spend time in nature.