Professional Development is About Teamwork

The Fair Start for Kids Act supports child care and early learning providers by supporting increased resources for professional development and support for adult educators who care for and teach young children in Washington State.

The FSKA supports the professional development team to provide a DCYF comprehensive framework and delivery of services for professional development.

Here are a few updates from the Professional Development team:

• The team established contracts with successful bidders from the Professional Development Request For Qualifications and Quotation (RFQQ) in March, including:
  • Voices of Tomorrow
  • Because it Takes a Village
  • Diverse Unified Education Network
  • UW Barnard Center
  • Eleva Consulting
• The team updated the health and safety and required basic training.
• They established expanded content for anti-bias anti-racist practices
• For the next fiscal year, the team will increase scholarships for Early Learning Providers participating in Early Achievers by $1.4 million.
• The team has implemented a streamlined new licensee orientation series for WAC, subsidy billing workflow, and Electronic Attendance process.

Here are other items the Professional Development team is working on:

• DCYF partners, including the Haring Center and Cultivate Learning, conducted two community listening sessions in April to collect provider insights on the updated Washington Pyramid Model (WAPM) birth-to-three training curriculum that will be introduced in the fiscal year 2023.
• DCYF, with contracted partners, will begin work on developing a training on Fundamentals of Trauma-Informed Care and Healing-Centered Approaches. The material will be added to updates for Child Care Basics in the fiscal year 2023.
• On June 23, DCYF held its fifth meeting of an internal and external FSKA Trauma-Informed Care Advisory Group. The purpose of the group is to discuss strategies for growing trauma-informed support outlined in the FSKA. Early Learning Providers convened in early June to make decisions on these strategies and how they will be implemented in the fiscal year 2023.