Just Say No to Judgment: How Judging Parents Actually Leads to Worse, Not Better, Outcomes for Kids

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Almost all parents feel judged, almost all the time. Our Tuning In survey showed that nearly 9 in 10 parents across the board feel judged (90% moms and 85% dads), and almost half say they feel judged all the time or nearly all the time (46% moms; 45% dads).

Read the full article here: https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/1716-just-say-no-to-judgment-how-judging-parents-actually-leads-to-worse-not-better-outcomes-for-kids

How Data Helped Head Start Centers Tackle a 'No Show' Problem

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From the article:

"What do you do when you build a preschool class—but many of the children never show up?

That's what happened at the Head Start program overseen by the Community Action Project of Tulsa in Oklahoma, or CAP Tulsa for short. In September 2016, 135 preschoolers—fully 20 percent of the program's Head Start population—never appeared at the start of the school year, even though their parents had enrolled them.

CAP Tulsa, as it has often done in the past, turned to data both to figure out the problem and devise a solution. And in doing so, it provided an example of how all of Head Start's 1,600 grantees are now expected to infuse data into their decisionmaking and continuous-improvement processes."

Read the rest of the article.

 

CCDF Comment Period Information

The Child Care and Development Fund State Plan update is available at the link below (DCF website) for public comment. There will be public comment hearing in Topeka June 6th.  Comments may also be emailed by June 11th to ccdfstateplan@ks.gov

 

http://www.dcf.ks.gov/services/ees/Pages/Child-Care-and-Development-Fund-State-Plan-Public-Hearing.aspx

 

Two items highlighted by KAC regarding the new state plan are below.

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First, the state should consider using child care funding to subsidize the cost of fingerprint-based background checks for providers. These new fingerprint-based checks are an important step to reduce the likelihood of abuse and neglect of children in child care, and Kansas can support providers by offsetting the additional cost of these new requirements.

 

·  Second, Kansas should do more to help families afford child care. The child care assistance program helps families afford the cost of child care tuition so that parents can work while children are in safe early learning settings. The number of children participating in the program fell by more than half in the last decade; child care assistance served fewer than 9,000 Kansas children in March 2018. 

Proposed Farm Bill Puts Kansas Families at Risk of Increased Hunger

Excerpt from the article:

"The federal Farm Bill proposal recently passed by the House Agriculture Committee would increase hunger throughout Kansas and the nation through its many changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It also forces other states to replicate some of Kansas’ failed policies on SNAP and other poverty-reduction programs, based on flawed studies about Kansas’ experience with similar proposals."