Child Care Council staff offer training, technical assistance and consulting services to child care centers and family child care providers in order to increase the quality of child care programs. We will assist programs in finding the path to quality based on their needs. The following are some avenues to achieve the highest levels of quality.
NAEYC
Since 1985, NAEYC has offered a national, voluntary accreditation system to set professional standards for early childhood education programs, and to help families identify high-quality programs. Today, NAEYC Accreditation represents the mark of quality in early childhood education. Over 7,000 child care programs, preschools, early learning centers, and other center- or school-based early childhood education programs are currently NAEYC-Accredited. These programs provide high quality care and education to nearly one million young children in the United States, its territories, and programs affiliated with the United States Department of Defense.
NAFCC
NAFCC sponsors the only nationally recognized accreditation system, designed specifically for family child care providers. This system was designed by hundreds of providers, parents, and early care and education experts in an effort to create a quality indicator for family child care programs across the country. NAFCC Accreditation is recognized as the highest indicator that a family child care program is a quality environment. It is awarded to family child care providers who meet the eligibility requirements and the Quality Standards for NAFCC Accreditation. Accreditation reflects a high level of quality through a process that examines all aspects of the family child care program, i.e. relationships, the environment, developmental learning activities, safety and health, and professional and business practices. Once family child care providers become accredited, they agree to abide by the standards set forth and to be measured against those standards, with periodic integrity and compliance reviews. There are over 2100 NAFCC Accredited providers throughout the United States and in other locations worldwide where military family child care professionals operate.
Pathways
Pathways Accreditation was developed by Children’s Institute in Rochester, NY and a team of experts in the field of early education and care to provide an efficient and affordable way for centers to improve quality and achieve their accreditation goal. Pathways is based on an extensive review of national standards including Head Start, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, the National Association for the Education of Young Children and other national and state level accreditation and quality systems.
School Age Accreditation
The COA (Council on Accreditation) After School standards were developed in partnership with the National AfterSchool Association (NAA) through the participation of an NAA Accreditation Transition Team of experts from the field. This process resulted in a blending of the NAA and COA standards into a comprehensive, yet program specific, set of quality standards for After School program recognition and Accreditation.
These standards and After School program recognition opportunities support quality in areas such as programming, continuous quality improvement, developing and maintaining healthy relationships, training and professional development, and staff supervision and support, to name just a few.
