Early Childhood Providers

Quality Early Care and Education

As an early childhood practitioner, you know that high quality early care and education has long lasting benefits to children and to society as a whole, setting the stage for lifelong health and success. Quality early care settings are a powerful venue to promote lifelong health and success.

Docs for Tots believes that there are opportunities to increase doctors’ engagement in improving access to quality early care and education. We also believe that early care and education settings have the potential to improve children’s health. Through promoting strong first relationships, social-emotional health, routine screenings, and supports and services children and families need, early care settings shape children’s lifelong health and well-being.

As an early childhood practitioner, you are uniquely positioned to:

• Advocate for increasing health promotion within your state’s quality improvement and rating system and other standards/regulations that touch early education and child care
• Conduct trainings around social-emotional health, healthy active living and other health issues in early education
• Be a strong voice to advocate for funding and policy supports for quality early education and child care: your stories and experience matter!
• Advocate for an expanded role for Child Care Health Consultants in early education and child care
• Link families with key resources, including the medical home, social-emotional supports, parenting education in your daily work