Quality Early Care and Education

As a pediatrician-led agency, we know how critical child care agencies are to help kids get on the right path to healthy lives.

This is why we

• share free resources for child care providers, and supports for families of the children in their care
• train child care providers to screen the children in their care, in partnership with the Child Care Councils of Nassau and Suffolk, and QUALITYstarsNY
• work with family/group family child cares in Project BRITE to support providers and improve the social emotional environment in each family-based child care
• partner with ECLC on a NYS Infant Toddler Mental Health Consultation project to build the capacity of the adult caregivers in children’s lives

Indeed, we support agencies like yours with the same tools, time, and personal attention that we give physicians’ offices.

Why? We know the tools to helping kids 0-5 already exist. And venues like your agency are where kids can get the benefit of such tools. But we also know that adopting these tools requires time, energy, and of course, money. That’s why we partner with child care agencies to make adopting best practices as easy as possible. In fact, Docs For Tots can attest to your agency’s adoption of such vital practices so parents – and the public – know the value of your service in helping kids thrive. Find out how.

High quality early care and education has long lasting benefits to children and society. When young children are in high-quality childcare settings, there are positive impacts on school success, and health and well-being.

Seventy percent of children from birth to age five are in some form of child care. Not all child care facilities are created equal, leaving some children in settings that fail to best support all aspects of children’s healthy development, including their social-emotional, early learning, and health needs. For many families, quality child care is far too costly to access.

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.

To help foster this engagement, Docs for Tots:

1. Brings attention to the potential of quality early care and education to transform our nation’s health.
2. Provides resources, technical assistance and trainings to support health promotion in early education and child care.
3. Promotes Quality Rating Systems (QRS) for early education and care and works to enhance state QRS’ emphasis on health promotion.
4. Enhances communication between early care settings and children’s medical home.
5. Educates doctors around the value of high quality early care and education.
6. Advocates for enhanced investments and strong early care and education policies.
7. Supports child care health consultants capacity to improve health promotion in child care settings through the formation of a New York statewide network of Child Care Health Consultants.
8. Coordinates care through Help Me Grow.