USA

For a child welfare agency to achieve its mission, it must attract, develop, and retain a skilled and ready workforce. Yet, child welfare agencies across the country are struggling to recruit, hire, train, support, and retain committed and high-performing staff. To hear key stakeholder concerns about the child welfare workforce, the Children’s Bureau and the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute invited 28 state and county agency leaders and 7 university partners, Children’s Bureau staff and national consultants to participate in a Workforce Workgroup on March 4-5, 2013. This report is a compilation of the most pressing child welfare workforce issues they face and recommended strategies for developing the child welfare workforce of the future.

The appendices from the Critical Competencies for Infant-Toddler Educators Related Professional Criteria, provide clear and concise guidance on essential knowledge and skills for infant-toddler educators.

Illustrating how criteria from various partners can be used together to support the preparation and professional development of infant-toddler educators, this document includes related professional criteria, tools and child development benchmarks.

Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress.

Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

The Early Childhood Workforce Index represents the first effort to establish a baseline description of early childhood employment conditions and policies in every state and to track progress on a state-by-state basis to improve early childhood jobs. Providing states with periodic appraisals of their efforts, based on measurable status and policy indicators, is aimed at encouraging states to step up their efforts to address these persistent workforce challenges and at supporting related advocacy efforts. It is our hope that expanded and consistent focus on early childhood jobs will, in turn, generate refined strategies and encourage the incubation and testing of sustainable policies to attend to compensation and other issues that have gone largely unaddressed.

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

2016

This report discusses the importance of supporting the early learning workforce – nearly a totality of whom are women – not only to improve the quality of early learning programs, but also to ensure fair pay so that they can support their own families. The report discusses how high-quality early learning matters for healthy child development and how the wage gap undermines children’s outcomes. It presents data on workforce earnings across states, as well as relevant state demographics and the recent federal efforts to support the early childhood workforce.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services U.S. Department of Education

2016

Workforce Development Framework (WDF) aims to support states and early childhood programs by providing recommendations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for developing and implementing career pathways to support the professional learning and practice of early childhood educators and program directors.

This statement aims to:

• Raise awareness about the need for career pathways that support and develop the specialized competences and skills of early childhood educators and early childhood program directors;
• Highlight the importance of building a progression of professional development and educational opportunities for the early childhood workforce, making it understandable to all stakeholders as a key strategy to expand high-quality early childhood education for all children from birth;
• Provide recommendations for state agencies to create the policies and resources to provide a career advancement pathway with the meaningful supports needed for individuals in the early care and education field;
• Provide recommendations for early childhood program leaders to support staff and take advantage of professional advancement opportunities; and
• Identify related resources to support states and local programs.
   

The Workforce Development Framework (WDF) can guide agency leaders to improve the health of their child welfare workforce. The WDF describes the key elements of an effective workforce and evidence-informed strategies to develop each component. The WDF’s inner circle describes the process for assessing organizational workforce gaps and implementing workforce strategies while the outer one delineates the components. Leaders can use this framework to develop a comprehensive approach to improving the health of their workforce. Together, the Process and Components compose the Workforce Development Framework (WDF) developed by NCWWI.