Project and Programs Across Areas of Focus

Early Intervention

The Early Childhood Center works to link research and practice in advancing the field of early education. Its current focus is the universal design of early education that helps all children and families enter school successfully.

The Early Childhood Meeting Place website is a collaborative effort to post, in one central location, all events, research activities, and professional development initiatives that exist in the early childhood field in Indiana. An expansion of the site is planned to provide parents and family members of young children access to family resource information available in their communities.

The Indiana Child Care Health Consultant Program works to increase the level of health and safety in out-of-home child care settings across Indiana through technical assistance and training for child care providers. This collaboration with state, regional, and local organizations and agencies supplying services to providers of child care enhances the quality of services in the child care field. The documentation and analysis of requests from child care providers for health and safety technical assistance and training and the provision of services are major components of this program.

Through a contract with the Ohio Department of Health and its Part C Program, The Ohio Help Me Grow Evaluation Project, assists the state agency in the design and implementation of a statewide process for collecting child outcome data. Data collected will be used to complete its 2007 federal reporting requirements.

Indiana’s Unified Training System (UTS) provides a mechanism for the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), Division of Family and Children (DFC), Bureau of Child Development (BCD)/ First Steps, and the Department of Education(DOE), Division of Exceptional Learners, to coordinate their training efforts into a comprehensive system of technical assistance to families and providers supporting children with special needs.

The UTS supports statewide coordination of training opportunities related to young children, and provides greater access to learning opportunities for families and
service providers. In addition, the UTS supports the training needs of service
providers of Head Start and community childcare settings. The Unified Training
System enhances capacity at the local level, and utilizes the expertise of the
teachers, service providers, and families of children with disabilities.

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