Professional Development Opportunities in Health and Safety

Professional Development Opportunities in Health and Safety

Nydia Ntouda: Our presenters today will introduce themselves starting first up with Steve. Take it away.

Steve Shuman: Thank you. Next slide, please. Nydia, Thank you very much for that introduction. I'm Steve Schuman. I'm the director of outreach and distance learning, which fits very much with today's theme. I am with the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety. I'm joined today by one of my colleagues. Tobie.

Tobie Barton: Thanks, Steve. Hi, everyone. It is really good to be with you today. My name is Tobie Barton, and I've been in the early childhood field for almost 20 years now. Almost all of my work has been related to professional development, to developing resources and curriculum, training, and technical assistance. I'm currently the director of product development with the National Center. We are really excited today to talk to you about all sorts of professional development opportunities.

Next slide, please, Livia. Our learning objectives today are to help you become familiar with a variety of resources to support your professional development. These resources are really useful for anyone who oversees health related work. Since I hope we all know that health is everyone's business in Head Start and early childhood programs, that means that everyone on this webinar no matter who you are, no matter what your role is, these resources are relevant to your work.

The resources that we're sharing range from introductory to more advanced. They offer learning opportunities no matter what your experience. Specifically today, we are going to explore resources that are available on the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center. We call it the ECLKC. Some people call it "e-CLICK." But it is the website that is developed by the Office of Head Start and provides resources developed by the National Centers, specifically for Head Start and early childhood programs.

There is a wealth of information on the ECLKC, and some of it very specifically oriented towards providing professional development. We're going to show you a number of resources you can access there. We are also going to tell you more about the Individualized Professional Development Portfolio, also called the iPD where you can take a variety of short online courses for free.

Many of those courses are available for CEU credit so that's a very exciting way to get your certificates and your contact hours. Then we're going to talk to you about a number of other ways to keep up to date in your learning about health and behavioral health and safety by engaging in professional development opportunities that we offer through the National Center, as well as additional professional development opportunities from the field.

We're really excited to show you a variety of different ways that you can learn more about health today. I am going to warn you that the Office of Head Start's website, the ECLKC, is having some technical difficulties today. We have a lot of screenshots that we're going to show you in our slides. We're really hopeful we'll be able to also do some screen shares and so show you some of these resources that's live and in the moment, but also just a warning that we may run into a few little hiccups along the way as the ECLKC website gets back up and running.

We have a poll that we'd like to pull up now just to get a little bit more information about who is with us today. Polls should have popped up on your screen and just select the role that most closely aligned with your work. If you scroll down in the poll, there should be a little gray scroll bar you can see there are a few more options at the bottom. If none of these options match who you are, please go ahead and pop into the chat and let us know the role that you have.

Steve: It's great to see so many people responding.

Tobie: It really is.

Steve: They're still awake. You may not be awake at the end. I don't know. We're glad you're awake now.

Tobie: Yeah. Looks like we have a lot of health managers and a few mental health managers, as well as some other health services staff. Then a variety of people who fill other roles, which is great because as I said, these resources are really valuable no matter what your role is in your program. And hopefully, you'll also be able to share these resources.

If you're a health manager or a health services staff, and you're working with your program on specific areas of health and safety, many of the resources that we're going to share with you today are really valuable for you to share with others, that you can use them as training tools, or you can provide them as resources for anyone in your program who wants to learn more.

Steve: Hey, can you just show the responses and then take the poll down? Thank you. OK. I think we're ready to move on.

Tobie: All right. We have one more poll for you all today. In this poll, we are actually asking you to kind of let us know how familiar you are with many of the resources that we're going to be sharing today. Select one if it's a resource that you've never heard of, or maybe a resource that you've heard of but you've never used. Select two through four if it's something that you use occasionally. Number five, if you're a frequent user.

Once again, you're going to just have to grab that little gray scroll bar to the right of the poll to scroll down because we have a number of different resources that we wanted to talk with you about today. It's really helpful for us to know if you're familiar with these resources already because this gives us some insight into where we're doing a good job of sharing resources and getting information to you. Maybe areas where we could do a better job of making everyone aware of the resources we have to offer.

Steve: Spoken like the director of product development.

Tobie: Well, we develop a lot of great products and we always want to make sure that the people who need them know how to find them.

Steve: Again, we're so appreciative of so many people responding to the polls. We know that some of you may be on devices where that's a little more difficult or sitting in groups. But this is very helpful information for us.

Tobie: Very helpful. This is the kind of data that we take back to our internal meetings and review it together and talk about. If we've gotten a lot of ones on a resource that we think is really valuable, then we can start to strategize about how to do a better job of making sure you all know about it.

Steve: I'm excited that so many people identified our webinars as they're new to our webinar. This is their first introduction, which maybe is a result of the time of year or maybe we just came up with a topic that people wanted to listen to.

Tobie: Yeah, that is great. I'm also really impressed with how many people are responding to the poll, Steve. We've got 100% response rate on a few of these.

Steve: It's great.

Tobie: Yeah.

Steve: Are we ready for Kate to show the results?

Tobie: I think so. I think we can. This was very helpful. I mean it looks like there's a wide range of experience and familiarity with some of our resources. Looks like there are more than half of the folks have either never heard of or never used the iPD. I'm really excited to talk about that today. Same with the VEEC, Steve. That'll be a really wonderful opportunity to share the VEEC with everybody because it's a pretty fun tool to use. OK. I think we can move right on. Steve, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Steve: Thanks, Tobie, and thank you everybody for that really great feedback and input. Most of what we're going to be talking about today, starts on this particular page of the ECLKC. We have a URL there at the top of the slide, and you'll get a copy of these slides. It's linked in your handout. When you go into ECLKC, go to the health dropdown menu. I'll only cough when I speak. Choose health services management.

Next slide, please. When you scroll down on the health services management page, you'll have an option to find the Head Start Health Services Competencies. That's what I'm going to talk about first. Competencies are the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. They can be a way to assess what an individual values or doesn't value, knows or doesn't know and can do or can't do.

The competencies complement Performance Standard 1304.52, the human resources management requirements for content experts. These are not regulations or standards. The competencies are consistent with science-informed practices for early childhood health staff, needed to deliver high quality health and safety practices. We went through lots of different competencies for early care and education staff, for health staff, and came up with these competencies.

There are actually two tools featured here. The first one, the Head Start Health Services Competencies is a tool to support health managers and staff. Sorry, had a little interruption there. Has background information and a full set of the 68 individual competencies. Each competency is indicative of an attitude, knowledge, or a skill.

The competencies are organized into four categories. The first category overarching, and you see a little clip of that page there, includes a set of crosscutting competencies that are relevant to all health services. We really thought that these were the most important for anyone involved in health services to acknowledge.

The other three categories, child and family health, engaging families, and leadership, address one particular aspect of the Head Start health services. The competency tool is not an exhaustive list of everything a person may need to know or be able to do. Individual competencies may not be relevant to every job description. In some recipients, more than one person may be responsible for meeting the health requirements.

In addition, health services staff may have other responsibilities not included in this list. We know you wear, many of you wear many hats. In some programs, the health manager may not be directly involved with a task, but will need to know how to manage teams of people or consultants with these competencies. We hope that will be helpful to you.

The other tool, the Head Start Health Services Competency Professional Development Assessment, also known as the PDA, is meant to be a user friendly companion piece to be used by individual staff members to support the delivery of high quality health services in early care and education programs. Staff can use this tool to identify where they or their supervisee scores in one of four levels for each competency.

The basic level is about staff who understand and use introductory concepts and methods. These people require regular coaching and support. The proficient level is about staff who work independently and understand and use introductory concepts and methods. They use data efficiently and effectively, and plan and guide the work of others.

The advanced level, these staff understand and consistently use more complex concepts and methods, as well as perform in-depth analysis. They lead and direct staff, specialists, and consultants. Finally, the expert level. These are the folks who have a deep specialized expertise. They play a leadership and mentoring role within their organization, within their community, and among their peers. Next slide, please.

To support all of these competencies and that we've identified as being important, the previous cooperative agreement, the National Center for Early Childhood Health and Wellness created a set of eight modules. These are online learning opportunities designed to develop and strengthen the attitudes, knowledge, and skills in some of the competencies. They cover all 11 of the overarching ones and a number of leadership ones too.

Each module is meant to deliver a 15 minute micro learning experience. We know you don't necessarily have a lot of time, with lots of opportunities to extend the user's learning if they want to spend more time then, or in the future. The eight modules that exist on the ECLKC, and they're all online, they're all free. You don't need to sign in. They're all there at the links in your handout.

Start with Fundamental Values, Knowledge and Skills to Manage Health Services. This is how the learner can reflect on their understanding of health and wellness, consider how to use requirements and regulations to identify important health practices, and to implement and model for others. Sort of a starting place. You don't have to do these in a particular order, but it is a good starting place.

As is Principles of Health and Wellness. The learner begins to understand the general principles of promotion, prevention, early identification, and intervention. We're going to look at that one in a little more depth. Another module is How to Find Science- Informed and Evidence-Based Health Information. This is how the learner can find and use current, accurate, and consistent health information. All the more important now with so much information out there, to support the health and safety of children, and develop evidence-informed program policies and procedures.

Like that one, Health Education for Children and Families and Staff helps the learner provide children, staff and families with health education that will empower them to make good health choices. One of my favorites, Strengthening Protective Factors to Reduce Health Disparities and Promote Resilience. We promoted a webinar earlier this year. This is designed to help children and families identify and use their own strengths to reduce factors that lead to poor health.

Supporting Community Health Partnerships allows to learn to identify the people and agencies who can assist in strengthening Head Start health services and the importance of creating partnerships with local health care providers and agencies, to meet the diverse needs of your children and families. How to Find and Use Health Data allows the learner to identify the importance of using community, program, and child health data to deliver health services.

A particular favorite of a lot of our users, Creating a Culture of Staff Wellness. The learner begins to be able to create an environment that enhances staff physical and mental health. I hope those may be piqued your interest. We're going to try to look at some of these now. Livia, if you could take down the slides.

Thank you. I need to go into the competency page. The competencies look like this. Each one has their own page and they all have a big sort of cover slide. They say Head Start Health Services Competencies and the word Start. When you click on Start, I'm going to flip over here to the one on Principles of Health and Wellness. You'll see kind of like a table of contents page.

We'll start with overview. Seems like a good place to start. If you've already been through it and you stop halfway, it will tell you that and you can pick up where you left off. Each module begins by explaining what the competency that this particular module covers. In some cases, it's more than one competency. In other cases, it's one competency.

The information across all the modules is delivered in small, little bites. That's sort of the definition of this microlearning or micro bursts. Here we begin to get what this competency is about. Continues to explain it all the way through.

When you have all the information, you can move on to next. Every module also explains why that competency is particularly important. Kind of like a rationale. Again, the information is delivered in these engaging ways. This one has the little kids, kind of cute. Again, small bits of information delivered hopefully, in a way that engages the learner. Then you go to Next.

Every module also has an opportunity for learning, trying your hand at it. Some hands-on learning. In this particular activity, and all the activities are different, we have created four categories, Health Promotion, Prevention, Early Identification, and Interventions, as four areas that are key to a public health model. When we move to the next category, I mean, next image, you'll see what this looks like.

We have buckets for each of those categories, and in this particular case, which one would hearing screening fall in? Health promotion, prevention, early identification, and intervention? You can type that into the chat. Tobie, if you could read the chat and tell me what people are saying. I'll get ready to select a bucket.

Tobie: Sure. Everybody is very intimidated. Oh, we got an early identification. That seems to be the most popular answer.

Steve: Well, I'm glad it is the most popular answer because it's right. You get the little chime to give you the positive feedback, and you also get a rationale as to why that one is correct. Just another example. How about handwashing? Is it health promotion, is it prevention, is it early identification, or is it intervention?

Tobie: Prevention seems to be taking the day here.

Steve: OK. Well, we have smart people. You got a ding for that. A good ding. I'll try one more just so that people have a chance to see how this works one more time. How about medication administration? Is it promotion, prevention, identification, or intervention?

Tobie: We're getting a whole bunch of people saying intervention, Steve.

Steve: They are right. Thank you. There's a whole bunch of those. I won't go through them all. I think there are maybe 12 in this particular activity. You can always skip ahead by going to the menu. You can see that we were just in the Try Your Hand section. Every module is set up in the same way with opportunities for more learning. If beyond the 15 minutes you have another 15 minutes, you might want to link to the Healthy Children E-magazine.

Take a look at that. If you have a half an hour, either now or later, you can check out the Bright Futures Guidelines and Pocket Guide. If you have a full hour, you might want to explore the Centers for Disease Control Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. Lots of information on those pages. They are linked there. If you still want to learn more, or any of these other topics pique your interest, we have additional resources.

This is built into every single module, something like what we've just seen here. Those are all hyperlinked and they are also in a downloadable PDF. All the resources mentioned in each module is available as a downloadable handout. Just click on that arrow and it will just download to your device, you can save it, you can print it. Do whatever you like with that. They all are hyperlinked.

Following up, the last page on each of the modules is about connecting with others. As I said earlier, this series was created by our predecessors, the National Center in Early Childhood Health and Wellness. The information still has their name, but that email address, health@ecetta.info and phone number, still comes to us, the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety. That's the email address that I believe, Livia and Nydia, have put or will put into the chat and is definitely on your handout.

Any questions about anything, you can write to us. We also recommend joining MyPeers. We're going to talk about MyPeers a little bit more later today. The opportunity to describe to our colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics their own Early Childhood listserv. Finally, and I know this is really important to lots of people who do professional development. There's an opportunity to download your own certificate. You will have to put in your own name, but the certificate is there for you to download and save, print, share. However you need to do it. Then finish. Back to the beginning.

I think I'm going to stop sharing here and allow you to hear more from my colleague, Tobie, about another exciting part of the ECLKC.

Tobie: Great. Thank you, Steve. I'm going to talk a little bit about the iPD Portfolio. It seemed from our poll earlier that about half of you had never used the iPD, and about half had a little bit or sometimes a lot of experience with the iPD. I'm really excited to be able to talk to you about it today. If any of you joined late, we mentioned at the very beginning of the webinar that much of the ECLKC website, including the login for the iPD is down today.

It's really great timing that the day we have a webinar to share all of these resources with you, the website is down. It happens very rarely. I anticipate that it will be back up sometime soon. Hopefully, even this morning or this afternoon. I'm on the West Coast so it's still morning for me but afternoon for many of you. If the links that you see in the chat and that we're providing related to these resources aren't working today, I promise they really do work so just try them again.

The iPD is a learning management system created to support professional development for staff in Head Start and child care settings. It's accessible, it's free, it has self-paced online courses that are based on staff roles and interests. Some of you who are familiar with the iPD already may or may not know that the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety has been creating a new collection of courses for this platform.

We're really excited that we have three new courses available. One of the things that we're most excited about is that we're offering these courses for CEU credit. A lot of the courses on the iPD are available for CEU credit. If you need those contact hours to meet your Child Development Associate Credential, professional development requirements, or other professional development requirements when you take an iPD course, you do have the opportunity to download a certificate that indicates you've earned CEU credits. That's very exciting.

The courses that we currently have available include Preventing Infectious Diseases in Early Childhood Settings. It's an interactive, online, two-part course that provides information about healthy and safe policies and practices, and environments that reduce the risk of infectious disease in child care and Head Start settings. That course is offered for two contact hours.

We have a course called Moving with the Brain in Mind. That is affiliated with the I Am Moving, I Am Learning initiative. I Am Moving, I Am Learning sometimes called IMIL, is a physical activity and nutrition initiative that helps educators and teachers add activities into their daily routine that increase quality physical activity, that teach children about healthy food choices, and generally, are really fun and easy ways to get children moving and learning in the classroom.

This particular course introduces the concept called Moving with the Brain in Mind where you'll learn how movement supports early brain development. Then you'll learn specific types of activities. Dances and songs that you can use in your classroom to encourage movement that supports learning. It's a really fun course. It's two modules and once again available for two contact hours.

Then we've also offered iLookOut, which teaches strategies and skills that help you recognize possible child abuse and understand your professional and your legal responsibilities to report suspected abuse and to identify children who may be at risk. That course is offered for three contact hours.

Next slide, please, Livia. When accessing the iPD, the easiest way to do it is to begin on the home page of the ECLKC. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the ECLKC. When you get to that home page, you scroll right to the bottom and look for that last entry under Quick Links. It says iPD. You click on that. Next slide, please.

Clicking on that quick link will take you to this page. This is the login page for the iPD. I just bookmark this page on my computer so any time I want to go to the iPD, it takes me directly to this page. There's a number of resources on this page that are really helpful. First of all, there's a step by step guide that provides you with instructions on how to register, there is a course catalog that lists all the courses that are available. There's information about state partnerships. Some states allow you to take iPD courses that fulfill your state professional development requirements. Then there's an opportunity to find answers to questions you may have about the iPD.

I will talk in just a moment about the log in process, but it does require you to sign up for the iPD. You have to click that Join button if you've never been to the iPD before to set up a username and password. That way, you're able to save your profile in the iPD and earn your CEU credits. Next slide, please, Livia.

The course catalog that you can find on the iPD portfolio page, lists all the courses that are available. I'm actually in just a minute going to show you what that catalog looks like because it's a really helpful way to identify courses that you want to take. They're listed out by different practitioner types, as well as different professional development goals.

If you're interested in health related courses, you can find those really easily. If you're a classroom teacher, you can find courses that might support your work in the classroom. It's a really easy way to navigate the many courses that are available on the iPD. Next slide, please.

Once you get logged in, you'll go to the launch page and you're ready to select the course that you want to take and begin. I am going to do a quick screen share. If you want to make that available, Livia. I was really hoping to actually log in to the iPD today and show you what that looks like. But as I mentioned, it's down and I'm not able to get in.

But I do have some more screenshots of the iPD available on my computer. I'm just flipping over here to show you another slide presentation that I have from another webinar that we've done. This slide here is an example of that step by step guide that you can download.

If you've never been to the iPD before, this is a really helpful step by step guide to show you how to set up your username and password. You can use the iPD on any device. It works on phones, it works on iPads, or other tablets. It works on laptops and computers. These registration guides show you how to do it no matter what kind of device you're using. I think that can be really helpful. It's exciting that the iPD works on any device because I know a lot of folks don't necessarily have access to a computer, but you can always take a course on your phone.

The courses also save your progress. If you are taking a course that takes an hour, but you only have 10 minutes, you can get through 10 minutes of that course, and it'll save your progress so you can return to it later when you have more time.

This is what the registration and login page looks like. As I mentioned, the login process can be a little bit cumbersome and fiddly. You'll set up a username and a password. Then you'll click on the link to get a verification code. That verification code will be sent to the email address that's associated with your account. You want to make sure that whatever email address you use to set up your username and password, is an email address that you have easy access to.

You'll get that verification code, it's just six digits, and you'll enter it into the box there. Then you'll be able to log into the iPD. It's a process that takes a couple of steps. Sometimes it's a little annoying to have to go through that process. But it is really helpful because it allows us to protect all of your data on the iPD. By entering that data and signing up for an iPD profile, like I said, it allows us to save your CEU credits, it allows us to make sure that we can track your progress through the course so you can leave and come back and you'll be able to enter the course right where you left off.

If you take an iPD course and you lose your certificate, you can always come back to the iPD and download that certificate again. It is really helpful to have that login information and that account set up so that you can access the full range of options within the iPD.

If you have any questions about how to log in to the iPD or, filling out your profile, there are step by step instructions in that PDF that I mentioned. But there are also a couple of really great videos that you can watch that talk you through the entire process of setting up your iPD profile. It's really not difficult. It really only takes five minutes or so to get set up in the iPD.

Then, sorry. My mouse is a little herky jerky here. Then if you have questions about the iPD, there is a dedicated help desk. You can email iPD @ecetta.info if you have any questions at all about how to get on to the iPD, how to find certain courses. If you're having any trouble with the technology in the iPD, they can answer your questions. That's a really helpful resource to have.

As I mentioned, there is a course catalog. I think this is a really helpful way of finding out what's on the iPD. This course catalog is kept up to date. As we add new courses, you have an opportunity to see them here in the course catalog. If you click on a course, it provides additional information about what that course is about, who the audience for that course is.

As I mentioned as well, you can find courses by practitioner type. That's what we're looking at now. If you're a home visitor or if you're a teacher, you can find courses that might meet the needs of your particular role. You can also find courses that are organized by professional development goals. There are a lot of great ways to search through the courses that are available on the iPD.

Some courses are also available in Spanish, which is exciting. Once you've logged in to the iPD, and you search for the course that you want to take, there's a little search box up in the upper left hand side. If you know the name of your course or you know roughly the name of your course, you can search for it that way. There are also a number of different ways that you can navigate through the iPD website. But once you've found your course, you can click on the course and this is what it looks like.

A lot like the course that Steve showed you earlier. It's a module, you click a Start button. It just leads you through the course. These are two examples of our Preventing Infectious Diseases course. Module One is related to how diseases spread and policies that reduce transmission. Module Two is related to practices that prevent infectious diseases. The courses are pretty fun. They have a lot of engaging activities where you get to make some choices. You get to test your learning.

This is just an example of an opportunity to learn a little bit more about proper ways of disposing of garbage and how taking proper precautions can keep children, staff, and families in your centers and your home safer. This is an example of a learning activity that's about keeping germs out of the air. Oh, my goodness. Sorry.

We can end the screenshare, Livia, and go right back to the slides. Once again, I'm sorry I wasn't able to show you an actual screenshare of the iPD but once you're in the iPD, it's pretty easy to navigate and pretty easy to find the courses that you're interested in taking. To get those CEU credits, which is always exciting.

In addition to the three courses that are available now, we have some new courses coming available relatively soon. Nutrition Building Blocks is another course related to I Am Moving, I Am Learning that talks about how to incorporate healthy nutrition messages throughout the day with the children in your programs. Again, it has some really wonderful activities and songs and movement opportunities that incorporate messages about healthy nutrition. We also have a course on infant and early childhood mental health consultation, which is sort of a reworked version of the mental health consultation tool that's already available on the ECLKC.

Parts of that tool weren't working very well so we decided to rebuild it for the iPD. Not only is it going to work really well for everyone, it'll have updated links and resources, but it will also be available for five continuing education hours. Nutrition Building Blocks will be available for two hours worth of credit.

Then coming up over the course of the next year, we anticipate having courses available on injury prevention, active supervision, staff physical and mental health, and the iLookOut course will be available in Spanish. These are courses that are in development or coming up really soon on the iPD that we're really excited about.

The last item for my piece about the iPD is that I was hoping to hear from all of you about what additional health topics you might be interested in seeing on the iPD. We can pull that pull up. You can choose more than one answer. If there are particular topics where that you would like to have some additional professional development, this will help us plan for our future years of developing courses. Again, you can scroll down.

If you don't see something in this list, but you're really, really hungry for a professional development opportunity on a particular topic, please use the chat and let us know. This is such helpful feedback for us as we plan our resource development over the upcoming years.

Steve: I think you've just done your annual needs assessment here.

Tobie: I know. I love it. We're going to leave this open for just a little bit longer because I want to make sure everybody has a chance to weigh in. I hope that if you haven't checked out the iPD that you do take an opportunity once it's up and running again, to set up a username and a password and log in and look around because the courses that are offered are great. It's always a nice opportunity to go in and get some professional development time, and to explore courses that maybe you haven't had an opportunity to explore before.

Thank you, Lauren. I see someone in the chat has put in a few additional.

Steve: That's good.

Tobie: Yes, always good.

Steve: You can always write to health@ecetta.info if there's something that comes to mind that you'd love to see, of course. Kate, if you could – it looks like you did. Thank you. Close the poll and show us the results. Quite a few here. Very popular.

Tobie: Yeah, folks want everything.

Steve: Yeah.

Tobie: Emergency preparedness is the winner.

Steve: Well-child checks close behind. I should mention that nearly all of these topics we do have other resources on the ECLKC. We provide regional training and will be doing other webinars in the future. Definitely, stay tuned if these are areas of interest. I know we're launching our health literacy initiative with a webinar in October. I think I got that right. OK. Let's take down the poll.

Thank you, Tobie. Next slide, Livia. I get to talk about the Virtual Early Education Center. This is another resource that is on the health services management page. You just scroll down a little further than where the competencies live on that page. But you'll see Virtual Early Education Center or VEEC. This was created with our partners at the American Academy of Pediatrics, again when we were the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness.

It is a simulation tool for early education programs. It is designed to have the look and feel of an actual early care and education center. Visitors can move virtually from room to room, and area to area, inside and outside, within the VEEC to find information in health and safety practices, and useful resources.

Users can explore these resources and get information regarding the Head Start Program Performance Standards, and the standards in Caring for Our Children. They can also learn the rationale behind these best practices. The topics as you can see on this slide range from emergency preparedness, healthy active living, managing infectious disease, medication administration, oral health, safety, staff wellness, and training.

If you haven't been on the VEEC recently, some of these are new levels where the topic information has been integrated into the virtual center. In addition, the center includes classrooms for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and even school age children, as well as a playground, a drop off and pickup area, director's office, a staff lounge, a kitchen and even a utility room. We're going to try to share.

Tobie: Steve, I think the ECLKC is back up actually. I was just able to click through.

Steve: I saw an email from Andrea so that's good. Livia, if you could take down your slides and I will bring up mine. Hopefully, nothing bad is going to happen. If I switch over, I have confidence now that it's back up. OK.

Here's our Center and we're just going to … Let me show. You do log in here. You don't have to, but it makes a big difference to have a little profile because it will give you opportunities to save things that you've already done and use the directory in these other tools a little more efficiently. You can see I've already logged in. The Explore More option gives you an opportunity to choose what topic you want to do and we're going to start with safety.

I'm going to start with where we start every day. The school bus drops us off. I click on the school bus, and there's we call these hotspots. You can click on the school bus, and you see you get a little blue bar. If you can't find it like I sometimes have, problems with. There's also an opportunity to click on it right down here in the very bottom.

We click on the school bus and here's how every hotspot works. You get a rationale, why is this important? Why is keeping children in this case safe, important on the school bus? We have some standards that are hyperlinked to the Caring for Our Children website. You get the actual standards that tell you the best practice of what you could be doing. Remember, Caring for Our Children are not regulations. These are best practice recommendations. Usually, science-informed and evidence-based.

Then there are also Head Start Program Performance Standards. I love this tool when we have so many new staff in Head Start, particularly this time of year where you can really get a feel for how all of the regulations, and these are regulations, that OHS has created for us to keep children safe. In this case, on the school bus. Then finally, there are some additional resources.

We have Caring for Our Children Basics, we have something that the previous deputy director, Ann Linehan, created in a bus driver performance observation form, because a whole bunch, hazard mapping and all kinds of good resources that you'll be able to link to.

What happens? We leave the school bus, and we walk into the entry area. I'm going to … Just give me one second here. Reminding myself what I promised to do here. We're going to choose for Explore More. We're going to choose Managing Infectious Disease. I submit that and I'm going to move from the school bus into the entry room. Now, we're in this beautiful entryway.

When I had a Head Start Center, I could only dream that my entryway looked like this, but we're in the virtual world where everything is perfect. You can see in this entryway, we have a lot of hotspots listed down here for managing infectious disease.

I'll just go right here to the reception desk and what I have there they want more information. We got CFO Caring for Our Children's standards about hand hygiene. You might have noticed that the bottle of hand sanitizer is there and also some wipes or tissues. This sign also is about hand sanitizing. It gives some instructions.

If I go over here to the parent information board, not only do I have a rationale and Caring for Our Children's standards, but I have actual regulations. OHS Head Start Program Performance Standards that talk about the importance of collaborating, communing with parents of all that information that's so important to engaging and building partnerships with families.

We even have a parent bookshelf with links to resources, including something on covering your cough and sneeze, what to do during flu season, immunizations, all kind of information you may want parents to have access to when they first come into your program. You can see we have a water dispenser. This is the parent handbook. Lots of fun things just right here in our entryway.

Finally, I'm going to choose Medication Administration. We're going to go into the preschool room. You can see when you go into a classroom, you have opportunities to go to different areas. Here's the eating area, one of the play areas, another play area, and the bathroom. I'm going to choose the eating area because it's kind of fun to look at.

You can see we have the back of one of our play areas, which is art and science. The table is set up for a meal with cute little bowls of peas and I'm not sure what else is there. Since this is our medication administration level, we can go to the medication and first aid cupboard. Again, we get a rationale, we get Caring for Our Children standard, we get Head Start Program Performance Standards, and resources.

Everybody's always looking for resources about medication administration. You can see and it's funny because Tobie just talked about garbage and infectious disease. We have a place where the trash can and its relationship to medication administration. The refrigerator where you may be storing medication, and on the outside is a temperature log so that you can make sure that everything in your refrigerator is maintained at their proper temperature.

That is a beginning introduction to the VEEC. It would take hours to show you every hotspot in every room and area. But it is so much fun, it's so interactive and you can use it as little or as much as you like. It's a great orientation tool, it's a great pre preservice tool. You can use it on your own or you can use it with a group.

I'm going to stop sharing, Livia, if you can bring up the rest of the slides. The next slide, please, and probably then slide after that. There you go. There are other resources, and we want to be able to answer some of the questions that came in as well. Also, on the health services management page on the ECLKC, there are links to all these other professional development resources.

They are may or may not be directly affiliated with the National Center, but they are trusted sources of education. There is a wonderful document called Healthy States, which has lots of resources about all of the required trainings that the Child Care Development Fund and the Head Start Program Performance Standards set up as requirements for training.

Early Educator Central is a source that many of you may already be familiar with. The Child Care Technical Assistance Network does have some work on protecting children's health and safety from our Office of Child Care colleagues. The Virtual Lab School is a wonderful set of learning opportunities online, video, audio, and print, developed and paid for by the Department of Defense and developed by Ohio State University.

Better Kid Care who are the developers of the iLookOut course that Tobie mentioned earlier is from the Penn State University. Lots of courses. You may already be in a state affiliated with Better Kid Care. We definitely recommend exploring those.

Some are free, some have a very small fee. If you want a CEU, there may be a small fee associated with that. Watch Me! Celebrating Milestones and Sharing Concerns from the Centers for Disease Control is a wonderful developmental milestones training. The Institute of Child Nutrition, terrific for nutrition folks, for cooks. Lots and lots of courses there as does the Department of Agriculture Team Nutrition. They have regular webinars and trainings. Some online, some archived.

Then for a little more in-depth training, the CDC has a training site as does the FEMA around emergency preparedness. I saw some of you are interested in that. All kinds of pathways to a variety of resources that provide health and safety training to health managers, cooks, nutritionists, nurses, home visitors, and other staff.

There are even competencies and modules for those of you that are child care health consultants are interested in child care, health consultation. Next slide, please. I mentioned MyPeers earlier. When Tobie showed you how to log into the iPD with that little button down at the very bottom of the page, it is right underneath a log in for MyPeers. The MyPeers link is also on your handout and here on this slide.

The National Center operates nine communities covering everything from emergency preparedness and response and recovery, to staff wellness. It's free to join. Just follow this link. Wait for your login information if you're not already a member. There are regularly scheduled orientations every single month. This is a great opportunity to learn from each other.

The Office of Head Start feels strongly that Head Start staff are the best resources for each other. Right now, there are 12,000 experts who are members of MyPeers. Next slide.

I see we're getting close to the time here. If you haven't already signed, subscribe to our monthly resource list, this will be a link that you want to follow up. It will be in your follow up email with your recording. Also be at the end of today's webinar, every single month we send out a list, seven or eight pages with online training events, news items, resources, and so many of the topic areas you mentioned is important and funding opportunities. It's always nice to be able to get a little bit more money for the work that you do.

With that, Nydia, I think we have a couple of minutes for questions. Next slide. Back, please. Thank you.

Nydia: I am impressed with your punctuality. You guys did great on covering the materials. We did have a couple of questions. You both did talk about some CEUs and maybe some in-service. There was a question regarding in-service hours for this particular webinar. Also, any RD or CEU opportunities in the iPD course.

Steve: Sure. For this webinar, there will be a certificate that you'll see once you submit the evaluation. In a moment, Nydia is going to explain the evaluation again. It's also linked on your handout and will also be in the recording email that you get within 24 to 48 hours after we finish today. In terms of the CEUs, and that's a certificate, not a CEU. In terms of the CEUs that Tobie talked about as part of the iPD, CEUs are really a different animal, if you will, than the certificates of completion or certificates of participation.

We have CEUs from the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training. This is the largest CEU granting organization in the world, and it covers lots and lots of different professional groups, including in some states, registered dieticians. You need to take your IACET CEU certificate that you'll get for completing a course on the iPD and bring it to your professional group or state agency to see if they accept this particular form of CEUs.

It is again, the largest CEU granting organization in the world. There's a fair amount of stringency to it so it's not just something that's given away casually. Any other questions that came in?

Nydia: Those were really the main questions. We do have a couple other questions that I think we are going to go over the email, the health@ecetta.info where you all can email as well as asking. There is a question about the link for VEEC. If you, Steve or Tobie, just had any final comments for participants or any reminders before we close.

Tobie: Steve, I did see that somebody had asked when you were discussing the VEEC about whether there was a layer for home visitors.

Steve: There is not. The Virtual Early Education Center, as its name implies, is an Early Education Center, not a home. But that really triggers an interesting idea.

Tobie: It does.

Steve: The VEEC as you could imagine is not something that's easy to just pull out of thin air as highly technical and took a lot of work. But thank you for that idea. Tobie and I are always looking for new ways to provide training particularly for home visitors, and so many of our programs are using that model of Head Start and Early Head Start.

Nydia: Well, thank you again to Steve and Tobie for all of this important information. If you all have any more questions, you can go to MyPeers or write to health@ecetta.info.

Steve: Next slide, please. I'm sorry.

Nydia: No worries. The evaluation URL, it will appear when the webinar ends so do not close the Zoom platform, or you won't see the evaluation pop up. Remember, that after submitting the evaluation, you will see a new URL and this link will allow you to access, download, save, and print your certificates, which we mentioned earlier.

You can subscribe to our monthly list of resources using this URL. You can find our resources in the health section of the ECLKC. Or write us health@ecetta.info. Thank you once again to our presenters, as well as all of our participants today. You can close the Zoom platform.