Head Start Collaboration Project
Literacy Development for Early Care/Education Providers

In partnership with the Office of Children and Family Services' Division of Child Care Services (formerly Bureau of Early Childhood Services), SUNY Research Foundation's Professional Development Program\Training Strategies Group, and Literacy New York (formerly Literacy Volunteers of New York State), the NYS Head Start Collaboration Project has developed a program to address the training and literacy needs of early care and education providers with low literacy skills.

While New York State has some of the highest regulatory standards for people providing early care and education in licensed or registered programs and settings in the nation, many people working as classroom assistants and family child care providers lack the literacy skills needed to provide quality services. Numerous training programs exist to help providers meet licensing standards. However, providers with low literacy skills cannot fully benefit from these trainings if they are unable to read and communicate effectively.

To address the needs of these providers, the project was designed to use existing early care and education training curricula as the context to provide adult literacy instruction. Trainers from child care resource and referral agencies, regional specialists, and Head Start staff received instruction in ways to modify technical information using valid adult education strategies thus making critical concepts and text accessible to more child care providers.