For individuals: Family child care providers and child care centers, tribal child care
For organizations: Child care associations, CACFP Sponsors, Resource and Referrals, Child Care Centers, 501c3’s focused on health and wellness for children
Purpose of Program - For Individuals
The program is focused on providing monetary assistance for implementation of best practices and/or policies for nutrition, health, and wellness in child care environments. Specifically for those individuals who are regularly overlooked as eligible applicants for grant funds.
There are a plethora of existing materials to engage child care providers in conversations to use best practices and create policies but there are monetary roadblocks. It is part of T&L Foundation’s mission to alleviate these roadblocks. Some examples below:
The Child and Adult Care Food Program encourages family style meals – we would provide a grant to assist the family child care provider or child care center with utensils and setting up the environment for family style meals.
There are many informational resources to educate providers about the importance of physical activity in the child care setting. For example a self-assessment from Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (Nap Sacc) encourages family child care providers to have 6-7 types of portable play equipment, i.e., jump ropes, wagons, big dump trucks, tricycles, scooters, ribbons, hula hoops, balls bean bags, portable tunnels, etc. T&L Foundation would provide a mini-grant to providers to purchase the appropriate equipment to meet the best practices suggested.
Breastfeeding in Child Care – assist providers as they encourage breastfeeding with support for moms, nice areas to pump or breastfeed the child, storage and sanitation supplies.
Purpose of Program - For Organizations
The program is focused on providing monetary assistance to enable organizations to educate and/or help providers implement best practices/policies (preferably, but not required, using resources which have already been created). Some examples below:
Modify existing resources by updating them, changing the format/wording so the audience said organization is trying to reach identifies with it, change it to suit specific programs.
Trainings – outreach materials and ancillary materials during training which would help the provider implement what they learned at the training.
Outreach and education materials – modify existing community materials to speak specifically to the program doing the outreach.
Supplemental materials/training – provide supplemental funds to CACFP Sponsors to include a physical fitness/screen time education during CACFP monitoring visits
Enable local child care associations to implement a health and wellness education/outreach program for their members and potential members.