On Wednesday May 25, Child Care Aware of NH drew winners for the Credential Challenge. Congratulations to the following teams and individuals:

Congratulations to all of the winners and a huge thank you to everyone who participated!

Child Care Aware of NH would like to recognize three programs for completing the Q-Ready Intro and Overview to Pyramid Model Cohort, which ran from October 2021 to May 2022. During this overview, programs got to know the Pyramid Model through readiness work in order to build their Pyramid Model practices within their programs.

We hope to see you at some of our upcoming training sessions, before we take a short break for the summer. Child Care Aware holds trainings from September through June, starting in July we will be preparing for our 2022-2023 training season.

We urge you to plan ahead and sign up for our upcoming sessions if you need them to satisfy the Granite Steps for Quality requirements or your annual professional development hours!

Trainings are available to register for in the NHCIS Training Tile. Please note that the training times have been updated in NHCIS to reflect the correct times. Please see instructions on page two (2) in the Trainings At-a-Glance Calendar on how to register for these trainings.

Offered through Child Care Aware of NH, this training is designed to provide an introduction and overview of The Pyramid Model; a conceptual framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children’s healthy social and emotional development.

Date: Thursday, June 2, 2022

Time: 6:15-8:15 PM

Registration is through NHCIS

This month, Melony Williams, Mental Health Counselor with TMC Family Resource Center in Claremont, NH, will be presenting on the topic "Beyond the Call: Exploring the Issues Around Making a DCYF Report". Melony will address how to support at-risk families, warning signs and how to make the decision to call DCYF. She also plans to speak about how to support families, staff, and classrooms after the call has been made.

CCAoNH is also offering nine (9) other virtual Early Childhood Focused Collaborative Meetings for Directors, Administrators, Teachers and other Early Childhood Professionals. Check out the other topics by clicking on the button below.

With summer fast approaching, it often means more time in the sun. Getting some sun exposure is important for everyone: it helps our bodies make vitamin D, it can improve moods, boost our immune systems, and even help with the sleep/wake cycle. But it only takes take a little time in the sun for most people to get those benefits. Too much sun can lead to sunburn, skin damage, eye damage, and skin cancer. Take a look at some of these resources to help keep the children and staff safe this summer.

New Hampshire’s voluntary quality recognition system for licensed child care providers, known as Granite Steps for Quality focuses on improving the overall quality of Early Care and Education and Out-of-School Time (OST) programs in the state. Programs participating in GSQ will promote a culture of continuous quality improvement thereby improving outcomes for children and families to thrive and succeed in school and beyond.

Not sure how to get started? We invite you to contact Child Care Aware of New Hampshire and a TA Specialist will help answer questions, provide detail surrounding the rubrics and help you to become Q-Ready!

The Bureau of Child Development and Head Start Collaboration is committed to welcoming programs into the revised quality recognition system. We are thrilled to have created a robust system with the goal of continuous quality improvement for Child Care in New Hampshire and we are excited to connect you with our package of incentives, including the award of quality funds.

With these goals in mind, and in order to more efficiently process applications and award Quality Steps, we announce a temporary pause of the use of NHCIS for Credentialing applications and GSQ applications. This does not mean we are pausing Credentialing or GSQ – we are just going to use paper applications until the fall. Programs that have already submitted their completed application online will continue to be processed. All other programs, including programs that have started, but not yet submitted an application, should plan to submit paper applications with paper documentation moving forward.

To assist those of you with partially completed applications already in NHCIS, we have arranged for the online applications for Credentialing and GSQ pause to begin on Friday, June 3 at 8:00 AM. Up until that time you may either complete your online application or download copies of the work you have done to date. After that time, you will need to reach out to us for help in getting any application documents in the GSQ or Credentialing application since it will no longer be visible to the public. In addition, we have included the necessary paper application links below and posted them on the NH Connections website, on the "Granite Steps for Quality" page.

We anticipate that this change will make applying in the system more manageable for providers at this time and we look forward to the relaunch of NHCIS later this year. Our team is working diligently behind the scenes to implement the fixes needed to make NHCIS the incredible, user-friendly platform it is intended to be.

Read this important update from May 24th, 2022 about how to enter the Granite Steps for Quality System.

The Pay By Enrollment Data Pilot officially started on Monday, February 28, 2022, and a new tab has been created under "Financial Resources". Look for the "Pay by Enrollment Data Pilot" tab to find all the information you'll need to navigate and learn about this program. You'll also find some information in the buttons below.

On May 2, 2022 The Bureau of Child Development and Head Start Collaboration made the announcement that Absent Due to Covid Billing policy would be extended for CCDF and non-CCDF children from May 30 through September 4, 2022. 

On Tuesday, April 26th, 2022, Melissa Clement sent out two (2) separate e-mails to programs with important updates. The first noted the implementation of the Revised Child Care Licensing Rules. The second mentioned critical information about performing tasks within NHCIS. You can find out more on the Child Care Licensing Website or view the documents on our "Child Care Licensing for Providers" page.

Located on the front page of our website, is the link to the Child Care Job Board. Feel free to post your open positions and let perspective educators know about what makes your program unique. Posting is FREE and your position will stay up for six (6) months or until you take it down!

Access the website TODAY at https://www.selanhmembers.com/ and begin with the Start Here tab.