Closing the Gap of Child Care Spots Needed

In our four-county area, there is a gap of 683 quality child care spots. This is the number of children under the age of 6 with all available parents in the workforce, requiring care, without access to available public or privately licensed child care. This has a direct impact on our families, the economic growth of our communities, and tax revenues. 

What can each of us do about the gap in childcare?

• Be informed! Learn more about the subject of child care and its community and business impact. First Five Nebraska is a great resource https://firstfivenebraska.org/
• If you know of someone who is interested in becoming a child care provider, share the information in the buttons below with them. 6 Regions One Nebraska is an effort in our area by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce to grow the number of providers.  Those interested in becoming licensed will have a ‘Child Care Champion’ assigned to them. Their ‘Champion’ will walk with them through the licensing process.
• Thank those that are licensed child care providers (in-home or center based) for caring for the most vulnerable in our communities.  Let’s support these early educators as they play an important role in helping our children’s brains grow and develop as well as to help our children grow socially and emotionally. 
• To support already existing providers, learn more about the Nebraska Child Care Tax Credits.  https://revenue.nebraska.gov/tax-credits/child-care-tax-credit-act

What is Community Prevention?

Community Prevention is a voluntary program for families to partner with a family Coach. If you are interested in the program, we help families with children 18 and younger in the household, caregiver 18 and younger in the home, pregnant or parenting youth and adults and emerging adults.

 To be able to get a coach assigned to you, there is a process. First, an intake to help discover the needs of the family. Once the intake has been completed, the family will be placed on a waitlist until there is an available coach who can take a family on their case load. The family is required to meet with the coach to get a better understanding of the needs of the family to be able to guide them to the correct resources the coach can provide.

Some of the resources we can connect you with include housing needs, food, utilities, parenting skills, budget management, and helping to build a system to meet the family needs and find connections in the community.

Food Access Resources

One word that we like to use to describe ourselves is "connectors." We connect people to resources, to help, to others that can help. With the rising food insecurity needs, a food matrix was created that has resources, as well as information regarding 2-1-1 and Find Help to connect participants to the resources they need. Please find these items below.

Toddlers and Tech

Community and Family Partnership and Columbus Area United Way offered multiple Toddlers and Technology presentations in our four-county area. These presentations were geared toward parents and caregivers and focused on how to safely manage your young child’s online exposure and activities. Technology can be tricky to navigate, and the information provided at these presentations helped to understand the impact of technology on the critical years of a child’s life and how to build a well-balanced digital wellness plan. See more information below!

Youth and Families Thrive Training Coming in December

If you want to learn more about working with children and families by using a strengths-based approach for positive change, consider attending the Youth and Families Thrive training. Youth and Families Thrive Nebraska is an approach that focuses on strengthening children and family so that all can thrive. Some of the promotive/protective factors that will be discussed are knowledge of parenting and child and adolescent development, social-emotional competence, resilience, social connections, and concrete supports. This approach is evidence informed and is designed to integrate into current practices to help people live a better life.

This training will take place over three days in December: December 1^st, December 8^th, and December 15^th. Please see the flyer attachment below to register for this training.

Ready to be a changemaker for families? Join the Bring Up Nebraska Network! 

Bring Up Nebraska is a call to action to help families thrive and is supported by Nebraska Children and Families Foundation. Bring Up Nebraska is focused on prevention and strengthening families BEFORE crisis to empower them within their communities. It is about uniting those with shared agendas, implementing systems and providing evidence-based training to support meaningful opportunities and creating partnerships. 

Helping families thrive and focusing on preventive efforts is a priority area of Community and Family Partnership and more voices are needed. The more people involved in the shared mission of improving the quality of life for young people and families, the more impact we can have. Let’s do this together. See more information in the flyer below or visit BringUpNebraska.org.

Have you visited the Schuyler Community Book Garden??

Check it out!

Like what you see? Want to share the news?

Download your own copies of these flyers by clicking on the picture!