PolicyWise for Children & Families is continuing to celebrate 20 years of impacting meaningful change. As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, we are sharing stories about our successful projects, both past and present.
Supporting Alberta Family Day Home Agency Consultants
Alberta’s licensed family day homes provide affordable, inclusive, high-quality child care in private homes. Recently, there have been family day homes have experienced changes to:
- Licensing processes
- Staffing requirements
- Training
- Education supports, and
- Quality standards
These changes came from the Government of Alberta when they passed new child care legislation and regulations. As well, the Alberta and federal governments reached an agreement to introduce $10-a-day child care.
Family day home agencies hire agency consultants to oversee and monitor family day homes. Agency consultants also support family day home educators, so they meet quality standards on safety, well-being, inclusion, and child development.
Because agency consultants have important and unique responsibilities within the child care workforce, they must be supported with training, resources, and professional development.
We collaborated with Alberta Children and Family Services to develop competency-based training to support family day home agency consultants in their professional practice.
We learned from experienced advisors in the family day home sector about the unique role agency consultants play in providing quality child care. Guided by the advisors’ expertise, we developed a competency model specific to agency consultants that describes the skills they use in their day-to-day work.
For the rest of 2023, we are working with the advisors, the Alberta Children and Family Services team, and a learning development company to design training for agency consultants. These self-directed e-learning modules will allow consultants to reflect on, apply, and strengthen their skills.
This project was sponsored by the Alberta Children and Family Services.
To learn more about how PolicyWise is making an impact and to read similar stories, check out our 2022-2023 Annual Report.
