Early Child Care Supports Thriving Communities (February 2026)

Description: 

Learn about early child care’s impact on families and communities. Early child care has the ability to affect three generations—parents, children and children’s children. Early child care allows parents to work, helps connect families to resources and therefore lowers parental stress. Early child care helps children develop crucial social skills and sets them up for a successful educational career. Children who had access to quality early child care services go on to achieve higher graduation rates and obtain stable, well-paying jobs which in turn helps their children. Early child care helps build strong economies and safe communities.  At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand how early child care affects the community.  
• Understand early child care’s affect on academic success, public safety and the health of families.   
• Consider partners in the community that could be helpful to your early child care program.
• Develop personal messaging for elected officials and other key decision makers in the community.

This class is interactive and involves participating in small and large group discussions.

Audience: 

This class is open to anyone, but is highly recommended for Child Care Directors, Child Care Educators, Child Care Community Advocates, Employers. Multi-stakeholder classes create richer conversations. Multi-sector conversations are where the magic happens.

Clock Hours: 

Earn 1.5 MOPD Clock Hours

Fee: 

$10

This program is not covered by a grant. The fee is non-refundable unless the class is canceled by MU Extension.