Family Child Care Network

What is the FCCN?

The Family Child Care Network (FCCN) is housed in the University of Arkansas' College of Education and Health Professions at the Early Care and Education Projects (ECEP)office. Since 1992, ECEP has achieved its vision of enhancing the quality of care and education for young children throughout Arkansas with the mission to educate, connect, and equip early childhood professionals. The Family Child Care Network strives to meet this mission by working with family child care providers to build relationships, expand knowledge, and share resources to enrich, develop, and promote family child care in Arkansas. Our goals are to increase the number of licensed and registered homes, support providers in trauma-informed and other best practices, and increase quality in family child care across the state. We aim to amplify the work of family child care providers as respected and valued professionals within Arkansas's early care and education system.

Family Child Care Network members gain access to incredible benefits:

Access to expertise around best practices, early childhood education, quality, policy, and finance.
Technical assistance from regional support staff in your home to consult about business, child, or environmental management issues.
Access to specialized training and resources like the Brigance Screen III.
Monthly training focused on issues related specifically to family child care homes.
Connections to other providers through regional quarterly Saturday gatherings and trainings.
Support shared services for family child care businesses.

Family Child Care Network Team

Be Well Care Well is a proven model in the Arkansas early childhood field that improves wellness among early childhood educators by incorporating a customized program at each family child care site. Each site works with a Well-Being Coach who connects providers and staff with health and wellness resources and individualized coaching to support a holistic well-being approach. The coach assists providers and staff in selecting and working toward individual and site-wide well-being goals. The coach works with each site in one-year increments to identify well-being activities and community partnerships to incorporate into day-to-day work culture to create lasting sustainable change.

The FCCN provides training and screening tool kits to licensed and registered Family Child Care participants. We will also equip Child Care Aware offices and other appropriate locations with selected screening kits to ensure screenings are available to family child care homes throughout the state.

Developmental screening is a first-line check of a child's development using a formal research-based tool. Screening tools should be age-appropriate, culturally appropriate, sensitive to the family's home language, used by trained personnel, valid for the intended results, reliable across users, and clearly identified for use in screening. ECEP reviewed research-based developmental screeners and identified the best fit with the Arkansas system: the Brigance Early Childhood Screen III Assessment.

Since family child care providers care for children in the home, sometimes they have difficulty thinking of themselves in professional terms. In reality, family child care providers are individuals operating a home business and are recognized by the U. S. Department of Labor as an occupation. Family Child Care Provider (often called FCCP) is a basic orientation training that specifically targets child care family home providers.

FCCP is required in Arkansas for all newly licensed and registered providers within the first six (6) months of being licensed or registered, and fulfills the orientation hours for family child care providers required by the Office of Early Childhood. It is also useful for providers who would like a refresher course in the basics of family child care.

Family Child Care Provider helps early educators:

Recognize family child care as a profession and review family child care regulations
Organize their homes appropriately in order to promote children’s safety, health, and learning for children of all ages
Discover techniques for behavior and guidance, schedules, routines and activities for learning that help guide children through the day
Develop an awareness of the business components of family child care
Apply the information learned in class to their home situation

Family Child Care Provider includes the following lessons:

Profession and Regulations 1.5 hours
Organizing the Home 1.5 hours
Guiding Children Through the Day 1.5 hours
Business Management 1.5 hours
Family Child Care Provider Home Review 2 hours (take-home activity)

Family Child Care Provider offers the following to all participants:

Up to 8 hours of professional development credit from the Arkansas Professional Development Registry and the Arkansas Department of Education
Available for anyone to enroll in FREE OF CHARGE
FREE course materials and access to in-depth content, including a participant manual, the Minimum Licensing Requirements (MLR) for Licensed Child Care Family Homes, MLR for Registered Child Care Family Homes, and other resources
Up to 0.8 Continuing Education Unit, upon request
Certificate of Completion and Verification of Training Hours, upon request
Opportunity to collaborate and build community engagement with other industry experts