Program areas at SFTA
Quality early care and educationlicensing preparation--in delivering these services, sfta also provides contract management, quality assurance, and professional development to our regional ccr&r partners. The long-term objective of this program is to create and sustain a field of professionals that are qualified and prepared to provide licensed childcare. The short-term objective is to support qualified and committed potential childcare professionals in preparing for the licensing process by ensuring safe and healthy environments are arranged and appropriate policies are in place. Childcare resource and referral (base contract)--including both components of administration and operations. With definitions of technical assistance and data collection processes prioritized. Each ccr&r generated their own customized work plan based upon nine options for services: training, technical assistance, online course conversion, recruitment and retention of regulated providers, engagement of automated 2 star and providers not participating in youngstar, customized supports for 4 and 5 star providers, scholarships and stipends for training, and cohort models. The long-term objective of this program is to address the systemic barriers regarding access to and quality of early care and education settings across Wisconsin. The short-term objective is to inspire, develop and implement innovative strategies for improving the quality of early care and education in Wisconsin in ways that complement and optimize other quality improvement initiatives, such as youngstar. Youngstar--in collaboration, sfta and ccr&rs deliver a package of services including training and professional development, technical assistance, rating, and micro-grants to support the quality improvement efforts of childcare programs. The long-term objective of this program is to ensure that all of Wisconsin's children are receiving quality early care and education services. Current areas of focus are to encourage providers who have taken automated ratings to actively participate in quality improvement efforts and to move programs up in star levels.the partner up! Grant program provides funding to support partnerships between businesses who purchase slots at existing regulated child care providers. The funding from this program can be used to increase staff compensation, reserve child care slots for local business employees, improve the quality of a child care program, and more.
Healthy children with funding provided by the uw school of medicine and public health's Wisconsin partnership program, preventing expulsion in early care is a five grant with a goal to prevent expulsion and eliminate the disparity in expulsion rates for children 0 to 5. This will occur because the innovative model of tiered support will be adopted statewide, Supporting both a change in how the field of early education approaches challenging behaviors and a new state-level policy on early expulsion that is well-informed, well-funded and driven by Families and early educators in Wisconsin.
Strong familiesparent education initiativethrough funding from the child abuse and neglect prevention board, sfta builds awareness and innovatively supports communities statewide through the successful implementation and sustainability of evidence-based parent education programming. This is a statewide initiative and the goals of the family strengthening continuum training and technical assistance grant are 1) to support the implementation of evidence-based/evidence-informed parent education programming in an effort to achieve the long-term goal of statewide reach 2) to support community-based agencies implementing evidence-informed parent education programs and protective factors framework training and 3) to build awareness of the family strengthening continuum and the need for communities to have primary child abuse and neglect prevention strategies. The purpose of this grant is to support efforts to strengthen all Wisconsin Families and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect through statewide prevention coordination and monitoring continuous quality improvement.
Responsive systems tribal training & technical assistance-this contract supports the efforts and priorities of the Wisconsin inter-tribal child care Association (witcca) in the form of hosting collaborative meetings, responding to salient issues via conference calls, building trainer and consultant capacity among first nations, delivering professional development, and continuing processes to plan, refine and evaluate efforts. The long-term goal of this project is to ensure that child care related needs, identified by first nations in Wisconsin, are responded to in culturally-relevant and responsive ways. The short-term goal is to provide culturally relevant resources, training and technical assistance and other support to first nations. Tribal-rural projectthe tribal-rural project is funded by dcf with the goals of Supporting tribal and rural childcare providers in their business practices, credit-based education attainment, pursuit of accreditation, and engaging in training and technical consultation.
Other programsgrants-- sfta engages in other activities designed to advance the mission and vision of the organization, as funded by private foundations and public entities. Training and consulting (also known as fees-for-services)-- sfta provides direct training, consulting, materials translation, and other supports and resources to early care and education professionals, other child and family serving organizations, non-profit organizations, and public agencies on a fee-for-service basis.