Signal Centers Program Growing Its Footprint in Child Care

The Work Ready program continues to grow its footprint in the child care landscape. The

program’s goal is to provide a nine-month paid internship and college course work to TANF eligible individuals so that they can gain employment in the child care field. Participants are provided a two-week orientation that includes training needed to work in child care, licensure requirements, ACEs, Trauma Informed Care, two day job shadowing at a child care site, applying for FASFA and application to Chatt State, Financial Literacy, and a background check. The program uses a 2 Generational approach to services that allows for the support of the intern and all members in the household. An intensive case management model is used to help identify barriers to success and connect participants and family members to directly to resources. This will hopefully allow them to enroll in and complete the program with fewer stressors and learn how to connect to a needed community resource independently going forward.

The program had its first cohort to complete orientation in July and the second in August. Our third cohort is scheduled to start September 5th and is expected to be our largest group yet. The first two cohorts have been placed in internships at several child care sites for their internships including Signal Centers, Purpose Point. and Chambliss. Placements will be expanded to 21St Century Child Development and Learning Center and Children’s Academy for Education and Learning with the completion of the orientation for the third cohort. Additional sites are currently also in development. Interns are thrilled to be able to earn money while being trained in a field enjoy. Teachers receive a stipend for training our interns and the child care sites also receive a stipend for hosting our interns. Ultimately, we hope that our interns can become employed at their sites.

Both intern cohorts started their first class with Chatt State on August 14th with classes being held on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday each week. The classes are held at our office location because of the partnership with Chatt State. The class will run for seven weeks, and a second class is scheduled to start in Oct. The third cohort will be able to register and attend this second class as well. Upon completion of the two college classes, our interns will be eligible for placement on the WAGE$ scale after employment. Through a partnership with Early Matters, our interns were able to obtain tuition assistance the Quality Matters Funds that covers the cost of their classes. The program was able to purchase the books for the interns that are needed for the class.