Purpose

The purpose of Welcome the Children is two-fold: (1) to facilitate appropriate referrals for services for children who speak Spanish and have developmental delays, and (2) to assist child care providers and early childhood educators through training and technical assistance to understand cultural issues and learn strategies to support children who speak Spanish.

To accomplish the first purpose, project staff members are collecting information through surveys and interviews on current assessment and referral procedures. Project staff will work with community training teams and local healthcare providers to help identify effective referral processes. Additional training materials will be developed from these results.

To accomplish the second purpose, Welcome the Children is using the proven training materials developed through the Nuestra Familia ("Our Family") project and is working with the Arkansas Early Childhood Professional Development System to further support and expand the professional development and training available to child care professionals across the state. To ensure the training will continue past this contract period, Welcome the Children is using a community team approach to develop the capacity of individuals across the state to present and support these training materials.

The community teams consist of child care providers; early childhood educators; disability and healthcare providers; clergy; family members; and representatives of Latino groups. With in-depth project support, these community teams will coordinate local training efforts. Welcome the Children will provide additional training, technical assistance, and ongoing support for the community training teams. This project will ultimately benefit Arkansas children through quality, trained child care providers and appropriate referrals for speech/language therapy and other services when warranted.