The
challenge I am going to study for my course project is helping early childhood
teachers understand how to best meet the needs of children from homeless
families. In the Child Care Development Fund requirements for the states
there are specific questions states will be required to address in the state
plan for child care. One of those questions is how are you as a state
preparing early childhood teachers with understanding the homeless community
and recruiting them for child care services. Most early childhood
classroom teachers are ill prepared supporting children growing up in homeless
families.
Nearly
1 million preschoolers and school-age children were homeless in 2009-2009 (Hanson & Lynch, 2013, p. 35). This is a crisis in our nation and the
federal government with these new
reporting requirements are attempting to
engage states with supporting these families with both enrollment into high
quality early childhood programs, but also ensuring they are benefiting from
child care subsidy to help pay the costs of the child care. Poverty and homelessness are examples of risk
indicators (Hanson & Lynch,
2013, p. 61).
The
questions I have initially are as follows:
Have you had any children from a homeless family in your classroom? How will you support the children and
families that are homeless?
I
think more research will need to be reviewed to ensure that the questions asked
of teachers are supporting and do not cause greater stigma to the homeless
population.
References
