Ensuring a Bright Future through Quality Childcare with Ofelia Gonzales

In today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, Christopher Robbins, co-founder of Familius Publishing, husband, father of nine, author, fisherman, backpacker, and aspirational musician based in the Central Valley of California, talks to Ofelia Gonzales, a wife, mother of three children, lover of life, family people and communicator by heart. She joined the team of the local community-based organization Children Services Network, CSN in 2002 as a community organizer, where she focused on grassroots organizing campaigns and efforts to empower families in low-income communities and provide children with school readiness opportunities. Ofelia finds great pleasure in building connections, linking families to services that help meet everyday needs, and representing an organization that focuses on assisting parents to raise happy, healthy children. Today they will discuss quality childcare, the information that aligns with its familiar habits like learn together, love together, give together and read together.

 

Episode Highlights:

• 02:24: As per Ofelia at Central Valley Children's Services Network, their mission is to improve the quality of care for children of the Central Valley, but it's a principle that goes everywhere.
• 03:07: Even if the child is possibly not in a childcare center, maybe they're in a licensed care home or with relatives or neighbors, we want to know what type of care our child is receiving, says Ofelia.
• 04:34: When we speak quality childcare, we want to go above and beyond. We want to make sure that there are programs that are really tying into helping the child transition into the early care and education to them, says Ofelia.
• 05:15: As per Christopher milestones development and milestones help are a few terms, help us understand what some of those might be.
• 05:54: When we say children learn through play, they absolutely do. Sing the song of colors with them, show them a picture book of animals, and they will learn what animals are.
• 01: Early literacy is a tremendous component of the longest programs that we've had here at Children Services network, because not only are we modeling early literacy, but we are modeling positive parent-child interaction, says Ofelia.
• 08:56: What certifications do you have, have you done any training, what are the discipline policies, these are the things that oftentimes providers don't have to do, but if they're doing it, then they want to do their best to implement quality childcare.
• 09:16: An infant needs different care than possibly its toddler or a school-age child.
• 10:15: When we are working families, we know sometimes we just need the best, but we need to keep in mind the little points that could make a difference in the type of care that our children are receiving.
• 11:02: It's easy to feel guilty and say I am not spending enough time with my child, but we have to keep in mind we can spend the whole day at home and if we are just on our phones and not pay attention to children or not doing quality investment of your time then it's nothing.
• 13:08: You don't have to invest so much money, find something like a recycled paper that you're probably going to toss out, crumble it up into a little ball play, catch 5 minutes in the living room with that and. kids love it, and you are spending that quality time with them.

 

3 Key Highlights

1. When we are thinking about quality childcare, or when we might be working and we might need to take our child to someplace for the day, what questions should we be asking when we're doing that?
2. Make observations when you go out for childcare. Check how childcare providers interact with children. How does the provider interact with a parent? Because that also tells you something.
3. Ofelia shares the top things that come to mind that we as parents, we as teachers, and professional childcare need to be doing to help this rising generation.

 

Tweetable Quotes

• "If you are looking for childcare, no matter who's going to be watching your child, if you have to go to work, if you have to go to school, you want to know that your child is in a safe place and child is receiving the most optimal care possible." - Ofelia
• "Quality childcare is going above and beyond the basic licensing requirement." - Ofelia
• "Quality always surpasses the quantity of the time that we're with our children." - Ofelia

 

Resources Mentioned

• Helping Families Be Happy Podcast Apple
• https://www.cbctn.org/
• Podcast Editing