Illinois Action for Children
Spread the Word proposal draft
April 1, 2009
Page 1 of 8
Spread the Word
A Healthy Meal is a Strong Start Toward a Bright Future
Funding Request from Illinois Action for Children (Chicago, IL)
Period Covered July 1, 2009 – June 30, 2010
Report Date: April 1, 2009
Primary Contact: Rebecca Creighton, Director of Development
Phone: 773-769-8004
Email:
Introduction
The Healthy Food Program at Illinois Action for Children is pleased to present the following proposal to support the Spread the Word outreach and education initiative. Spread the Word creates a plan for Illinois Action for Children’s Healthy Food Program to reach thousands more low-income children, parents, and child care providers—and to change thousands of lives. This work addresses significant problems of poor nutrition and fitness in low-income areas of Cook County.
History of the Organization
Illinois Action for Children is a catalyst for developing, organizing, and supporting strong families and powerful communities where children matter most.
Illinois Action for Children has fought for 40 years to ensure that all children in Illinois have access to high-quality early care and education, and that parents are supported in their goals of economic self-sufficiency and stability. Through it all, the grassroots approach and premise behind the work has remained essentially the same: Parents love their children and want them to be happy and healthy. Illinois Action for Children’s job is to organize those dreams so that families are heard and their dreams become public will.
By integrating Program Services with Public Policy and Advocacy, Illinois Action for Children develops systemic approaches to meeting families’ needs. The organization receives ongoing funding to operate programs in Cook County that support child care and early childhood education. Program Services include Family Resources for childcare referral and financial assistance, Provider Resources for program enhancement and professional development, numerous Early Learning Programs, Outreach and Home Visiting, Mental Health Consultation, Public Health Outreach, and the Healthy Food Program. Public Policy and Advocacy work is accomplished through a member-base that consists primarily of child care providers, parents, and other advocates. By building state and national public policy advocacy efforts around a grassroots membership, Illinois Action for Children ensures a focus on the priorities identified by those most directly affected.
Background and Mission
Now in its third year of operation, The Healthy Food Program at Illinois Action for Children serves to dramatically increase quality eating habits in low-income areas most vulnerable to poor nutrition.
The Program is a sponsor for the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service and the Illinois State Board of Education. CACFP sets guidelines and reimburses participating home based child care providers for serving nutritious meals to children, and relies on sponsor organizations such as Illinois Action for Children and the Healthy Food Program to fulfill the critical role of on-the-ground child care provider recruitment and support.
Illinois Action for Children’s Healthy Food Program focuses its outreach efforts on families that qualify for the state administered Child Care assistance Program (CCAP), which provides low-income, working families with child care subsidy on a sliding-scale through the use of certificates or contracts. Targeted populations have been identified as being at high-risk for resultant disease and chronic illness, including obesity and diabetes, and also a decreased quality of life.
The Healthy Food Program is proud to supply families and child care providers with important nutrition education to support the health of young children and families, in addition to general recruitment, support, and facilitation of reimbursements. Healthy Food Program Nutrition Advocates visit enrolled child care homes three times each year for a one-on-one training session to observe meal preparation, service, and consumption, and review provider paperwork and meal schedules. Each visit lasts approximately 30 minutes and includes review of healthy lifestyle education materials. In addition to these home visits, the Healthy Food Program also engages providers—and parents—through public outreach at Illinois Action for Children’s West and South Side client walk-in sites, and nutrition workshops and training sessions held in cooperation with community organizations throughout Cook County.
Unlike the 13 other CACFP sponsor programs in Illinois, the Healthy Food Program puts special emphasis on providing services to licensed-exempt child care providers—a common child care resource for low-income families. License exempt child care providers are often unaware of the benefits and supports available to child care providers, and are in greater need of information and financial support to provide high-quality care.
At present, the Healthy Food Program serves 500 child care providers to reach an approximate 3000 children across Cook County, Illinois.
Project Description
The Spread the Word outreach and education effort reflects the Healthy Food Program’s desired evolution from a small facilitator program, to an entity of greater impact for bringing creative solutions to improve health in vulnerable communities. Specifically, this project aims to improve the health of young children by 1) enabling them to receive nutritious meals, and 2) making education easily accessible to parents and child care providers in a way that is not invasive or costly to their lifestyle and fittingly allows them to change and improve the overall health of children in their care.
Spread the Word will:
· Educate child care providers in low-income areas of Cook County—and the families of children in their care—about the basic principles of healthy eating and fitness. Staff will use innovative and culturally appropriate delivery methods, with sensitivity to overarching socioeconomic issues such as poverty, literacy, and geographic location.
· Motivate and support the target population in making positive changes in their food and activity choices, in a way that will improve young children’s quality of life and establish lifelong healthy-lifestyle habits.
· Act as a link and facilitate higher enrollment in state and federal nutrition support programs, to support the providers’ and families’ efforts.
The project aims to meet people in their own communities and is cognizant of two pervasive and significant factors to poor health, which are regrettably thriving in the homes and neighborhoods the project will visit: child undernourishment and family poverty.
Approach
Through survey and experience, the Healthy Food Program has seen how child care providers have a tremendous opportunity to influence—and reverse negative impacts on—the long-term health of the children in their care. Most child care providers serve at least two meals and one snack per day—which means that children consume the majority of their daily nutritional intake in the child care setting. And in addition to teaching, instilling, and facilitating healthy nutrition, a provider may be one of a child’s few reliable sources to receive a daily full meal.
Statistics show that:
· Forty percent of children from ages zero to five who are enrolled in child care spend a minimum of 31 hours per week under the providers care. Children from low-income families are likely to spend even more time in child care.
· Forty-five percent of the children in care with home child care providers are age five or younger—the key ages at which children learn most of their eating habits.
And:
· Chicago’s population of children that are overweight or at risk of being overweight is higher—by percentage—than the national average (Ogden et al, 2006; Mason et al, 2006; IDPH, 2006).
· Children from predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago are overweight at three to four times the national average (January 2004, the Sinai Urban Health Institute).
To date, a total of 26,300 child care providers participate in Illinois Action for Children’s CCAP program. These 26,300 providers—and the tens of thousands of children in their care, plus those children’s parents—constitute Spread the Word’s built-in target audience. The population is primarily African American, Latino, low-income, and has a history of limited access to high-quality health education services including nutrition and fitness counseling.
Spread the Word will improve health for young children in vulnerable communities, and those children’s families, by working primarily through child care providers, and parents.
Goals and Objectives
Goal 1: To provide education materials, and group workshops and trainings on basic principles of healthy eating and fitness, to child care providers, families, and others in their communities.
Linked Objectives:
1) To outreach to the 5000+ providers and parents that visit Illinois Action for Children’s South and West Side walk-in locations monthly, with culturally appropriate and appealing nutrition education information facilitated by a Nutrition Advocate team of one English- and one Spanish-speaking staff member.
The Healthy Food Program will set up an outreach table and use visual aids to demonstrate the effects of an unhealthy diet on children and adults. Everyone who drops by the table will receive an easy to follow family nutrition plan to use at home, as well as information about topics like nutrition on a budget, nutrition for picky eaters, reading food labels, and fitness and diet. The demonstration and materials are designed to be easy to understand for low-literacy levels and bilingual (Spanish) populations. Parents and Providers will also receive product donations and easy recipes for healthy meal preparation, and will be able to sign up for classes/seminars on nutrition.
2) To increase the participation of child care providers that attend nutrition and fitness training workshops to 100%, having each new or existing provider enrolled on the Healthy Food Program attend a minimum of one workshop each year, in addition to the one-on-one counseling and training sessions provided by Nutrition Advocates.
As part of their own participation, providers will also be encouraged to invite parents to participate in workshop activities. Top providers engaging full parent participation will receive incentive awards. In having both providers and parents attend workshops, the Healthy Food Program works to create nutrition and fitness consistency in both the child care and home environment.
As part of the Healthy Food Program’s general outreach at Illinois Action for Children’s walk-in sites, parents and providers not enrolled in the program will also be invited and encouraged to register for workshops.
Goal 2: To form new partnerships and apply innovative methods that will motivate and support the target population—primarily low-income communities of color—in making positive changes in their food and activity choices.
Linked Objectives:
1) To seek out and create innovative, new partnerships to provide enhanced opportunities that facilitate peer and neighbor support for healthy eating and lifestyle choices.
The Healthy Food Program will facilitate gatherings in locations such as churches and community centers, with partner outreach to strategically identified organizations such as Whole Foods, University of Illinois Chicago, Kendall College Culinary School, The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, and the 61st Street Farmers Market. Culinary students and other food experts from neighboring communities will be brought in to provide trainings and demonstrations, as well as on-site gatherings and tours.
2) Engaging 50 parents and child care providers each month in community-based, group gatherings focused on nutrition and fitness issues and solutions in at-risk neighborhoods in Cook County.
The Healthy Food Program plans to outreach to community-based organizations, such as Provider Associations already in contact with the agency, as a launching point to drive attendance. Providers currently enrolled on the Healthy Food Program will be invited to attend as well.
Goal 3: To facilitate enrollment of the target population in the CACFP and other federal nutrition support programs so they can receive ongoing support.
Linked Objectives:
1) To use the Health Healthy Food Program outreach efforts as a way to also provide child care providers and parents with information on eligibility and instructions on how to apply for federal nutrition support programs including Food Stamps, WIC, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
2) To increase enrolment in the Healthy Food Program to 1000 home child care providers, serving more than 5000 children. This goal will be met within a period of two years.
3) To provide one-on-one support for child care providers, through home visits that provide ideas and encouragement for improving food and activity choices with their families and the children in their care, at a session of 60 minutes for each visit.
The goal is for a 100% increase from the current number of home visits, and also includes a 30-minute increase to the time. Additional time will be used for in-depth nutrition and fitness training for meager budgets as well as fitness training for limited indoor space appropriate to low-income family situations.
Goals and objectives will be achieved through four points of engagement, to take place exclusively in Cook County:
The first point of engagement is Nutrition Advocates’ outreach to the 5000+ child care providers and parents that visit Illinois Action for Children walk-in centers each month. This creates an opportunity for Nutrition Advocates to connect with tens-of-thousands of parents and providers over the course of a year. Currently, Nutrition Advocates are present at the walk-in sites one day a month. With additional funding, staff can be present during the entire first week of the month—when child care providers and parents come to drop off their reimbursement paperwork and walk-in centers experience the highest volume of traffic. First-week visits constitute 50% of all walk-in visits each month.
The second point of engagement is through one-on-one visits inside home child care providers’ homes. Research and experience demonstrate that the best practice for engaging providers occurs through one-on-one, personal contact. It is at these one-on-one visits where the impact to have a positive influence on the child care and curriculum is greatest. This recommendation comes through Illinois Action for Children staff members’ direct field experience and working relationships with families and providers, and is further substantiated by a year 2008 research brief from the Cornell Early Childhood Program (“Can Home Visiting Increase the Quality of Home-based Child Care? Findings from the Caring For Quality Project. By Lisa A. McCabe and Moncrieff Cochran). Often providers are intimidated to attend outside meetings due to transportation difficulties or the unfamiliarity of the surroundings of the meeting place, but are comfortable and relaxed in their own environment.