Category: Services

Promoting Self-Care For Your Staff

Now more than ever, as Head Start professionals, we are at high risk for experiencing stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Exposure to children and families experiencing trauma, ensuring every child’s (or family’s) basic needs are met, rising administrative demands, limited time, and competing priorities are daily realities. Still, as professionals, we show up, deliver high-quality services, day after day. But at what cost?

While we support families’ goals for better health, well-being, and education, we often neglect our plans in these areas, sending the “do as I say, not as I do” message despite our best intentions.

We have developed customized trainings, based on your program’s staff needs, that take a deep-dive into identifying areas for your professional and personal growth using sections of the Head Start Relationship-Based Competencies tool and research-based strategies to transform your health and well-being. These trainings will spark hope and give participants a real-life game-plan to be their best selves at work and at home. These training can be delivered on-site or virtually; whichever best meets the needs of your program.

As outlined in ACF-PI-HS-21-03 FY 2021 American Rescue Plan Funding Increase for Head Start Programs, ARP funds can be used for staff wellness and mental health support.

You can learn more about these and other support services online.

Please call us at (704) 277-7473 or email us at susanwitek@hsessentials.com to discuss how we can support you.

On The Road Again

We are so excited to be back on the road offering in-person training.  So many of our clients have expressed the desire for in-person training and we are happy to be able to provide it.  While live virtual trainings and webinars have filled a necessary void during the pandemic there are many advantages to in-person training.

  • Your trainer has the opportunity to read nonverbal cues. They can read the audience and adapt the training to best meet your program’s needs.
  • Trainings can be more interactive. Participants have a more active role.  They can practice the content that they are learning during the training.
  • Virtual trainings can be prone to distraction. The phone may ring; someone may stop by the office, causing the participant to lose focus.
  • Team building. In-person training allows your team to come together, building comradery. They can share experiences and learn from each other.
  • Trainings should have content that is customized to the specific needs of your program. Webinars are not customized, and the information can be outdated.

 

We recognize that many of our clients are not yet in the position to have in-person trainings or have found that they fill a need for their program, so we will continue offering our synchronous virtual trainings.

We are currently scheduling training for both in-service and pre-service as well as live CLASS™ Observations.  For information on our training topics please contact Susan Witek at (704)277-7473 or view our services.

Finding The Support Service You Need

While Essential Elements is well-known for our highly effective and interactive training, we offer many additional support services. Our clients have relied on these services for many years. Now, as staffing shortages and the need for classroom coverage have greatly reduced time and personnel available to complete compliance tasks internally, clients are turning to EE for external support.

Is it time to write your grant application? Let us take out the guess work and do it for you. We can write a comprehensive strengths-based grant application (whether it is a refunding application, a re-competition application or a 5-year baseline application).

Our grant writers have a long history of successful grant writing and consulting for Head Start and Early Head Start programs as well as other early childcare and education programs. For the past 20 years, our grant writers have procured grant funds and contracts from local, state, and federal funding sources, and currently have a 100% funding success rate.

Is your Community Assessment up to date with new census data and COVID related data? If not, we can help with that!

We create community assessments and community assessment updates for many of our clients. Our data collection process includes a combination of internal and external data, both qualitative and quantitative data. In addition to a comprehensive analysis of the data (graphs, charts, and key findings for each piece of data), your Community Assessment will include items such as an Introduction, Methodology, Executive Summary, Program Summary, Map of your Community, Description of your Community and a List of Community Resources, just to name a few. Our community assessments go far beyond simply meeting the required element of the Head Start Performance Standards.  We include data unique to your program to make this the “go to” resource document for your program.

Can’t find the time to complete a Wage Comparison Study, Annual report, Strategic Planning, Curriculum Fidelity Check, or write a Policy and Procedure Manual? We’ve got you covered!

You can learn more about these and other support services online.

Please call us at (704) 277-7473 or email us at susanwitek@hsessentials.com to discuss how we can support you.