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Early Childhood Education
Nurturing Homes Initiative Project

The relationship between caregiver and child is a key indicator of the quality of care. The social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development of children is dependent on the quality of interactions with caregivers and the environment established by child caregivers. Children who receive supportive, stimulating care are more likely to show normal development at two, six, and ten years old.

The Nurturing Homes Initiative project provides educational information, training and technical assistance to family home-care providers who offer full-day, full-year childcare services to children of families meeting certain income requirements. With an estimated 63 percent of Mississippi's children in unlicensed settings, it is vital to provide additional educational information and programs to those providers in family home care.

The Nurturing Homes Initiative will:

• Recruit and enroll family home-care providers.
• Support family home-care providers with a system of learning through technology-based and printed materials.
• Provide one-on-one instruction that includes intensive demonstration methods, hands-on activities and follow-up visits by the program instructor.
• Offer family home-care providers incentives for participation in the program.
• Provide membership in an early-childhood professional organization.
• Increase the quality of care as measured by the Family Day Care Rating Scale and the Caregiver Interaction Scale in participating homes.
• Establish and implement a resource and referral system for parents participating in the Nurturing Homes Initiative who need social services and community help.
• Replicate and expand the project throughout the state.

During 2001, the Mississippi State University Extension Service provided the NURTURING HOMES INITIATIVE pilot project in 12 Mississippi counties, with participation by 60 family home-care providers. The data were statistically significant in each of the subscales of the Family Day Care Rating Scale. The project is being replicated and expanded throughout the state and continues to be successful.

RESOURCES available through Nurturing Homes Initiative

* This project is conducted by Mississippi State University Extension Service in partnership with the Mississippi Department of Human Services Office for Children and Youth.

For more information please contact:
Nurturing Homes Initiative Project staff:
Box 9745, Mississippi State, MS 39762
Phone: 662-325-3083
Fax: 662-325-1805
E-mail:nhi@ext.msstate.edu

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