Questions for Caregivers of Children in Hillsborough County's Child Welfare System

Common Questions

1. Is this a Head Start or Early Head Start provider?
2. Has the provider worked with children in the child welfare system?
3. Has the provider had trauma-informed care training?
4. Has the provider had training in teaching children with challenging behaviors?
5. Does the provider make accommodations to include children with special emotional or physical needs?
6. Do teachers focus on social/ emotional development?
7. Do teachers focus on peaceful conflict resolution?
8. How often do teachers test a child’s developmental progress?
9. How do teachers use assessment results to better teach the student?
10. Do teachers share and explain assessment results with caregivers?

Explanation of Questions

• Head Start provides a free, comprehensive quality early education for 3-5-year-old children. Early Head Start provides a quality early education to 0-2 year-olds.
• Trauma-informed training instructs teachers how to best meet the needs of children who have experienced trauma.
• Training on teaching children with challenging behaviors is important as many children have behaviors associated with their abuse, neglect or abandonment. Teachers should work through emotional and behavioral problems with students. Positive Behavior Support is a training offered in Hillsborough County that helps child care teachers respond appropriately to address and reduce challenging behaviors.
• Accommodating children with special needs to include them in the general classroom enhances their opportunity to learn.
• Focusing on social/emotional development ensures that children regularly practice controlling themselves in a school setting, a skill that is associated with more success in the k-12 setting and later in life.
• Peaceful conflict resolution should be practiced. Often, children in care have seen bad examples of conflict resolution by adults. Learning to resolve conflicts peacefully increases the child’s likelihood for k-12 success.
• Assessments of the child’s developmental progress should be done several times throughout the year so the teacher knows whether the student is making progress in the areas in which they are behind.
• Assessment results tell a teacher where the child struggles. The teacher should use them to create a plan to help the child strengthen those skills.
• Explaining assessment results to caregivers is important because you can continue working on those skills at home with the children.