Broward’s Infrastructure Design to Guide and Sustain Permanency

for Young Foster Children

(BRIDGES)

Grantee

Nonprofit agency founded in 1971

Supporting low-income and at-risk children and their families in South Florida

Services include childcare resource and referral, subsidized child care, training and technical assistance and family support programs including BRIDGES

Lead Agency

GOAL

To create early learning environments that meet the needs of young children in foster care and to promote and sustain permanency of their placement.

Target Population: Foster children (birth to five) enrolled in child care programs in Broward County, Florida.

Partner Agencies/Governance

Creating a BRIDGE

Early Learning & Education

Child Welfare

Why is this needed

Effect of abuse/neglect on developing brains

The prolonged, severe, unpredictable stress caused by abuse and neglect can alter brain development.

Toxic stress in young children causes negative impacts on the child’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social growth.

The first five years are crucial to a child’s brain development and lay the foundation for all future learning

Foster children come with challenging behaviors

• Difficultly transitioning to new home and child care center due to trauma of removal from parents and change in placement

• Challenging or withdrawn behavior due to stress of suffering experienced by abuse and/or neglect

Common child care issues for foster children

• Child care providers lack of knowledge and experience in handling challenging behaviors of foster children

• Trend in children being expelled from child care centers due to behaviors

• Foster children often move from center to center further exacerbating their instability and stress

aims to create an early learning environment that is stable and high quality for young foster

children to heal their trauma and provide a

place of protection

BRIDGES

Create system to identify programs with the capacity to provide quality child care for foster children.

Provide resources and support for child care programs to address complex needs of foster children in their care.

Develop and strengthen infrastructure for communication and collaboration between key systems serving foster children, including child welfare and early learning systems.

Build system capacity for child advocates, parents, guardians, and foster parents to make informed child care choices to meet needs of foster children.

How?

BRIDGES StructureGovernance

TrainingEarly Screening and Identification

Quality Child Care Centers

Training of Child Welfare and Child Care Professionals

Curriculum Development aimed at child advocates, parents, guardians, and foster parents to build competencies in making informed choices in selecting childcare programs that are “places of protection” and meet the needs of foster children

Curriculum Development targeted to professionals to build capacity of agencies to meet the complex social, emotional, behavioral, and family support needs of foster children

Develop policy and procedures recommendations as it pertains to future training, such as MAPP, and training to foster parents and early childhood professionals.

Early Screening and Identification

Eliminate barriers to early identification and screening of young foster children by facilitating communication and data sharing between key players

Refine the referral process for screening to ensure it is seamless

Quality Child Care Settings

Develop certification process to create and identify those early learning centers that are equipped to handle the complex needs of foster children

Provide supports outside of training to equip early learning centers to meet the complex needs of foster children

Implementation of transdisciplinary staffings and Positive Behavioral Support

Positive Behavioral Support Program

PBS is

funded by

coaches and supports directors, teachers, parents and children in the acquisition of the skills needed for successful social/emotional development. 

building nurturing relationships and creating safe environment for the children; providing social emotional support to targeted students, providing intensive individual intervention including home visiting

reflects a very strong foundation of evidence-based knowledge at the early childhood staffing level.

Sustainability Plans

• At end of project, BRIDGE’s steering committee, will fold into Foster Care Steering Committee, a well-established committee that includes all key stakeholders in foster care system.

• Certification of child care programs responsive to foster children will be linked to community’s Child Care Quality Rating System.

• Strategic plan will be developed to identify ways that programs like PBS that address social/emotional development can be expanded to other child care sites.