The National Workforce Registry Alliance (NWRA) and ECE Professional Development Workforce Registries nationwide (including The Nevada Registry) are collaborating to elevate voices from the field. Help us reach every provider with an invitation to inform future conversations regarding priorities and investments in Early Learning. Early in the pandemic, in 2020, workforce registries were able to reach out to over 700,000 child care providers in 28 states, over 80,000 participated. Within just two short weeks, the Early Care & Education workforce had an opportunity to participate in Yale’s Child Care & Pandemic Mitigation study. Registries collaborated to contact four times as many people as AEYCs alone can reach and 15 times the number of people CCRRs can locate. At that time, Dr. Gilliam coined ECE Registries the Emergency Broadcast System for the Child Care Industry, due to their expansive access to child care providers. We hope that you can assist us again as we seek to generate reliable data for policy leaders making important decisions about the safety and economic needs of child care programs and providers.
That 2020 study was one of the largest COVID-19 studies at that time in the pandemic, and clearly the largest study of the health of the child care workforce ever conducted. The study can be obtained here, and was shared in federal briefings with the CDC and the U.S. Office of Child Care, and covered widely by news media. More information about the study and its impact can be seen here, including a briefing of the child care workforce attended by thousands of child care professionals and featuring many national child care leaders. As Dr. Gilliam stated publicly, after the release of the 2020 study, “…the network of state child care registries is the closest thing we have to a National Emergency Broadcast System for child care professionals, and especially during a global pandemic this is incredibly valuable.”
2021 Study Aims listed below:
This study focuses on several areas: (a) determining the transmission rate of COVID-19 in child care providers at this point in the pandemic (no increased risk was found for child care providers one year ago, three months into the pandemic); (b) determine child care provider vaccination rates, intentions, and barriers; (c) examine the role of various strategies for reducing COVID-19 transmission; (d) examine the financial impact on child care programs and their current ability to hire and retain staff and enroll children; (e) explore the relationship between child care reopening and community level economic impact; (f) address various questions regarding the mental health impact of COVID-19 on child care providers and their children in their care; (g) make recommendations about policies that can better support child care programs and providers; (h) carefully consider issues of equity within all of the above; and (i) many other questions central to the health and wellbeing of child care professionals.