Licensing Corner

Greetings all,

It has really been a year. 

There is so much I want to pass on … Then I think that if I do, you will all pass out.

Let’s keep this simple.

Masks are going to be a reality for the foreseeable future.

Once you get the rules and regulations down, they WILL change.

For those of you that have preschoolers, you are watching them on trikes and scooters as they careen around corners, hit walls, or just tip over? This may be the precursor to their driving habits in a motorized vehicle when they get older.

With that in mind, I will try to distract you from counting the years to when you may want to get off the road or the months till the masks can go away.  That just leaves the rule changes.

If you are licensed as a child care center, preschool, teen parent program, or operate as a Mobile Preschool, the David Bowie song “Changes” truly fits with what is going to happen December 1^st.  If you have not seen the Secretary of State website where the rules are, then it may be the time to take that leap and look.  No looking and leaping.  We want you around.  Here is the website it you wish to get a leg up.

https://www.sos.state.co.us/CCR/GenerateRulePdf.do?ruleVersionId=9734&fileName=12%20CCR%202509-8

I know it is 483 pages long, but not all these rules pertain to your facility.  The ones changing will be in the 7.702 section for Child Care Centers, Preschool, (new) Mobile Preschool, Part Day Preschool and Childcare Centers in high schools.
The good news?! The underlying goals of these revisions include:

• Technical clean-up and clarification
• Removing duplicative rules from other agencies or found in other rule sections
• Removing outdated rules
• Making the ruleset more user-friendly
• Expanding workforce qualifications
• Removing barriers to operating programs
• Including changes in response to public comment

• Added that shaken baby/abusive head trauma training now needs to be updated every two years instead of annually and can be counted for ongoing professional development.
• All staff must complete Introduction to the Early Intervention and Preschool Special Education Programs, Recognizing the Impact of Bias on Early Childhood Professionals on PDIS. This course is required once and can/will be counted towards ongoing professional development.
• Requirements for Assistant Directors have been added.
• All Directors and Assistant Directors must complete the Department-approved training course: Working with an Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant and Introduction to Child Care Health Consultation. These courses are required once and can/will be counted towards ongoing professional development.
• Centers licensed under the same governing body to provide care for preschool-age children only at multiple locations are not required to have a Large Center Director qualified staff member assigned to each program.
• Short term unscheduled Early Childhood Teacher vacancies up to ten (10) business days per calendar year, an Assistant Early Childhood Teacher can substitute for the Early Childhood Teacher.
• Sunscreen requirements for documenting application times, and If documentation of application time is not available, the center must ensure that sunscreen is applied thirty minutes before going outdoors. If the child will be outside for more than one hour, sunscreen must be reapplied every two hours.
• Maximum height for toddler climbing equipment cannot exceed thirty-two inches.
• Trampolines and inflatable bouncers are prohibited.

 
As I read through the new rules, I am reminded……The wheels of change will continue to move……. We as professional will continue to grow…. And I will never understand TikTok.

We are headed into that time of year when we get to see the wonder in the eyes of the little ones. I challenge you to be part of that wonder.  They are the reason and the most important part of our professional world.  

Be safe and if you need us we, your licensing crew, will be here

Mark Lapka   970-319-3570    mlapka@garfield-county.com
Sandy Jennings 720-660-7136      Sandra.jennings@state.co.us    
Monica De La Espriella    970-309-7217  mdelaespriellamoreno@garfield-county.com

Are We Giving Children the Relationships They Need?

In a fascinating article called “Hunches on Childhood,” psychotherapist Kent Hoffman provides his perspective on the vital importance of the early childhood years. He writes:

“I believe, after fifteen years of doing this work, that what happens in our earliest years has a radical — root — effect upon all that we experience thereafter.” He supplies a list of what he believes is crucial to know about humans’ emotional development.

Here’s a sampling:

The way we were treated as small children is the way we will treat ourselves and others the rest of our lives: with tenderness and support, with neglect and cruelty, or with something in between.

Each person is infinitely precious, of infinite worth — that is, worthy of infinite tenderness and support. Nowhere is this more obvious and apparent than in the life of a young child.

To have grown up in this industrialized society means that we are — each of us — wounded in ways that we do not yet comprehend. Unless we grieve — and thus release — these wounds, we will pass them on to the next generation.

Our degree of openness to relationship — to intimacy and negotiation — is established in the first four years of life.

Indeed, the context of life for the earliest years is the world of relationship, or the lack thereof.”

In her important and beautiful book, Illuminating Care, Carol Garboden Murray strongly urges a new emphasis on how respectful nurturing care in early childhood settings (meal times, diapering, helping children with sleep and rest..), builds the vital relationships Kent Hoffman describes.

Murray writes: “Care is not a soft skill. Care is an intellectual exchange and the seed of our human strength. Care is the strong back bone of our survival and flourishing.”