Child care is a rewarding and yet demanding career. These demands come from an abundance of sources: consistent changes to rules and regulations, requests from parents, and the forever evolving needs of a child in your care. Not only should these demands help solidify you as a growing early childhood professional, there are also plenty of other demands that can significantly affect your career choice. These include educational levels, levels of hands-on training, personal interests, family obligations, values, abilities, and your individual professional priorities.
Each education level, level of hands-on experience and continuing training is different for each position in child care. For example, an aide position only requires, “an orientation upon hire and must 16 years of age” ("Careers in Early Childhood: A Maryland Guide"). On the other hand, a nursery school teacher must have several more respectable qualifications. These include, “a Bachelor's degree, 120
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These factors include interests, family obligations, abilities, values, and professional priorities. Each one of these attributes can affect how the applicant views their career as a whole (positively or negatively), how it affects their work performance and/or evaluations, and how applicant work with other providers. Child care providers should have an interest in working with children, should have creative and engaging abilities to work with the children they service, and should have their professional priorities in order. Professional priorities include organization, lesson plan skills, continuing education and training, state credentials, and being a member of professional organizations. Career choices should be made with patience, all the facts, and should be analyzed carefully. A wrong career choice an affect an individual for the rest of their life. It's important for the applicant to consider these factors when making a career
A significant facet of an early childhood professional is the ability to work with families. This however can be an area in which many professionals entering into the field can feel inadequate. In order to fully support all areas of a child’s performance as a professional it is critical to work with their families. In order to effectively work with families, you must be able to understand the diversity and complexity of families.
Elliott, A. (2004). Where to Now for Early Childhood Education and Care? Early Childhood Education Research Program (ACER), 12(2).
As a qualified early years practitioner level 2, I am a reliable and motivated, and delicate to children’s individual needs. Its really important for an early year practitioner to have a range of skills and attributes to a good level of knowledge in many areas such as child development, observation and assessment, safeguarding, legislation, policies and procedures also working with others.
As children interact with the child care professional several hours a day, parents always look for persons of good influence who can help in the development of their child’s emotional, intellectual and social aspect. Therefore, the characteristics that a childcare worker must possess in order to be successful in the field is, having a positive outlook when working with children, being always patient with them, having excellent communication skills, being energetic both mentally and physically, being flexible in dealing with the young hearts, and being well informed. Further, a good childcare worker must have an honest and inborn interest for children, be compassionate to their needs, and must feel motivated to help them. Without the quality of being patience, childcare workers
Over time, the debate of childcare issue within the Canadian public policy context has been raging. Rise in the media attention of the social issue of childcare policy in Canada concentrates on the relationship and coordination among the federal, provincial, and territorial governments in addressing the social issue (Finkel, 20013). According to Lewis Steven of The Star Canada News Agency, childcare is one of the priorities the Canadian Federal Government need to consider when designing its social policies. According to Lewis (2013), the Canadian Federal Government needs to consider the safety net income as an important factor contributing to affordable childcare services in the country. In Canada, parents or members of extended family have the responsibility of providing childcare services without the consideration of family net income. However, outside the family, there are many childcare providers operating as private individuals or agencies. Such childcare providers operate as private businesses.
Retrieved April 20, 2003, from http://www.steoltingco.com/tests/catolog/TKFGRS.htm. Anderson, Jeanne. (2002). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the ' Selecting a Child Care Program. The electronic version of the.
... this career can be maintained with just a high school diploma with the option of secondary schooling. However, as easy as it is to start being a child care worker, its just that much harder to deal with the everyday struggles and well as qualifications.
Through extensive research I have learned a lot about the career field I have chosen to attain. A preschool director provides leadership and assistance to teachers and staff as well as providing educational and non-academic activities for the school’s programs. Depending on if the school you choose to work for is public or private depends on the requirements that are needed to be eligible for the position of director. Public schools usually do not expect a degree but some want a Masters Degree, while private schools look for a Bachelors or a Masters Degree. The Bachelors Degree would be desired in early childhood education or a relat...
As a child, I loved being babysat. Hanging out with older kids and having some independence from my parents for a few hours was a blast for me. I always knew that I would want to babysit when the time came, but I was always skeptical as to why it was considered a job, because it seemed easy to me. When I was around 8 or 9, I had two main babysitters. Babysitter A put on a movie for us and texted her friends on her phone. Babysitter B played games with us and made us fun dinners. Whenever my mom asked me which babysitter I wanted I always asked for Babysitter B. From that experience of always choosing one girl over the other I learned that being a babysitter is not as easy as it seems.
This section reviews a range of government policy initiatives that have wide-ranging implications for health promotion with looked after children since the year 2000. For several years, there has been a series of government initiatives to raise awareness of the needs of looked after children to try and improve their outcomes. Legal framework within which local authorities work as providers of fostering services and children’s homes is provided through The legal framework of The Children Act 1989 and the Care Standards Act 2000 accompanied by regulations and statutory guidance enable local authorities to provide fostering services. Other Acts such as the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and the Children Act 2004 also enhanced duties on local
Recruiting, identifying and hiring qualified additional staff is crucial to the expansion and sustainability of the daycare center. Though it must adhere to state requirements for each of it’s staff, except the Office Paraprofessional, hiring those who share the values and mission of the daycare center is paramount. The care and education of children is the primary goal and must be the foundation of the staffing process. “Recruitment should be a continuous process of review, reflection and evaluation to employ and retain skilled and experienced child care professionals. Successfully implemented, recruitment processes can assist services to provide quality outcomes for children, families and child care professionals, and promote a commitment to continuing improvement” ("Recruiting Childcare Professionals," n.d.).
When seeking a career, it is important to see the future growth of the job and the salary. It will determine how difficult it will be to find placement. Early childhood educators are the first people to truly show an impact on children and will always be needed. The projected growth of early childhood lead educators between 2014 to 2024 is 7% (Elrick). They will be needed in the upcoming future and the projected growth is said to go up even further. The median annual salary in the United States is $28,120 (Elrick). Many people do not choose this career because the salary is very low compared to the amount of hours spent. Early childhood educators spend a lot of time and energy for these children. They also have to understand that their pay is considerably low compared to many other
The combination of the Rumbold Report and the establishment of Ofsted was the reason why the early learning goals and then the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS) for children under five and further childcare qualifications were brought in. This introduction of early years’ qualifications led to a number of practitioners refusing or resisting undertaking a course of study for qualifications in a career that they had been participating in for years. As a result, a large number of highly experienced, quality practitioners left childcare. These practitioners were a serious loss to the industry.
Most countries have set a qualification guideline as to who can become a nursery staff. In Britain, for example, a qualified nursery staff means a person who has a degree and at least a GCSE C grade in English, Mathematics and Science. A person who has passed a professional test in numeracy and literacy and have undergone initial teacher training. (Sellgren:
After taking a few babysitting classes at the YMCA and Red Cross first aid and CPR classes I decided to make a profile on Care.com. Originally I was messaging all the families in need of childcare in my area, but before I knew it I was receiving messages from people noticing me on the website. I was babysitting at least four times a week during the summer, and I was able to sit a few times a month during the school year. During high school, I was really able to expand my knowledge about childcare. All the electives I took involved childcare, including child development, early childhood education, nutrition, and elementary education.