Financial coaching for childcare parents and employees

The Childcare is a two-generation strategy that improves quality of life for children by increasing their parent’s financial security. These services are offered free to family childcare providers, childcare centers and Head Start programs, and Parents as Teachers. The services include:

• Financial coaching: Personal financial coaching to help childcare workers and parents take specific actions to improve their financial well-being.
• Mind Over Money workshops: Three one-hour workshops for childcare administrators recognized for annual hours by the Office of Child Care Licensing.
• Sesame Street workshops:  This program was developed by the Sesame Street Workshop and is offered as a parent/child activity that teaches basic financial concepts of spending, saving and sharing to young children. It is also available as a train-the-trainer program for childcare educators so they can add this content to their classroom curriculum.

Eight coaches, four of whom are bilingual in Spanish, work in childcare centers across the state. The state Office of Early Learning has worked with Stand By Me to qualify program services in Delaware’s early childcare quality initiative, STARS. As a result, centers not only benefit by making these services available to their staff and families, but they also add value towards their quality rating.