A Healthier Future Home Study Program For Child Care Providers

Abstract

The 1992 survey. Food and Nutrition of Child Care Programs in Washington State, states there is a lack of knowledge among child care providers in the areas of nutrition, sanitation and food safety. Child care providers cite the lack of convenience, funding and accessibility as the primary obstacles to training. To overcome these problems, A Healthier Future Home Study Program was developed. The program is based on The Healthy E.D.G.E in Schools which utilizes the Dietary Guidelines and a team concept. Such issues as nutrition, recipe modification, labeling laws, food safety, picky eaters and marketing nutrition to parents were included in the manual's five lessons. Each lesson contains a self- administered quiz and evaluation form used to monitor the subjects progress and evaluate lesson acceptance. A pre-test and post-test were used to evaluate the effectiveness of training. A demographics survey was used to characterize the subjects and a telephone survey was administered to assess reasons for non-compliance. The pilot study assessed 44 licensed home child care providers whose mean test score increased from 77% to 94% following training. Currently, 250 home child care providers are participating in a second round of testing.