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Resilient Oakland Communities & Kids (ROCK): Trauma Responsive Classroom Toolkit

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Resilient Oakland Communities & Kids (ROCK): Trauma Responsive Classroom Toolkit

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Trauma-Responsive Classroom Toolkit

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Resilient Oakland Communities and Kids (ROCK) builds knowledge about protective factors and resilience, trauma and its impact on children’s health and learning, and classroom-based trauma informed…

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Resilient Oakland Communities & Kids (ROCK): Trauma Responsive Classroom Toolkit

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Resilient Oakland Communities & Kids (ROCK): Trauma Responsive Classroom Toolkit

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Trauma-Responsive Classroom Toolkit

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Resilient Oakland Communities and Kids (ROCK) builds knowledge about protective factors and resilience, trauma and its impact on children’s health and learning, and classroom-based trauma informed…

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2060 likes, 8 comments. “It’s easy to feel like if you haven’t been perfect, you’ve already fallen behind. But consistency isn’t about never messing up, it’s about not quitting when you do. Download our favorite free habit-tracking app, Cub, link in bio 💕🐼”

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NCDHHS Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Resources

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NCDHHS Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Resources

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Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health | NCDHHS

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Early experiences shape a child’s brain development and have a lasting impact on overall health and development. Why Early Childhood Matters describes how when brain development in infants and young children is fully supported, they are more likely to reach milestones needed for future individual and community success. These include:

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from Health Guide

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Burnout: Symptoms, Treatment, and Coping Strategy Tips

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Feeling burned out, emotionally drained, or mentally exhausted? These tips can help you overcome burnout and regain your balance.

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Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing: Immigrant Children and Families in Early Care and Education Settings

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Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing: Immigrant Children and Families in Early Care and Education Settings

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Supporting Mental Health and Wellbeing: Immigrant Children and Families in Early Care and Education Settings | The Children’s Equity Project

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Download the article, Practicing Self-Care and Professionalism. Article - Practicing Self Care Download the presentation, Caring for Yourself: Foundational to Caring for Others. Presentation - Caring for Yourself Download the presentation, Compassion Fatigue Can We Care Too Much.

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Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Funding Compendium

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Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Funding Compendium

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Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Funding Compendium

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Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Funding Compendium

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CECE Early Childhood Videos at Eastern CT State U.

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The Importance of Self-Care for Early Care and Education Professionals

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while published for Head Start, this toolkit has som

e great resources to look over and adapt

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Mental Health Toolkit for Head Start Staff

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Build a compassionate, safe culture for your staff and increase individual resilience with resources from our partners at Starling Minds.

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LENA's Talking About Emotions Poster for Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers

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LENA's Talking About Emotions Poster for Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers

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Strategies for Supporting Self-Regulation: Snapshot Series

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Strategies for Supporting Self-Regulation: Snapshot Series

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A focus on Infants and Toddlers, Preschoolers and working with families in home settings.

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Strategies for Supporting Self-Regulation: Snapshot Series | ECLKC

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Parents, teachers, coaches, and other adult mentors play a key role in shaping and supporting children's ability to self-regulate through an interactive process called "co-regulation." The home environment, including a child's relationship with parents and primary caregivers, is the biggest influence on a child's ability to develop self-regulation skills.

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Creating a Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP)

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Creating a Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP)

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Download the PDF

A Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) allows your program to be intentional and thoughtful about creating a workplace that values staff wellness, mental health, and physical health.

Why create a SWAP?

If your program is just beginning to incorporate staff wellness activities, the SWAP can be a useful tool for planning. If your program already has a staff wellness plan, you may find the SWAP a useful tool for prioritizing goals and strategizing how to implement initiatives. Unexpected events, such as a public health emergency or another type of event that adds strain to the local community, are also appropriate times for revising your program's staff wellness plan - looking with fresh eyes and establishing new goals that place wellness at the forefront.

A great resource to help you focus on the well-being of your team is ACF-IM-HS-21-05 Supporting the Wellness of All Staff in the Head Start Workforce. This Information Memoranda includes staff wellness requirements and many suggestions for activities to improve your program's efforts.

The SWAP template has four sections. Each section is outlined below. You can also create your own version of this SWAP to best meet the needs of your program.

Section 1: Identifying the Team

What to do: List the team members who will develop your SWAP. Include a wide variety of roles and perspectives.

Why is this important? Including a wide variety of voices on the team ensures your SWAP incorporates the perspective of everyone who will participate in the activities that you propose and of program leaders responsible for implementing your plan.

How to get started: You might include staff members such as:

Teaching staff

Site directors

Family engagement staff

Home visitors

Content area managers

Program leaders

Program finance and benefits administrators

Head Start agency representatives if your program is part of a larger recipient

Head Start families

External team members might include:

Infant and early childhood mental health consultants

Child care health consultants

Health Services Advisory Committee members

Representatives from local businesses

Nonprofit organizations

Public health agencies

Health insurance carriers

Universities and community colleges

Section 2: Collecting Data About Our Program's Wellness Interests and Needs

What to do: List the data sources you are using to inform your SWAP. Record the information they provide. Then use the space in the final column to identify some of the specific areas your program may want to address based on the information you learned from your data collection and analysis.

Why is this important? By defining your program's strengths and identifying any gaps, you can create a plan that builds on your assets, addresses challenges, and helps you define and accomplish goals more effectively. Be sure the information you collect specifically explores the staff's interests and also provides a variety of types of activities for staff's consideration.

How to get started: Below are some of the many options for data sources.

Listening sessions

Focus groups

Motivational interviews

Surveys and questionnaires

Polls

Research studies on wellness in the workplace and "stay surveys" focused on why staff members stay in their positions over time

Identify your program's existing strengths around staff wellness. Then consider how you can build on or enhance what is already working well.
Some considerations for the team to discuss include:

How have you gathered data in the past?

How do you gather information about staff wellness needs?

How much staff interest exists already around staff wellness action planning?

Can you expand or improve an existing programs to address these interests and needs?

Are there gaps in your resources or current staff wellness programming?

What community assets may help you overcome existing challenges or barriers?

How much administrative and community support do you have?

What funding and resources are available to create and implement the staff wellness program?

Section 3: Creating Our Staff Wellness Goals

What to do: Set one or more overarching goals for your program. Then, list several objectives that will help your program achieve these goals. Remember to write objectives that are SMARTIE: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic/Relevant, Time-bound, Inclusive, and Equitable. List your desired outcomes. Outcomes describe the results of your actions. This information will help you to know if you have been successful.

Why is this important? Determining your goals and objectives will help your team define and prioritize the work ahead. SMARTIE objectives bring specificity to your goals and help your team communicate the intent of your SWAP effectively to staff.

How to get started: Consider these questions when creating your objectives.

Specific: What does your program want to accomplish?
Measurable: How will you know when you have been successful?
Actionable: Are these tasks concrete and will lead to action steps?
Realistic: Is this objective realistic? Will working toward this objective bring meaningful change?
Time-bound: When will this happen? What are the timeframe and due dates?
Inclusive: How will you include all staff and all voices in processes, activities, and decision-making?
E quitable: How will you ensure each objective is beneficial to everyone in your program?

Example:

Goal: Expand our staff wellness program.

Objective: Expand our staff wellness program into three new counties by the end of June.

SMARTIE Objective: Expand our staff wellness program into three new counties by the end of June, with volunteers who are representative of the communities in age, gender, race, and other characteristics informing the expansion.

Section 4: Putting Our Ideas into Action

What to do: For each objective, list the action steps you will take to be successful. Identify who will lead the work, others who can support the work, and resources needed. Set a timeline for your action step and monitor your progress.

Why is this important? One of the most challenging components of the action planning process is moving from identifying strategies and goals toward implementation. Describing each action step helps to put your objectives into action.

How to get started: Consider these guidelines to move your plans to action.

Start by focusing on relationships - with staff, colleagues, administrators, families, and leaders. Seek, build, and maintain strong partnerships.

Be engaged, responsive, and flexible.

Communicate, share information, and meet often and regularly. Celebrate work accomplished to promote engagement.

Brainstorm possible solutions to barriers.

Keep solutions that worked and use them in the future.

Discuss and record strategies that did not work this time. These may work in another context. Reflect continually on whether your approach promotes equity and fosters inclusion.

Identify training and technical assistance opportunities to learn more about topics such as staff wellness interventions, stress reduction, reflective supervision, motivational interviewing, coaching, employee assistance programs, and other strategies.

Learn about continuous quality improvement and how to implement plan-do-study-act cycles. Develop a system to measure progress through data collection and feedback to guide your improvement efforts.

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Creating a Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) | ECLKC

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A Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) allows your program to be intentional about creating a workplace that values staff wellness, mental health, and physical health. This resource will help you develop your own SWAP.

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ACF and ECLKC share a series of animated videos that support participants in moving their bodies in mindful ways to promote and practice regulation skills.

Each video is about 6 minutes long.

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Practice your adult regulation skills and have some fun playing! Follow along as the Adult Recess videos guide you through a warm up, interactive game, and closing reflection.

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Nurturing Resistance: A Playground for Troublemakers and Radical Lovers-FREE

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Nurturing Resistance: A Playground for Troublemakers and Radical Lovers-FREE

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August 7th, 2024- 3:00-4:30pm

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Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Nurturing Resistance: A Playground for Troublemakers and Radical Lovers. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

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We are hosting ONE MORE live Virtual Playground! The Redux will take place on Wednesday, August 7th at 9am Hawaii/ 12pm Pacific/ 1pm Mountain/ 2pm Central/ 3pm Eastern Join us in a virtual experiential healing space for home visitors, clinicians, educators, care providers, and administrators who work directly and indirectly with children 0-3 and their families...

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August 30th and September 6 from 9:30-12:30

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FREE! Understanding the Science of Resilience

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FREE! Understanding the Science of Resilience

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SEPTEMBER 12, 2024 1:00pm

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Understanding the Science of Resilience. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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In this webinar, participants will learn about the hopeful message behind the science of resilience, as well as the practical strategies that provide powerful opportunities to promote resilience in the children and adults in our lives. Join us as we review the compelling body of research behind resilience theory.

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FREE! Take Care of You, Take On Challenging Behaviors

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FREE! Take Care of You, Take On Challenging Behaviors

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AUGUST 20, 2024 1:00pm

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Take Care of You, Take On Challenging Behaviors. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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Working with children who use challenging behavior can be stressful for the adults who care for and about them. Children often act out because they are having difficulty working through an inner conflict. Ironically, their inner conflict can often mirror our own!

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Just Picture It! Resilience through our eyes

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Creating a Healthier Life: A Step-by-Step Guide to Wellness

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Creating a Healthier Life: A Step-by-Step Guide to Wellness

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from SAMHSA

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FREE 3-Day PD opportunity May 21-23, 2024

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FREE 3-Day PD opportunity May 21-23, 2024

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Welcome to the landing page for Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well, the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety's (NCHBHS) virtual Health and Mental Health Leaders Institute (HMHLI).This three-day Institute offers a unique opportunity for both new and experienced health and mental health leaders to deepen their skills and understanding about how Head Start and Early Head Start programs, and other early childhood education (ECE) programs, can enhance the health and well-being of the children and families they serve.You can find further event details in this HMHLI flyer that you can download and share with colleagues and peers who would like to register.Bienvenidos a la página de inicio de Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well: Conferencia Virtual de Líderes en Salud y Salud Mental (HMHLI, sigla en inglés) del Centro Nacional de Salud, Salud del Comportamiento y Seguridad (NCHBHS, sigla en inglés).Esta conferencia de tres días ofrece una oportunidad única para que los líderes de salud y salud mental, tanto nuevos como experimentados, profundicen sus habilidades y conocimientos sobre cómo los programas Head Start y Early Head Start, y otros programas de educación de la primera infancia (ECE, sigla en inglés), puedan mejorar la salud y el bienestar de los niños y las familias que atienden.Encontrará más detalles del evento en este folleto del HMHLI que puede descargar y compartir con compañeros(as) y colegas que deseen inscribirse.

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May 2, 2024 from 1-2pm: Using a Trauma-Informed Lens to Address Children's Behavior

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May 2, 2024 from 1-2pm: Using a Trauma-Informed Lens to Address Children's Behavior

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Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

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Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.

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Episode 1: Childhood Trauma

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Whole People
Traumatic experiences in childhood have profound negative effects on health and wellbeing for life, including historical trauma experienced generations earlier. Produced in partnership with CentraCare.

Aired: 01/13/19

Rating: TV-PG

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

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Whole People | Childhood Trauma | Episode 1 | PBS

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Traumatic experiences can deeply damage children. But we now understand this issue better.

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From The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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A Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) allows your program to be intentional about creating a workplace that values staff wellness, mental health, and physical health. This resource will help you develop your own SWAP.

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A Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) allows your program to be intentional about creating a workplace that values staff wellness, mental health, and physical health. This resource will help you develop your own SWAP.

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A Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) allows your program to be intentional about creating a workplace that values staff wellness, mental health, and physical health. This resource will help you develop your own SWAP.

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A Staff Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) allows your program to be intentional about creating a workplace that values staff wellness, mental health, and physical health. This resource will help you develop your own SWAP.

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From the CENTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD MENTAL HEALTH CONSULTATION

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From the CENTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD MENTAL HEALTH CONSULTATION

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Welcome to the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast! Get practical, manageable advice from Gretchen and her sister and guinea pig, Elizabeth Craft.

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Explore thousands of movements from Wayne McGregor's 25-year archive of choreography #LivingArchive @WayneMcGregor @GoogleArts

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And The Happy Child App available here: Get the Happy Child App (humanimprovement.org)

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Matt is a well-being researcher, technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He has been interviewed about the science of well-being on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, Sirius XM, Telemundo, public radio, and websites like Parentology.com and Mom.com. He spends most of his time on the Human Improvement Project but is also the chairman of two software companies:

Previously, he was the executive chairman of TapInfluence a venture-backed Social Media company. Prior to TapInfluence, he was the Founder and CEO of Confio Software. Confio was the fastest growing company in the database tools market. It was acquired in 2013 by Solarwinds (NYSE: SWI).

Previously, Mr. Larson helped found an oil and gas technology company. In the span of a year, the company grew from four employees to over two hundred employees while raising over $110 million in venture capital. In 2012, Mr. Larson was named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist. Mr. Larson holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Colorado where he graduated 1st in his class. He is a member of the Mensa Society. Mr. Larson has also worked with the U.S. Congress and the White House to fund over $300 million in new spending for child-related causes.

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A non-profit research institution that provides free apps

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Creating a Culture of Appreciation for a Thriving and Engaged Workplace

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Creating a Culture of Appreciation for a Thriving and Engaged Workplace

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Launch Call: Jan. 19, 2024, 10-11:30am for NC Trauma-Informed Communities Project Workshop

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Launch Call: Jan. 19, 2024, 10-11:30am for NC Trauma-Informed Communities Project Workshop

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February 6, 2024 1-2:15pm- Resilience and Racial Equity Webinar

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February 6, 2024 1-2:15pm- Resilience and Racial Equity Webinar

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Webinar on January 23, 2024 from 1-2pm Rubber Bands & Umbrellas: 5 Practical Strategies for Helping Parents Understand Risk Factors Protective Factors and Resilience

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Webinar on January 23, 2024 from 1-2pm Rubber Bands & Umbrellas: 5 Practical Strategies for Helping Parents Understand Risk Factors Protective Factors and Resilience

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Rubber Bands and Umbrellas! 5 Practical Strategies for Helping Parents Understand Risk Factors, Protective Factors and Resilience. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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Fully understanding the concepts of risk factors, protective factors, and resilience can serve as a powerful catalyst for helping each of us navigate life's challenges. But all too often, the use of jargon and unfamiliar language can get in the way of individuals making true meaning of these terms. We would like to change that!

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January 17th 1-2pm: Understanding the Science of Resilience

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January 17th 1-2pm: Understanding the Science of Resilience

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Understanding the Science of Resilience. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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In this webinar, participants will learn about the hopeful message behind the science of resilience, as well as the practical strategies that provide powerful opportunities to promote resilience in the children and adults in our lives. Join Susan Damico, M.A., director of the Devereux Center for Resilient Children, as she reviews the compelling body of research behind resilience theory.

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HiMama Blog - Resources for Daycare Centers

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The importance of social-emotional skills, mental health, and wellness in a childcare classroom [Podcast]

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This week on The Preschool Podcast, we sit down with Denise Cesare! Denise is an Educator, Speech Language Pathologist, Social Emotional Learning Specialist, and Published Author of Moments in Motion…

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HiMama Blog - Resources for Daycare Centers

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In this episode of The Preschool Podcast with Jo and Maddie, our hosts talk about one of the biggest challenges in childcare: burnout.

WebMD describes burnout as:

"[A] form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It's a result of excessive and prolonged emotional, physical, and mental stress. ... Burnout happens when you're overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to keep up with life's incessant demands."

Sound familiar?

Jo and Maddie start the episode by sharing their own experiences with burnout, then consider other professions with high burnout rates and how they compare with early childhood education. From there, they discuss why burnout happens and how childcare providers can avoid it with suggestions from HiMama's Early Childhood Education Blog and the HiMama Helps Webinar Series.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts in Circle Time!
Additional Resources on Burnout:

Investing in your center's future with the HiMama App

Bridging the gaps in early childhood education [Webinar]

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Burnout in Early Childhood Education [Podcast]

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In this episode of The Preschool Podcast with Jo and Maddie, our hosts talk about one of the biggest challenges in childcare: burnout. WebMD describes burnout as: "[A] form of...

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January 17, 2024- Exploring Early Relational Health: A New Perspective on Your Role as an ECE Professional

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January 17, 2024- Exploring Early Relational Health: A New Perspective on Your Role as an ECE Professional

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January 17, 2024

Co-Chair, Human Development and Education Program; Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
View profile
Researcher
Ecological Approaches to Social and Emotional Learning (EASEL) Lab

View profile

Sponsored by The Burke Foundation

If you think about it, as an early childhood professional, building and strengthening relationships is part of what you do every single day. Early Relational Health (ERH) is an emerging concept that organizes the cumulative understanding of the relational foundation of children's and adults' health and well-being. As a profession, we have focused on research about brain science, return on investment in young children, the "word gap," and the like, but using a lens of relational health is a new way to see our work. Unlike earlier research, the vision of ERH is inclusive (not limited to any one profession), reciprocal (caring for both children and the adults), and fundamentally rooted in relational human experiences.

Join this paradigm-shifting webinar presented by human development researcher and lecturer, Junlei Li, from Harvard Graduate School of Education and researcher Thelma Ramirez, from Ecological Approaches to Social and Emotional Learning (EASEL) Lab to consider how we can recognize early care and learning as an essential part of the early relational experiences for children and their families. Can we lift up our educators and providers as early relational health professionals alongside disciplines like pediatrics, home visiting, mental health, and others? Does it matter? This presentation is an invitation to explore these questions in the context of early care and learning leadership and advocacy work.

In this webinar, you will:

Explore the science and concept of Early Relational Health and connect and compare that with existing ideas in early childhood;

Understand the importance of this inclusive "relationship-centered" framework in describing the work of early care and learning.

Discuss the foundational principles of the early relational health profession in creating a healthy ecological system for children, families, and professionals.

All sessions are 1.5 hours long and include a brief announcement from our sponsor. 2:oo PM - 3:30 PM Eastern Time. ****** Certificates of Attendance are free!

If you attend the live webinar and stay from the beginning to the very end, you will receive the OFFICIAL certificate by email within one week of the live webinar. You can also download the blank certificate using the link displayed at the end of the webinar.

If you arrive late to the live webinar or watch the recording download the blank certificate by following the link announced at the end of every webinar.

Recording viewers must enter the link announced and displayed at the end of the webinar into a browser to download the certificate.

Read more about free certificates. ****** As of January 1, 2024 we temporarily suspended the service of offering Continuing Education Units. We hope to begin offering them again in the future. ******
See the schedule of upcoming webinars.
Register now

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Exploring Early Relational Health: A New Perspective on Your Role as an ECE Professional, Junlei Li and Thelma Ramirez - Early Childhood Webinars

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Sponsored by The Burke Foundation If you think about it, as an early childhood professional, building and strengthening relationships is part of what you do every single day. Early Relational Health (ERH) is an emerging concept that organizes the cumulative understanding of the relational foundation of children's and adults' health and well-being.

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January 11, 2024-Creating a Culture of Appreciation for a Thriving Engaged Workplace

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January 11, 2024-Creating a Culture of Appreciation for a Thriving Engaged Workplace

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January 11, 2024

Certified Professional Coach
Inspiring New Perspectives

View profile

Sponsored by Inspiring New Perspectives

Join this inspiring webinar to kick off the New Year by embracing authentic ways to acknowledge and validate the unique strengths of each staff member in your program. It is no secret that resilient and motivated teachers are better equipped to offer children joyful learning environments. To help teachers stay engaged and motivated, program directors, supervisors, and professional development providers must intentionally implement strategies that help educators feel respected, appreciated, and valued.

Presented by author and early childhood leadership expert Susan MacDonald, the session will highlight current research studies showing that workplace appreciation increases engagement and reduces employee turnover and absenteeism. You will be inspired to set in motion ripples of positive energy and enthusiasm to strengthen workplace relationships, enhance collaboration, and bring a renewed sense of joy to your school culture. We will explore:

- Positive communication techniques
- Appreciative Inquiry strategies
- Daily practices for building engagement.

Susan will provide participants with a comprehensive reflection guide containing a wealth of valuable resources, including information from her soon-to -be-published book - 101 Ways to Supercharge Professional Development Experiences!
All sessions are 1.5 hours long and include a brief announcement from our sponsor. 2:oo PM - 3:30 PM Eastern Time. ****** Certificates of Attendance are free!

If you attend the live webinar and stay from the beginning to the very end, you will receive the OFFICIAL certificate by email within one week of the live webinar. You can also download the blank certificate using the link displayed at the end of the webinar.

If you arrive late to the live webinar or watch the recording download the blank certificate by following the link announced at the end of every webinar.

Recording viewers must enter the link announced and displayed at the end of the webinar into a browser to download the certificate.

Read more about free certificates. ****** As of January 1, 2024 we temporarily suspended the service of offering Continuing Education Units. We hope to begin offering them again in the future. ******
See the schedule of upcoming webinars.
Register now

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Creating a Culture of Appreciation for a Thriving Engaged Workplace, by Susan MacDonald - Early Childhood Webinars

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Sponsored by Inspiring New Perspectives Join this inspiring webinar to kick off the New Year by embracing authentic ways to acknowledge and validate the unique strengths of each staff member in your program. It is no secret that resilient and motivated teachers are better equipped to offer children joyful learning environments.

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Free Resource Library by scrolling through www.seedandsew.org/parents

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The future is emotionally intelligent Supporting families and teachers in all the moments that matter

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Free Resource Library by scrolling through www.seedandsew.org/parents!

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The future is emotionally intelligent Supporting families and teachers in all the moments that matter

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Professional Burnout: You Can't Give to Others What You Don't Have! -December 12,2023 1-3pm

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Professional Burnout: You Can't Give to Others What You Don't Have! -December 12,2023 1-3pm

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Healing Play Strategies for Preschool Children Who Have Experienced Adversity, November 29, 2023 2pm, FREE

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Healing Play Strategies for Preschool Children Who Have Experienced Adversity, November 29, 2023 2pm, FREE

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Healing Play Strategies for Preschool Children Who Have Experienced Adversity-November 29, 2023 2pm, FREE

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Healing Play Strategies for Preschool Children Who Have Experienced Adversity-November 29, 2023 2pm, FREE

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Overcoming Burnout in the ECE Workplace-December 6, 2023 2pm, FREE

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Overcoming Burnout in the ECE Workplace-December 6, 2023 2pm, FREE

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Overcoming Burnout in the ECE Workplace, by Ellen M. Drolette - Early Childhood Webinars

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Sponsored by Redleaf Press. Most professionals in every field occasionally experience flagging motivation and workplace frustration, but in early childhood education, rates of burnout have skyrocketed. We’re all looking for the magic answer to banish the blues, rejuvenate educators, and inspire prog…

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Building Your Bounce: Simple Strategies for a Resilient You- November 15, 2023 1-2pm, FREE

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Building Your Bounce: Simple Strategies for a Resilient You- November 15, 2023 1-2pm, FREE

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Building Your Bounce: Simple Strategies for a Resilient You. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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"If you get up one time more than you fall, you will make it through." - Chinese Proverb. In this webinar, learn how to take care of YOU so you can better take care of the children whose lives you touch.

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December 12, 2023 1-3pm:  Professional Burnout: You Can't Give to Others What You Don't Have!

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December 12, 2023 1-3pm:  Professional Burnout: You Can't Give to Others What You Don't Have!

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Out-of-School Time Social -Emotional Learning & Mental Health Toolkit: Support for Systems and Programs

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Out-of-School Time Social -Emotional Learning & Mental Health Toolkit: Support for Systems and Programs

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October 26th, 2023-1:00-2:00pm FREE: Take Care of YOU, Take ON Challenging Behaviors 

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October 26th, 2023-1:00-2:00pm FREE: Take Care of YOU, Take ON Challenging Behaviors 

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Take Care of YOU, Take ON Challenging Behaviors. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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Working with children who use challenging behavior can be stressful for the adults who care for and about them. Children often act out because they are having difficulty working through an inner conflict. Ironically, their inner conflict can often mirror our own!

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Talking Mental Health with Young Children video

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Talking Mental Health with Young Children video

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Defining Mental Health || Talking Mental Health with Young Children

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World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2023
"Our minds, our rights"

World Mental Health Day 2023 is an opportunity for people and communities to unite behind the theme ' Mental health is a universal human right" to improve knowledge, raise awareness and drive actions that promote and protect everyone's mental health as a universal human right.

Mental health is a basic human right for all people. Everyone, whoever and wherever they are, has a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health. This includes the right to be protected from mental health risks, the right to available, accessible, acceptable, and good quality care, and the right to liberty, independence and inclusion in the community.

Good mental health is vital to our overall health and well-being. Yet one in eight people globally are living with mental health conditions, which can impact their physical health, their well-being, how they connect with others, and their livelihoods. Mental health conditions are also affecting an increasing number of adolescents and young people.

Having a mental health condition should never be a reason to deprive a person of their human rights or to exclude them from decisions about their own health. Yet all over the world, people with mental health conditions continue to experience a wide range of human rights violations. Many are excluded from community life and discriminated against, while many more cannot access the mental health care they need or can only access care that violates their human rights.

WHO continues to work with its partners to ensure mental health is valued, promoted, and protected, and that urgent action is taken so that everyone can exercise their human rights and access the quality mental health care they need. Join the World Mental Health Day 2023 campaign to learn more about your basic right to mental health as well as how to protect the rights of others.

Good mental health is an integral part of our overall health and wellbeing.

Good mental health allows us to cope with challenges, connect with others and thrive throughout our lives. It's vital and deserves to be recognised and respected.

Mental health is a universal human right.

Human rights are universal and serve to promote and protect people's right to dignity, autonomy and community inclusion.

We must challenge the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental health.

We all have the right to live our lives free from stigma and discrimination in places like schools and workplaces.

Good quality community mental health services and supports are crucial for all our futures.

Mental health and well-being are fundamental to enjoy a good and meaningful life. It is vital to ensure that everyone can access community mental health services and supports. In particular, access to mental health support and resources in early life can make a real difference to the health and well-being of young people and adults in later life. This should be promoted as a priority in all countries.

Recognising mental health as a universal human right empowers people to stand up for their rights - and for those around them.

If people are not aware of their human rights, they are not able to advocate for them. By including people with lived experience of mental health conditions in decision-making on mental health issues, new policies, laws and service planning can be positively influenced and guided by their expertise.

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Find out about this year's World Mental Health Day campaign (10 October) and how you can get involved.

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December 6, 2023 2-3:15pm Overcoming Burnout in the ECE Workplace-register here

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December 6, 2023 2-3:15pm Overcoming Burnout in the ECE Workplace-register here

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Understanding the Science of Resilience-July 27, 2023

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Understanding the Science of Resilience-July 27, 2023

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Understanding the Science of Resilience. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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In this webinar, participants will learn about the hopeful message behind the science of resilience, as well as the practical strategies that provide powerful opportunities to promote resilience in the children and adults in our lives. Join Susan Damico, M.A., director of the Devereux Center for Resilient Children, as she reviews the compelling body of research behind resilience theory.

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SEL and Mental Health Supports for Out of School Time-June 29th, 2023

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SEL and Mental Health Supports for Out of School Time-June 29th, 2023

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Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: SEL and Mental Health Supports for Out-of-School Time: A Conversation on Strategies and Systems . After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

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Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and mental health shape high-quality out-of-school time (OST) programming. Hosted by the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE), this interactive webinar will begin with a presentation on building SEL and mental health capacity for OST programming followed by a facilitated discussion with system leaders on the best strategies to equitably address the SEL and mental health needs of children and families with consideration for culture, ethnicity, linguistic needs, income, historical context, and other factors.

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By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. High-quality early care and education and long-term care are critical to our Nation's economic growth and economic security. Early care and education give young children a strong start in life, while long-term care helps older Americans and people with disabilities live, work, and participate in their communities with dignity. Access to both types of care is also critical to our national security because it helps ensure the recruitment, readiness, and retention of our military service members.

Throughout this order, early care and education are collectively referred to as "child care." References to "care" that do not specify the type of care refer to both child care and long-term care. References to the "care workforce" refer to individuals and businesses working in the fields of child care and long-term care.

A sizeable majority of families and individuals in the United States who require care cannot access the affordable, high-quality care they need. The markets for child care and long-term care for persons with disabilities and older adults who need support in their homes and communities fail to deliver enough high-quality care because of a persistent gap between the costs of providing this care and the prices families can pay. High-quality care is labor intensive and requires skilled workers, and providers have limited ability to reduce costs. As a result, even when high-quality care is available, it costs far more than many families and individuals can afford, causing them to forgo care altogether, seek lower-quality care options, juggle unconventional shifts at work, reduce their own paid work hours, drop out of the labor force, or make other arrangements. Care expenditures represent a significant and increasing share of families' budgets, with child care prices growing by approximately 26 percent and some types of long-term care costs growing by over 40 percent in the last decade. Inadequate supply is exacerbated by high turnover in the care workforce. Care workers - disproportionately women of color - are among the lowest-paid in the country and often have to rely on public benefits despite working complex and demanding jobs. Investments in the care workforce are foundational to helping to retain care workers and improving health and educational outcomes. In recent years, more than half of the long-term care workforce and nearly 20 percent of the child care workforce turned over each year. And the workforce remains 8 percent smaller than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2019, more than three in four United States households that searched for care reported difficulty finding adequate care for their young children, and roughly the same share of center-based child care providers turned families away because they lacked enough child care slots. Similarly, more than three in four long-term care service providers have reported not being able to accept new clients, making it harder for older Americans and people with disabilities to find the care they need. Military families consistently cite access to high-quality child care as an impediment to military spouse employment and family economic security. Difficulty accessing care also poses a challenge for both spouses - and, as data shows, particularly for women in dual military couples - to continuing their service if they have caregiving responsibilities. The need for long-term care is likely to become more acute as our Nation's population ages. By 2060, there will be approximately twice as many adults over the age of 65 than in 2016, and projections indicate that there will be around 8 million long-term care job openings over the next decade.

Family caregivers provide informal, often unpaid, care to help loved ones live in their homes and communities, including caring for aging family members, people with disabilities, and children. At least 53 million people are family caregivers in the United States - including 5.5 million who are caring for wounded, ill, and injured service members and veterans - and many face challenges due to lack of support, training, and opportunities for rest. Family caregivers include spouses, parents, siblings, adult and minor children, grandparents, and other relatives. Family caregivers reflect the diversity of America's communities, and people can assume family caregiving responsibilities at any stage of life. Without adequate resources, family caregiving can affect caregivers' own physical and emotional health and well-being and contribute to financial strain. These negative consequences are felt most acutely by women, who make up nearly two-thirds of family caregivers and drop out of the workforce at a rate three times higher than men.

It is the policy of my Administration to enable families - including our military and veteran families - to have access to affordable, high-quality care and to have support and resources as caregivers themselves. It is also the policy of my Administration to ensure that the care workforce is supported, valued, and paid well. Additionally, care workers should have the free and fair choice to join a union.

The Congress must provide the transformative investments necessary to increase access to high-quality child care - including preschool and Head Start - and long-term care services, as well as high-quality, well-paying jobs that reflect the value the care workforce provides to families and communities. Such investments include removing barriers and providing the funding needed for Tribal Nations to effectively provide high-quality child care and long-term care.

Nearly every other advanced country makes greater public investments in care than the United States. Investing in care is an investment in the future of America's families, workforce, and economy.

While the Congress must make significant new investments to give families in this country more breathing room when it comes to care, executive departments and agencies (agencies) must do what they can within their existing authorities to boost the supply of high-quality early care and education and long-term care and to provide support for family caregivers. Through this order, I direct agencies to make all efforts to improve jobs and support for caregivers, increase access to affordable care for families, and provide more care options for families.

Sec. 2. Increasing Compensation and Improving Job Quality for Family Caregivers, Early Educators, and Long-Term Care Workers. (a) To increase compensation and benefits for early childhood educators and long-term care professionals who are providing federally funded services:

(i) the Secretary of Health and Human Services, through the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), shall issue guidance to States on ways to use enhanced funding to better connect home- and community-based workers who provide services to Medicaid beneficiaries;

(ii) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall implement strategies to encourage comparability of compensation and benefits between staff employed by Head Start grant recipients and elementary school teachers;

(iii) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall expand efforts to improve care workers' access to health insurance; and

(iv) the Secretary of Education shall use grant notices for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program to encourage grantees to improve quality in funded programs, including by increasing compensation and providing support services for early childhood educators who serve children of students at CCAMPIS colleges using Federal and non-Federal funding as appropriate;

(v) the Department of the Treasury shall conduct outreach on the Saver's Match credit, and the Department of Commerce shall conduct - and the Small Business Administration is encouraged to consider conducting - outreach on potential Federal resources available to assist small businesses in offering retirement plans, including a per-employee credit of up to $1,000, as provided in the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (Division T of Public Law 117-328), in order to ensure that the care workforce, including individuals and small businesses, are aware of Federal retirement assistance for which they may be eligible.

(b) To improve working conditions and job quality in federally assisted child care and long-term care programs, encourage providers to establish incentives to recruit and retain workers, help prevent burnout, make it as easy as possible for care workers to access behavioral health services, and thereby improve the care that individuals receive, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall:

(i) consider additional actions - such as providing guidance, technical assistance, and provider and resident education - and rulemaking on nursing home staffing transparency to promote adequate staffing at nursing homes, building on the Department of Health and Human Services' efforts to propose minimum standards for staffing adequacy at nursing homes;

(ii) consider additional actions to reduce nursing staff turnover in nursing facilities and improve retention of those staff, advancing the Department of Health and Human Services' efforts to measure and adjust payments based on staff turnover; and

(iii) implement strategies to expand mental health support for the care workforce, including early childhood providers supported through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Head Start.

(c) To expand training pathways and professional learning opportunities to increase job quality, improve quality of care, and attract new entrants into the care workforce, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Education, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall:

(i) encourage recipients of Federal financial assistance to expand opportunities for early childhood educators and long-term care professionals through community college programming, career and technical education, Registered Apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeships leading to Registered Apprenticeship, and other job training and professional development;

(ii) make available innovative funding opportunities, develop and evaluate demonstration projects for care training and educational attainment, and provide technical assistance to State, local, and Tribal partners to improve job quality for care occupations; and

(iii) develop partnerships with key stakeholders, including State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments; unions and labor organizations; State and local workforce development boards; institutions of higher education (including community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Minority Serving Institutions); aging and disability networks; and national- and community-based organizations that focus on care (including professional membership organizations).

(d) To support family caregivers of beneficiaries of Federal health care programs and services, and in conjunction with implementing the 2022 National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers:

(i) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall, consistent with the criteria set out in section 1115A(b)(2) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1315a(b)(2)), consider whether to select for testing by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation an innovative new health care payment and service delivery model focused on dementia care that would include family caregiver supports such as respite care;

(ii) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall consider how better to evaluate and clearly set expectations for family caregivers in the Acute Hospital Care at Home program, which allows hospitals to treat in their homes those who would otherwise be hospital inpatients;

(iii) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take steps to ensure that hospitals are actively involving family caregivers in the discharge planning process, consistent with CMS condition of participation discharge planning requirements, including by promoting best practices such as partnerships with community-based organizations and using resources from the Administration for Community Living and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality;

(iv) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall increase beneficiary communications and support family caregivers by increasing promotion of the option for Medicare beneficiaries to choose to give family caregivers access to their Medicare information via 1-800-MEDICARE and the State health insurance assistance program networks;

(v) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall consider issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of this fiscal year that would make any appropriate modifications to eligibility criteria for the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers, which provides services and benefits, including a monthly stipend, for eligible caregivers of veterans who sustained a serious injury or illness in the line of duty; and

(vi) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall develop and implement a pilot program to offer psychotherapy via video telehealth to family caregivers within the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers to improve their access to mental health services.

(e) To improve and expand opportunities through AmeriCorps to encourage more individuals to enter early learning careers, the Chief Executive Officer of AmeriCorps is encouraged to consider:

(i) expanding access to Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards, which AmeriCorps members can use to pay for education and training or reduce their student debt; providing loan forbearance for AmeriCorps members involved in early learning; and providing other benefits to supplement national service activities that support early learning; and

(ii) prioritizing applications that propose to implement or expand high-quality programs focused on early learning and prioritizing projects intended to prepare AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers to enter early learning careers.

(f) To improve jobs of domestic child care and long-term care workers:

(i) the Secretary of Labor shall create and publish in multiple languages, as appropriate, compliance assistance and best practices materials - such as sample employment agreements for domestic child care and long-term care workers and their employers - to promote fair workplaces and ensure the parties know their rights and responsibilities, and shall identify other means to promote employers' adoption of best practices;

(ii) the Secretary of Labor shall work with community and other local partners to expand culturally and linguistically appropriate community outreach and education efforts to domestic child care and long-term care workers in order to combat their exploitation; and

(iii) the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is encouraged to work with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop materials addressing the employment rights of non-citizen domestic child care and long-term care workers who are legally eligible to work.

(g) To improve data and information on the care workforce:

(i) the Secretary of Labor shall conduct and publish an analysis of early childhood and home care workers' pay in comparison to the pay of other workers with similar levels of training and skill;

(ii) the Secretary of Labor shall issue guidance to help States and localities conduct their own analyses of comparable pay rates for care workers in their respective jurisdictions; and

(iii) the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall, in consultation with relevant agencies and external experts and organizations, jointly conduct a review to identify gaps in knowledge about the home- and community-based workforce serving people with disabilities and older adults; identify and evaluate existing data sources; and identify opportunities to expand analyses, supplement data, or launch new efforts to provide important data on the home- and community-based care workforce and ensure equity for people with disabilities and older adults. The Secretaries shall publicly release the findings and recommendations of this review no later than April 2024.

Sec. 3. Making Care More Accessible and Affordable for Families. (a) To increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and long-term care for workers delivering federally assisted projects:

(i) Agencies shall identify and issue guidance on which agency discretionary, formula, and program-specific funds can be used for child care and long-term care as a supportive service for workers who are being trained for and working on federally funded projects, and in doing so shall consider agency funds made available by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58); Public Law 117-169, commonly referred to as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022; and division A of Public Law 117-167, known as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act of 2022.

(ii) With respect to the agency funds identified in subsection (a)(i) of this section:

(A) Agencies shall consider requiring, where appropriate, applicants for Federal job-creation or workforce development funds to provide affordable, accessible, safe, and reliable child care and long-term care for workers carrying out federally assisted projects (including both construction and operating phases where applicable), or shall consider preferencing applicants that use the funds for this purpose or encouraging applicants to use funds for this purpose. Agencies shall provide implementation guidance to relevant program staff and collaborate with the Department of Labor to identify potential support for these actions, including technical assistance for guidance and funding opportunities.

(B) Agencies shall consider providing technical assistance to help funding recipients provide access to child care and long-term care as a supportive service and to connect funding recipients with potential partners, including care associations, community-based organizations, Registered Apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, and labor unions.

(C) In cases where child care or long-term care is required or encouraged, agencies shall consider collecting information from funding recipients on whether and how they will provide access to child care and long-term care, and how many workers (including apprentices and pre-apprentices) would be affected.

(iii) The Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce, shall support the efforts outlined in subsection (a) of this section by issuing guidance and providing technical assistance with best practices and models for how to provide supportive services, including child care and long-term care.

(b) To lower child care costs for families eligible for Federal programs, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall:

(i) consider issuing regulations to pursue policies to reduce child care costs for families benefiting from CCDF;

(ii) identify potential opportunities to reduce barriers to eligibility for Head Start and CCDF;

(iii) encourage States, through all available avenues, to increase the use of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds for basic assistance and work supports for families - including access to child care - and to spend more funds on cash assistance for families; and

(iv) identify other potential strategies to make child care and Head Start more accessible for those families most in need.

(c) To help more Federal employees access affordable care:

(i) the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall consider establishing criteria that support equitable and accessible employee participation in child care programs, to include agencies' adoption of income thresholds that are aligned with increasing costs of child care;

(ii) the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall conduct a review of child care subsidy policy and agency program data to determine the effectiveness of current child care subsidies within the Federal Government;

(iii) the heads of agencies are encouraged to expand employee access to child care services through Federal child care centers, child care subsidies, or contracted care providers; and

(iv) the Department of Defense shall take steps to enhance recruitment and retention of the Department's child development program workers and to improve the affordability of child care for service members by September 2023, in addition to its ongoing efforts as part of the Fourteenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation to assess how child care costs impact the ability of the military to attract and retain its workforce.

Sec. 4. Expanding Options for Families by Building the Supply of Care. (a) To provide families with more options for high-quality long-term, home-, and community-based care and early learning services:

(i) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall consider rulemaking to improve access to home- and community-based services under Medicaid. As part of any such rulemaking, the Secretary shall consider taking steps to support provider participation in Medicaid home- and community-based programs.

(ii) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall issue policies that would support child care providers to give families more options to access high-quality child care providers, and shall update payment practices to improve provider stability and supply.

(iii) The Secretary of Education shall update a guide for schools and districts to expand high-quality early learning programming using Federal funds so that more preschoolers are fully prepared to succeed in school.

(iv) The Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall identify and disseminate evidence-based practices for serving children with disabilities and their families in high-quality early childhood education programs, including Head Start. The Secretaries shall also take steps to ensure that services are inclusive of children with disabilities and their families; highlight any resources that are available to aid in that effort, including for preschool-aged children with disabilities under section 619 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families under Part C of the IDEA; and provide information to support all early childhood programs in meeting their obligations under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

(v) The Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is encouraged to consider developing financial guidance resources that support families during their care planning.

(vi) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take steps to streamline processes for Tribes to use CCDF and Head Start funding to construct and improve facilities, including facilities that are jointly funded.

(vii) The 12 agencies that signed the October 2022 Memorandum of Agreement to implement Public Law 102-477 (the "Tribal 477 Program") shall increase the effectiveness of Tribal employment and training programs to ensure child care can be used as a support for families by reducing and streamlining administrative requirements, including through consolidation of budgeting, reporting, and auditing systems.

(b) To expand options for quality home- and community-based services to veterans:

(i) The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall consider expanding the existing Veteran Directed Care Program - which provides veterans who need help with daily living with a budget to spend on home- and community-based services including personal care services - to all Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers by the end of Fiscal Year 2024, and shall consider developing an implementation plan for this expansion by June 2023.

(ii) The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall consider designing and evaluating a pilot program in no fewer than five veteran sites or in five States for a new Co-Employer Option for delivering veteran home health services. Features of the program may include allowing veterans to choose who provides their care and to determine when and how that care is delivered, and connecting veterans with a third-party agency that would help coordinate administrative tasks and act as an intermediary between veterans and their home health workers. Should the Department of Veterans Affairs implement this pilot program, it shall provide an implementation plan - including cost estimates and evaluation strategy - to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, before August 31, 2023.

(iii) The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall consider expanding the Home-Based Primary Care program by adding 75 new interdisciplinary teams to provide care to veterans in their homes.

(c) To increase the supply of providers and options for families by encouraging greater private financial protection, support, and technical assistance for care providers:

(i) the Secretary of the Treasury shall consider providing information to and sharing industry best practices with Community Development Financial Institutions to facilitate capital flows and support to care providers;

(ii) the Administrator of the Small Business Administration is encouraged to consider publishing a guide on how individuals in the care workforce may start and sustainably operate care businesses locally and through Small Business Administration programming; and

(iii) the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is encouraged to consider issuing guidance addressing financial institution practices that may increase the burden on the care workforce, discourage their work, and harm their financial well-being.

(d) To build the capacity of local communities to better coordinate and deliver care:

(i) the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall review existing policies to identify opportunities - including among Tribal communities - to increase the capacity of community care entities by providing operational support to these networks of providers; and

(ii) the Secretary of Agriculture shall use the Rural Partners Network and issue guidance developed in partnership with the Secretary of Health and Human Services to promote opportunities - including by hosting workshops - to increase access to child care and long-term care in rural and Tribal communities.

(e) To make the delivery and design of Federal care assistance and programs work better for families, the care workforce, and people seeking care, the Secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Veterans Affairs shall consider - and the Administrator of the Small Business Administration is encouraged to consider - prioritizing engagement with parents, guardians, and other relatives with care responsibilities; individuals receiving long-term care; State and local care experts; care providers and workers; employers; and labor unions.

Sec. 5. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) Where not already specified, independent agencies are encouraged to comply with the requirements of this order.

(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

THE WHITE HOUSE,
April 18, 2023.

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Executive Order on Increasing Access to High-Quality Care and Supporting Caregivers | The White House

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By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. High-quality early care and education and long-term care are critical to our Nation's economic growth and economic security. Early care and education give...

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Helping Early Childhood Educators Thrive: Promoting ECE Staff Mental Health and Well-Being-May31, 2023

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Helping Early Childhood Educators Thrive: Promoting ECE Staff Mental Health and Well-Being-May31, 2023

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Description

Early childhood educators and service providers fill important roles in their communities: facilitating children's healthy development and early learning, supporting parents and families, and implementing practices that promote quality, health, and safety. Over the last several years, the early childhood community experienced unprecedented levels of stress-too often while working long hours and without the pay and support they deserve. Many early childhood educators and providers continue to experience heightened stress, burnout, exhaustion, and even depressive symptoms.

Promoting access to mental health support and wellness for early childhood educators and service providers is critical to a strong early childhood system. During Mental Health Awareness Month, join us for a webinar to learn how programs and states are leveraging the expertise of infant and early childhood mental health consultants (IECMHC) and other resources to support educators' and providers' wellness, as well as that of children and families.

Panelists on the webinar include:

-Rebecca Banner, Director, Office of Child Care, Utah Department of Workforce Services

-Caitlin Fitzsimmons, MSSW, Public Health Advisor, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services

-Alison Hargarten, Early Childhood Mental Health Program Administrator, Colorado Department of Early Childhood

-Natalie Holifield, LCSW, Early Childhood Mental Health
Consultant, WellPower

-Cassy Jacob, Head Start educator and Mental Health Services Manager, West Central Community Services, Inc.

For more information about registration, access, or alternate phone lines, contact webcasts@hsicc.org

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Description Early childhood educators and service providers fill important roles in their communities: facilitating children's healthy development and early learning, supporting parents and families, and implementing practices that promote quality, health, and safety. Over the last several years, the early childhood community experienced unprecedented levels of stress-too often while working long hours and without the pay and support they deserve.

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Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well-May 23-25, 2023

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Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well-May 23-25, 2023

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Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well: Health and Mental Health Leaders Institute 2023

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Welcome to the landing page for Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well, the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety's (NCHBHS) virtual Health and Mental Health Leaders Institute (HMHLI).This three-day Institute offers a unique opportunity for both new and experienced health and mental health leaders to deepen their skills

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Head Start and Early Head Start staff are better able to provide the care and nurturing children need to thrive when programs focus on the well-being of the adults. Programs can create wellness strategies that promote both physical and mental health for staff. In the resources below, learn ways to promote a culture of wellness for young children and the adults who care for them.

Explore Resources

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Head Start and Early Head Start staff are better able to provide the care and nurturing children need to thrive when programs focus on the well-being of the adults. Programs can create wellness strategies that promote both physical and mental health for staff.

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Eventbrite - Rosie Molinary presents Tend April 2023 - Wednesday, April 5, 2023 - Find event and ticket information.

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The Healing Power of Play & Optimism Recorded Webinar

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The Healing Power of Play & Optimism Recorded Webinar

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Caring for Each Other: Supporting Children and Families Enduring Traumatic Experiences

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Mindful Self-Compassion: Heart Skills for Our Families and Ourselves in Challenging Times

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Today is International Women's Day, which celebrates women's achievements and calls us to action for gender equality. Here, we've gathered articles, practices, and videos from Greater Good that offer tips and resources to support women's well-being, whether you're taking care of yourself, supporting the women in your life, or advocating for women in your family, workplace, or community.

Click to jump to a section:
Resources for stress and self-care
Resources for gender equality
Resources for the workplace
Resources for parents
Resources for relationships
More insights about gender
Resources for stress and self-care

Resources for gender equality

Resources for the workplace

Resources for parents

Resources for relationships

More insights about gender

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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Greater Good Resources for Women's Well-Being

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Today is International Women's Day, which celebrates women's achievements and calls us to action for gender equality. Here, we've gathered articles, practices, and videos from Greater Good that offer tips and resources to support women's well-being, whether you're taking care of yourself, supporting the women in your life, or advocating for women in your family, workplace, or community.

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Give support and comfort in new situations. For anxious children to feel comfortable enough to interact with other people, approach new toys, or explore new situations, caregivers should provide support as the child warms up or comfort when the child is too dysregulated by fear. Caregivers who try to push the child to interact too soon, insist on interactions with new people, or leave the child too quickly in new situations will find that these methods don't work-and may even make things worse.

Avoid dragging out separations. When dropping children off for child care or leaving them to go out, avoid dragging out the moment of separation. Settle the child with the adult who will be caring for them, and then follow three steps: say you are going, say that it is okay to stay with this person, and say that you will be back. Don't sneak out and to try to avoid looking afraid or worried, as children will take their lead from their parents as to how to feel about the separation.

Offer alternative ways of connecting.
For young children who experience anxious feelings around interactions with others, try coaching them in low-contact (but still appropriate) methods of interacting. For example, teach a child to smile and wave to unfamiliar adults If making eye contact or speaking is too hard. A child who does not want to give a kiss or hug to a family member could give a high five or fist bump instead.

Provide increased structure. More structure in the home environment (as well as day care and school) is likely to ease anxiety in any child. That's because structure, including regular routines, lets children feel that the world is predictable.

Select age-appropriate activities. Be sure that young children are engaged with activities that are appropriate for their developmental level and don't contain frightening imagery that can increase their anxiety. For example, shield young children from scary movies and video games used by adults or older children in the home.

Red Flags for Possible Anxiety Disorder

When anxiety and avoidant behaviors are severe, they can interfere with daily activities of the child or family. Watch for red flags regarding possible anxiety disorders in young children. Referral to a child's physician or a mental health specialist may be indicated when you see red-flag behaviors like these:

There is a family history of anxiety disorder.

Anxiety starts in infancy and continues in early childhood or school age.

Compared to peers, the child's fears are more intense and frequent and occur across settings.

The child's fears are undifferentiated (i.e., occur with dangerous and nondangerous things).

The child's anxiety or avoidant behavior interferes with family functioning (e.g., the family cannot go out due to extreme child reactions to new places and people).

The child is too fearful to do something they like or want to do.

The child displays excessive clinginess with caregivers, refusing to be alone or left with others.

The child experiences sleep disturbance due to anxiety about sleeping, dreams, or being alone at night.

Want more practical guidance on working effectively with young children and families? Add the book Tackling the Tough Stuff to your library!

*Grady, J.S., & Karraker, K. (2014). Do maternal warm and encouraging statements reduce shy toddler's social reticence? Reference
Infant and Child Development, 23, 295-303.

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8 Things Caregivers Can Do to Ease Young Children's Anxiety - Brookes Blog

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Give support and comfort in new situations. For anxious children to feel comfortable enough to interact with other people, approach new toys, or explore new situations, caregivers should provide support as the child warms up or comfort when the child is too dysregulated by fear.

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Offered by Rice University. This course provides a broad overview of the fundamental concepts, principles, and practices of mindfulness. ... Enroll for free.

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HIghlights

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Early childhood teachers report high levels of adverse childhood experiences.

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Adverse childhood experiences harm teacher resilience and classroom behavior.

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Addressing trauma-specific stress is important for teacher interventions.

Abstract

Early childhood teachers play a critical role in supporting young children's cognitive, social, and emotional development. Unfortunately, teachers' abilities to promote young children's well-being can be hindered by their own stress. Teachers can experience both workplace stressors as well as chronic stressors from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Very little is known about whether different sources of teacher's stress have independent effects on their functioning. The present study examines whether workplace stress and history of ACEs are unique or redundant predictors of teacher resilience and classroom behavior, including teacher-child interaction quality, child classroom misbehavior, and staff affect regulation. Data were collected from female teachers ( N = 718) across 101 childcare centers. Teachers ( Mage = 39.26, SD = 13.69) completed self-report assessments on their history of ACEs, workplace stress, and resilience. For a subsample of teachers ( n = 58) classroom behavior was observationally coded in the classroom. Controlling for student-teacher ratio and center type, both a higher number of ACEs and workplace stress were associated with lower levels of resilience. Only a history of ACEs was associated with observed teacher-child interaction quality and child classroom misbehavior, not workplace stress. Although there are some limitations to the measurement of retrospective ACEs, the present study offers some promising findings regarding the impact of ACEs on teacher functioning. The present findings suggest that addressing trauma-specific stress is important for early childhood teacher interventions, beyond general relaxation and stress management strategies.

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Adverse childhood experiences, stress, and resilience among early childhood teachers

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Early childhood teachers report high levels of adverse childhood experiences. * Adverse childhood experiences harm teacher resilience and classroom behavior. * Addressing trauma-specific stress is important for teacher interventions. Early childhood teachers play a critical role in supporting young children's cognitive, social, and emotional development.

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Rest Is An Act Of Courageous Self-Care

Dr. Dalton-Smith shares seven types of rest she has found lacking in the lives of those she encounters in her clinical practice and research-physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, creative-and why a deficiency in any one of these types of rest can have unfavorable effects on your health, happiness, relationships, creativity, and productivity. Sacred Rest combines the science of rest, the spirituality of rest, the gifts of rest, and the resulting fruit of rest. It shows rest as something sacred, valuable, and worthy of our respect.

By combining scientific research with personal stories, spiritual insight, and practical next steps, Sacred Rest gives the weary permission to embrace rest, set boundaries, and seek sanctuary without any guilt, shame, or fear.

Order Sacred Rest

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith is a Board-Certified internal medicine physician, speaker, and author.

She is the founder of Restorasis, a subsidiary of Dalton Smith Enterprises dedicated to restoring wellbeing in the workplace.

As a busy physician, author, and mom, she understands that life's demands can leave you feeling mentally overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and physically tired. Daily she helps high-achievers deal with their work-rest imbalance and find actionable answers to the thriving lifestyle they desire.

MORE ABOUT ME

Incredible book!!! Opened my eyes to so many false definitions of rest (i.e. escapism). And helping me see that rest can be an ACTIVE journey too. Discovered so many types of rest! I got halfway thru reading the physical book, then bought the audiobook too so I can listen and re-listen again in the car or when I do chores! It is well written, easy and fun to read. Very personable voice in the author's writing style. It was truly a breath of fresh air! Whether you are busy or exhausted or ultra successful or all is well in your life/world, this book is perfect for anyone and everyone to discover the beauty and benefits of true rest!! Our whole family (including my spouse and Elementary aged kids) are going thru this book together again now. Each of us are having fun discussions and "aha moments" as we read and listen together

HAN (Verified 5-Star Amazon Review)

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Dr. Dalton-Smith shares seven types of rest she has found lacking in the lives of those she encounters in her clinical practice and research-physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, creative-and why a deficiency in any one of these types of rest can have unfavorable effects on your health, happiness, relationships, creativity, and productivity.

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How To Create A Mindful Morning Routine - The Good Trade

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How we’ve created our mindful morning routines to clear our mind and nourish our bodies for the day ahead.

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Do you ever wake up from nine hours of sleep feeling worse than when you first laid down? Or find yourself staring off into the distance instead of focusing on work or a conversation with friends? Us too. We've been there, and it's quite literally exhausting when you don't feel rested. It's even more frustrating when you can't understand why.

It turns out there may be something more to "not feeling rested" despite getting enough sleep. About 10 years ago, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith was a busy physician and mother of two young kids. Despite sleeping well at night, she was feeling burned out, overwhelmed, and exhausted-and she was noticing the same trends in many of her patients.

"What happens if you get 8 hours and you're still exhausted? Cause that's where I found myself," says Dr. Dalton-Smith, a board-certified internal medicine physician near Birmingham, Alabama. Sleep wasn't cutting it for her anymore, so she decided to research the problem. She also began exploring why many of her patients complained about feeling unrested.

"What happens if you get 8 hours and you're still exhausted? Cause that's where I found myself."

- Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith

The research was astounding. Dr. Dalton-Smith found that many of her patients were lacking seven different types of rest: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, and creative. She then published her findings in her book " Sacred Rest " in 2017.

Some types of rest, like emotional and social, often go hand in hand. For example, "when you're stuck in traffic, you're using your mental and sensory energy to process your surroundings," Dr. Dalton-Smith explains in a TED Talk. If you're in need of one type of rest, you're likely in need of a few of them.

So, which types of rest do you most need right now? While you may have a good idea after reading the descriptions, Dr. Dalton-Smith's Rest Quiz can also help you determine what areas of your life need the most focus. By exploring Dr. Dalton-Smith's seven types of rest and taking some emphasis off of simply sleeping, we can move away from our culture of burnout and enter what she calls a "rest revolution." Here's how:

1. Physical Rest

"Active rest can look like gentle activities such as yoga, stretching, or massage therapy."

According to Dr. Dalton-Smith, sleep isn't even an entire rest category of its own-sleep is in the physical rest category, which also includes active physical rest. Active rest can look like gentle activities such as yoga, stretching, or massage therapy, which increase blood flow to your muscles, lower stress, and boost your body's healing. You'll know you're not getting enough active physical rest if your body has certain aches or swelling. Some experts recommend taking active rest days every other day.

2. Mental Rest

A person lacking mental rest might have racing thoughts that they have difficulty quieting to focus or falling asleep. While going on vacation might help with this type of fatigue, Dr. Dalton-Smith advocates for more sustainable long-term solutions, like scheduling breaks every couple of hours throughout your day to do nothing but rest your brain. You can also jot down your thoughts throughout the day or before bed to clear your mind.

Since launching the Rest Quiz a few years ago, Dr. Dalton-Smith notes "mental rest deficit has consistently been one of the top 2 almost every single time." While we talk a lot about mindfulness, she continues, many of us haven't yet added mindfulness into our routine in an effective way. Many folks actually find successful mental rest when they're active. While running, for example, rather than thinking a million thoughts, someone might focus on their cadence and breathing, she explains.

3. Spiritual Rest

Spiritual rest is harder to define because spiritual needs vary from person to person. But no matter your beliefs, common spiritual needs include the need for purpose, love from others, and a sense of belonging.

"Someone lacking spiritual rest might have trouble feeling like what they do everyday matters."

Someone lacking spiritual rest might have trouble feeling like what they do everyday matters. Finding a strong community and getting in touch with your own beliefs, whether through a faith-based culture or not, can help you find spiritual rest. Additional ways to nurture your spiritual needs may include daily prayer, meditation, gratitude practices, or giving back to others.

4. Emotional Rest

If you feel yourself putting on a front when you talk to others or struggle to say no and advocate for your own needs, you may need emotional rest.

"An emotionally rested person answers the question 'how are you today?' with a truthful 'I'm not ok,'" Dr. Dalton-Smith says in her TED Talk. In other words, emotionally rested people can more easily let their guard down.

When we bring more authenticity into engaging with others and showing our feelings, we can more easily work toward emotional rest and balance. Try being honest about how you're genuinely feeling with someone you trust. Therapy can also be a great environment if you're seeking a safe and vulnerable space.

5. Sensory Rest

"Most of us aren't aware of how sensory environments can impact our feelings, personality, and even energy levels."

- Dr. Dalton-Smith

Between blue light screens, our AirPods, and that stack of TBR books, the stimulation we're exposed to daily can become overwhelming. "Most of us aren't aware of how sensory environments can impact our feelings, personality, and even energy levels," says Dr. Dalton-Smith. While putting on a favorite album or sitting down with a book can be relaxing, sometimes it's more restful for our brains to shut off and have some content-free time.

Try to drive home from work in total silence, or if you're feeling particularly stressed or tired in the middle of the work day, find a quiet space where you can shut your eyes and be with your thoughts for a few minutes.

6. Social Rest

While introverts might need more time to recharge after social interaction than extroverts, everyone can benefit from social rest. According to Dr. Dalton-Smith, a social rest deficit happens when "we fail to differentiate between those relationships that revive us from those that exhaust us." For more social rest, prioritize spending time with those in your life who simply want to be around you without constantly needing anything from you. Additionally, be mindful of your calendar as you say yes to invitations and gatherings.

7. Creative Rest

"We experience creative rest whenever we appreciate beauty."

- Dr. Dalton-Smith

All of us are creative in some capacity. You don't have to be a writer or painter to use creativity in your daily life; you use it when problem-solving, brainstorming, or thinking outside the box, and you might have trouble doing these things when you need creative rest.

We experience creative rest whenever we appreciate beauty, explains Dr. Dalton-Smith, like the beauty of nature, artwork, or music. When you rest creatively, you allow yourself to simply be without overthinking or analyzing your surroundings. While you may have the urge to make sense of your environment or create art from your experience, sometimes it's necessary to simply rest and enjoy the beauty around us.

Remember that no matter what society tells us, rest is not an optional activity or something reserved for vacations and weekends. We all need rest, every day, in different capacities and areas of our lives. May this list and Dr. Dalton-Smith's work encourage you to find the rest you need-and may we all encourage one another to live mindfully and slow down as often as needed.

Natalie Gale is a Boston-based freelance journalist. When she's not writing about art, food, or sustainability, you can find her biking to the farmers' market, baking, sewing, or planning her next Halloween costume. Say hi on !

RELATED READING

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What Are The 7 Types Of Rest? (Plus, The Best One For You) - The Good Trade

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Rest is more than getting enough sleep. In this article, we share the seven different kinds of rest and how to ensure you're implementing each into your life.

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Dive in to the practice of mindfulness. Explore the theory and methods of mindfulness that aim to increase your awareness and decrease suffering.

About this Specialization

The goal of the Specialization is to showcase the ways in which the practice of mindfulness is an effective means of enhancing and maintaining optimal health and overall well-being that can be implemented in every aspect of daily living. The intention of the Specialization is to supply learners with practical tools to support thriving in life. Each course will feature mindfulness practices, directions for implementation and application, experiential exercises and reflection opportunities.

Applied Learning Project

Each week, there will be lectures to watch, discussions to contribute to, and short quizzes to assess your learning. You will also have the opportunity to practice mindfulness yourself, and you will find different ways to try it out when you complete the weekly challenges/experiences.

Set and maintain flexible deadlines.

Approximately 3 months to complete

Suggested pace of 5 hours/week

Set and maintain flexible deadlines.

Approximately 3 months to complete

Suggested pace of 5 hours/week

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How the Specialization Works

Take Courses

A Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. To begin, enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you'd like to start with. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you're automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. It's okay to complete just one course - you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time. Visit your learner dashboard to track your course enrollments and your progress.

Hands-on Project

Every Specialization includes a hands-on project. You'll need to successfully finish the project(s) to complete the Specialization and earn your certificate. If the Specialization includes a separate course for the hands-on project, you'll need to finish each of the other courses before you can start it.

Earn a Certificate

When you finish every course and complete the hands-on project, you'll earn a Certificate that you can share with prospective employers and your professional network.

There are 3 Courses in this Specialization

Mindfulness and Well-being: Foundations

This course provides a broad overview of the fundamental concepts, principles, and practices of mindfulness. With interactive exercises to help students explore their own attitudes, mental habits and behaviors, Foundations of Mindfulness offers a pathway for living with more freedom, authenticity and ease. Featured components of the course include experiential exercises, guided meditations, personal reflection and interactive discussions.

Mindfulness and Well-being: Living with Balance and Ease

This is the sequel course to Foundations of Mindfulness that will continue to provide a broad overview of the fundamental concepts, principles, and practices of mindfulness. With interactive exercises to help students explore their own attitudes, mental habits and behaviors, Foundations of Mindfulness series offers a pathway for living with more freedom, authenticity and ease. Featured components of the course include experiential exercises, guided meditations, personal reflection and interactive discussions.

Living with Balance and Ease will not only cover some of the fundamentals of mindfulness, but will focus on connecting to the innate resources and abilities that will allow for a more effective response to life's challenges, build resiliency, and invite peace and ease into everyday life. Although this course can be taken as a standalone, it is recommended to take the first Foundations of Mindfulness course before beginning this course.

Mindfulness and Well-being: Peace in, Peace Out

The purpose of this course is to introduce mindfulness as a robust tool for spiritual development. Highlighting its rich traditional roots, the course explores the capacity of mindfulness to expand understanding about the nature of human consciousness and facilitate certain transcendent emotional experiences, including awe, wonder and flow. Designed for practical application, the course includes a variety of meditations, reflective exercises and activities to help make the material personally meaningful and is the culmination of a specialization created to promote holistic well-being through the practice of mindfulness.

Offered by

Rice University

Rice University is consistently ranked among the top 20 universities in the U.S. and the top 100 in the world. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy.

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Dive in to the practice of mindfulness. Explore the theory and methods of mindfulness that aim to increase your awareness and decrease suffering. The goal of the Specialization is to showcase the ways in which the practice of mindfulness is an effective means of enhancing and maintaining optimal health and overall well-being that can be implemented in every aspect of daily living.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is the sequel course to Foundations of Mindfulness that will continue to provide a broad overview of the fundamental concepts, principles, and practices of mindfulness. With interactive exercises to help students explore their own attitudes, mental habits and behaviors, Foundations of Mindfulness series offers a pathway for living with more freedom, authenticity and ease. Featured components of the course include experiential exercises, guided meditations, personal reflection and interactive discussions.

Living with Balance and Ease will not only cover some of the fundamentals of mindfulness, but will focus on connecting to the innate resources and abilities that will allow for a more effective response to life's challenges, build resiliency, and invite peace and ease into everyday life. Although this course can be taken as a standalone, it is recommended to take the first Foundations of Mindfulness course before beginning this course.

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Mindfulness and Well-being: Living with Balance and Ease

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is the sequel course to Foundations of Mindfulness that will continue to provide a broad overview of the fundamental concepts, principles, and practices of mindfulness. With interactive exercises to help students explore their own attitudes, mental habits and behaviors, Foundations of Mindfulness series offers a pathway for living with more freedom, authenticity and ease.

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You've probably heard someone talk about the benefits of meditation. Countless studies and experts have praised the practice's transformative qualities.

It's true-meditation can affect the brain and body in myriad ways, from reducing the risk for chronic diseases to lowering the risk for anxiety and depression.

Maybe most notable in the age of burnout is meditation's impact on stress levels and its ability to reduce the fight or flight reaction, or the acute stress response that activates your sympathetic nervous system and can raise blood pressure.

"Fighting and fleeing was an adaptive response back when there were saber-toothed tigers, but it's not very adaptive when the stressor is the morning commute or anticipating a bad email," Dr. Elizabeth Seng, an associate professor of psychology at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University, tells Fortune.

Being mindful through meditation can reduce rumination on negative thoughts and help you stay in the present moment. This can alleviate that heightened stress response in everyday situations.

"You're teaching yourself to be non-judgmentally aware of the present moment," Seng says, who works with people taking up meditation for her research. "We want them to be more focused on what's going on right now than regretting what happened in the past or worrying about what will happen in the future."

Over time, practicing mindfulness through meditation can improve concentration, clarity, and help us process our emotions more effectively, Maria Gonzalez, a mindfulness coach and author of Mindful Leadership: The 9 Ways to Self-Awareness, Transforming Yourself, and Inspiring Others, tells Fortune.

How meditation affects the brain

Research shows meditation reduces stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms. A 2016 study found that longer-term meditation practice was associated with structural changes of the "white matter" in the brain, which is responsible for "relaying sensory information" and can explain why meditation helps people stay in the present moment and may help combat age-related cognitive decline.

A more dated study found an increase in gray matter in the brain's hippocampus, the areas associated with memory, emotional regulation, self-processing, and perspective taking, with regular meditation.

The practice also enhances attention, and increases the ability to cultivate awareness around emotions so they don't bubble up later, Gonzalez says.

Practicing meditation regulates breathing, Seng says. Unlike being in fight or flight mode, when our stress response jumps into action, meditation enacts the parasympathetic nervous system which is in charge of calming our nerves.

Imagine a highway system with an infrastructure bill, Seng says. If you keep investing in roadways toward places you don't want to go, those roads only get longer. Our mind works in the same way. The more we fester, catastrophize, and overanalyze, the windier that road becomes, meaning the more our mind gives it validity to keep going.

Mindfulness meditation can help us instead stop the unwanted pathways in their tracks and focus on a smaller dirt road of acceptance, presence, and gratitude, that in time, will also extend the more we give it credence. We slowly create new connections in the brain that teach us to let unwanted thoughts pass by like a train car versus internalize them and lose focus.

"You build more and more neural connections with these pathways, and therefore, it's easier for you to go down this path," she says.

How does meditation affect the body?

Given that meditation reduces stress, and chronic stress is a risk factor for other health problems, our physical bodies benefit from meditation.

"So many chronic illnesses are exacerbated by your body being in fight or flight all the time," Seng says. These chronic illnesses include heart disease and sleep problems.

Stress also lowers immunity, which is why we sometimes feel like we get a cold when we are overwhelmed like studying for an exam. When cortisol (the stress hormone) constantly surges, it depletes the body. When the body relaxes, the immune system doesn't get challenged.

Routine meditation for 8 weeks was also associated with helping migraine symptoms 6 months after the practice, in a study Seng authored this year.

"Our studies have found that mindfulness produces big changes in headache related disability, which is basically like how many days you didn't go to work, or weren't able to be with friends because of migraine attacks," she says.

For those experiencing chronic pain, meditation also increases symptom awareness. When people can detect subtle symptoms earlier they can intervene and take medication or other proactive measures immediately, Seng says.

How long do you need to meditate to see results?

Studies point to 8-weeks of meditation practice to see results. One study found improvements to memory, emotional regulation, and mood with 8 weeks of 13 minutes of meditation a day. But there isn't a magic number.

Gonzalez, who has trained over numerous leaders in the practice, says as little as 10 minutes can make a difference. What matters most is dedicating yourself to the technique (that means not checking work notifications in the middle of a practice).

Whether guided meditation, meditation on-the-go, counting your breath, or repeating a mantra, being intentional about committing to mindfulness matters the most.

"If someone were to follow their breath, 10 minutes a day, every single day, I would be really surprised if they didn't experience benefits," Gonzalez says.

Seng says starting slowly and incorporating meditation into your day in any form is better than doing nothing.

"Finding something that you do think you can do the most. That can be more important than starting a stopwatch," Seng says.

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How long you need to meditate to see results for your body and brain

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You've probably heard someone talk about the benefits of meditation. Countless studies and experts have praised the practice's transformative qualities. It's true-meditation can affect the brain and body in myriad ways, from reducing the risk for chronic diseases to lowering the risk for anxiety and depression.

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FEB 8, 2023: TEND-A Virtual Self-Care Check In

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FEB 8, 2023: TEND-A Virtual Self-Care Check In

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10 Self-Care Tips for Early Intervention Professionals - Brookes Blog

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These tips will help Early Intervention professionals avoid burnout and stay optimistic and refreshed in the year ahead.

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Read and engage with a repository of thousands of wisdom excerpts from diverse spiritual traditions. Plus audio, translations and original art! This week's featured passage is by:

For over 25 years, local circles have convened for an hour of group meditation, followed by a circle of sharing and a meal. Prior to the pandemic, in 100+ cities across 23 countries.
View Locations
We engage in deep conversations with individuals gently shaking the world, and inspiring us to transformative action. Also check out our archive of 500+ speakers! Coming up:
Danusha Laméris

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Read and engage with a repository of thousands of wisdom excerpts from diverse spiritual traditions. Plus audio, translations and original art! This week's featured passage is by: For over 25 years, local circles have convened for an hour of group meditation, followed by a circle of sharing and a meal.

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DailyGood is a portal dedicated to sharing inspiring and positive news from around the world. We feature one story every single day.

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Life can be overwhelming, anxiety invoking, and stressful. Sometimes we all need a healthy escape. This Virtual Calming Room was inspired by School Counselors and School Social Workers across the United States to help students locate tools and strategies to positively manage their emotions.

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A healthy escape using anxiety reduction and relaxation techniques to provide healthy outlets for stressful times.

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We are operating in uncharted territory right now and many things are still unknown. Your SCUSD Student Support & Health Services Department wants you to know that your feelings are valid , no matter what they are.

You might feel scared, confused, overwhelmed, angry, alone, grateful, or completely calm. You might feel many things throughout the days or all at once, like being upset that an event was cancelled, but happy that you can wear pajamas all day.

Your feelings are normal; the situation is not.

This Virtual Calming Room is a place for students, families and staff to find tools and strategies for managing emotions and feelings and building our resilience during this pandemic .

We are here to support you!
Disclaimer: The following links are purely for educational purposes and are not intended as psychological interventions or as a substitute for psychological treatment. If you are in need of psychological help you should seek the consultation of a licensed mental health professional.
Sacramento City Unified School District - 5735 47th Ave, Sacramento, CA 95824 - (916) 643-7400 -
The Sacramento Unified School District prohibits discrimination, intimidation, harassment (including sexual harassment) or bullying based on a person's actual or perceived ancestry, color, disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, immigration status, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or association with a person or a group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. For questions or complaints please contact the following staff: Title IX Coordinator & Equity Compliance Officer: Melinda Iremonger - 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento, CA, 95824 - 916.664.7446 - melinda-iremonger@scusd.edu; Chief Human Resources Officer: Cancy McArn - 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento CA, 95824 - 916.643.7474 - cancy-mcarn@scusd.edu; Section 504 Coordinator: Noel Estacio - 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento CA, 95824 - 916.643.9412 - noel-estacio@scusd.edu.
Non-Discrimination Policy Contacts

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We are operating in uncharted territory right now and many things are still unknown. Your SCUSD Student Support & Health Services Department wants you to know that your feelings are valid, no matter what they are. You might feel scared, confused, overwhelmed, angry, alone, grateful, or completely

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We are operating in uncharted territory right now and many things are still unknown. Your SCUSD Student Support & Health Services Department wants you to know that your feelings are valid , no matter what they are.

You might feel scared, confused, overwhelmed, angry, alone, grateful, or completely calm. You might feel many things throughout the days or all at once, like being upset that an event was cancelled, but happy that you can wear pajamas all day.

Your feelings are normal; the situation is not.

This Virtual Calming Room is a place for students, families and staff to find tools and strategies for managing emotions and feelings and building our resilience during this pandemic .

We are here to support you!
Disclaimer: The following links are purely for educational purposes and are not intended as psychological interventions or as a substitute for psychological treatment. If you are in need of psychological help you should seek the consultation of a licensed mental health professional.
Sacramento City Unified School District - 5735 47th Ave, Sacramento, CA 95824 - (916) 643-7400 -
The Sacramento Unified School District prohibits discrimination, intimidation, harassment (including sexual harassment) or bullying based on a person's actual or perceived ancestry, color, disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, immigration status, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or association with a person or a group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. For questions or complaints please contact the following staff: Title IX Coordinator & Equity Compliance Officer: Melinda Iremonger - 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento, CA, 95824 - 916.664.7446 - melinda-iremonger@scusd.edu; Chief Human Resources Officer: Cancy McArn - 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento CA, 95824 - 916.643.7474 - cancy-mcarn@scusd.edu; Section 504 Coordinator: Noel Estacio - 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento CA, 95824 - 916.643.9412 - noel-estacio@scusd.edu.
Non-Discrimination Policy Contacts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We are operating in uncharted territory right now and many things are still unknown. Your SCUSD Student Support & Health Services Department wants you to know that your feelings are valid, no matter what they are. You might feel scared, confused, overwhelmed, angry, alone, grateful, or completely

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Beyond Burnout: Coping with Compassion Fatigue | presented by lulafit

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Discover strategies to prevent and overcome the negative effects burnout and compassion fatigue can have on your well-being and productivity.

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Where DEI + Employee Wellness Intersect | presented by lulafit

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Uncover the relationship between DEI and employee wellness and the impact a diverse and inclusive well-being program will have on your employee experience.

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Cultivate Mindfulness + Everyday Resilience | presented by lulafit

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Experience breathwork, meditation, and mindfulness in action to increase your sense of presence + stress management.

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Stress Management: How to Reduce and Relieve Stress

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Overwhelmed by stress? You don’t have to be. These stress management tips can help you drastically reduce your stress levels and regain control of your life.

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WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?

In this resource, mindfulness is thought of as intentional and non-judgmental present-moment awareness. This kind of awareness means we are purposefully paying attention to what is happening around us, what is happening inside us, what we are doing, and how we are doing and feeling without judging or analyzing. This ability to focus attention on the present and to maintain that focus is a foundational skill that underlies many other important capacities that we need for health, well-being, and connection with children, families, and others. When adults engage in focusing practices like mindfulness in early childhood settings, it helps to build important mental, social, and emotional skills that they need to be responsive supports and effective models.

Mindfulness in the Early Childhood Environment

We often hear about the important role that a calm and responsive adult, and secure adult-child relationship, plays in helping young children learn and grow. We know that these relationships develop through attuned and sensitive care and interactions. What can early education professionals do to offer children consistent, nurturing care and responsiveness? How can we build our capacity to stay focused and attentive to all children and families in our care? What helps us notice and respond sensitively to a child's needs and emotions (while we are experiencing strong feelings too)? These are common challenges that arise in caring for children. Similar challenges arise when providing support to parents and professionals working with children. Through the work of scientists, psychologists, and child development specialists, we are discovering some answers to these questions and how practicing mindfulness in early childhood settings might help.

Different Definitions: Mindfulness is...
"[I]ntending and developing the capacity to come back to center; to pay close attention to the internal experience of sensations, thoughts, and emotions with engaged curiosity, equanimity, deep compassion, and acceptance. Thus, mindfulness is defined as moment-by-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, characterized mainly by 'acceptance'-paying attention to thoughts and feelings without trying to distinguish whether they are right or wrong." (Shahmoon-Shanok & Carlton Stevenson 2015, p. 18)
"Paying attention here and now with kindness and curiosity." (Association for Mindfulness in Education) "The act of being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling at every moment - without interpretation or judgment." (Mayo Clinic) "Waking up from a life on automatic and being sensitive to novelty in our everyday experiences. With mindful awareness the flow of energy and information that is our mind enters our conscious attention and we can both appreciate its contents and come to regulate its flow in a new way." (Dan Siegel) "Maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment." (Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley) "The basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we're doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what's going on around us." (mindful.org) "The psychological process of bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training." (Wikipedia) "The awareness that arises through paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally." (Jon Kabat-Zinn) "Simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won't)." (James Baraz).
Four Capacities Enhanced by Mindfulness
In this toolkit, we highlight four distinct and related capacities that are critical in the early childhood workplace: attentional awareness, emotional regulation, perspective-taking, and self-compassion. All can be enhanced by mindfulness.

Mindfulness training supports attentional awareness by helping us engage with important details, stay with present experience, and disengage with distracting information.

There is growing evidence that mindfulness training improves emotional regulation skills (Baer et al 2009; Carmody et al 2009). Emotional regulation skills allow us to better model and scaffold a state of calmness, particularly in times of distress for children, families, and co-workers.

Mindfulness can be used to expand our capacity for perspective-taking as we better understand our own emotions, intentions, and beliefs, we see others' more clearly as well.

Self-compassion helps us shift from a stance of self-criticism and judgment to one of self-care, warmth and love. Rather than judge ourselves harshly, we can acknowledge our feelings in the moment (shame, frustration, anger, disappointment, etc.) and recognize that these moments are part of the shared human experience. Doing so can increase our capacity for resilience during moments of conflict, frustration, or upset.

Attentional Awareness: Mindfulness Can Improve Focus
Mindfulness enables staff to bring their full presence to the demands of the workplace. Early childhood professionals are bombarded with the conflicting needs of the children and families they serve; the needs of colleagues; the stresses and pressures of the organization; and the demands of our fast-paced society. Too often, the expectation is that skilled staff can do more with less, and professionals are frequently asked to add more tasks to each day. Through the practice of focusing attention, mindfulness makes it possible to clarify what is essential and to slow the pace of our day. As we become more practiced in mindfulness, we are more likely to make conscious choices about where we should place our attention. We become more consistent with follow-through on necessary tasks that demand sustained attention.

A recent study by Norris et al (2018) using female undergraduates who had never been exposed to mindfulness meditation found that one brief 10-minute, audio-guided mindfulness meditation instruction period improved attention. Another recent study demonstrated that a two-week mindfulness training with undergraduate students was associated with improved reading comprehension scores on the Graduate Record Exam (Mrazek et al 2013). The ability to remain focused for sustained periods is also linked to positive emotions-satisfaction and happiness-and to improvements in creativity, problem solving, and psychological flexibility; (Killingsworth, Matthews & Gilbert 2010; Mrazek et al 2013).

EMOTIONAL REGULATION IS ENHANCED THROUGH MINDFULNESS
Self-regulation, or the ability to intentionally manage one's cognitive and emotional resources to accomplish goals, is crucial for early childhood providers. Self-regulation helps providers respond to children with emotional attunement and calm consistency. Mindfulness may help practitioners self-regulate-which helps them provide the supportive, nurturing co-regulation that children need in order to develop a strong foundation of social-emotional skills. This ability to "share their calm" with parents strengthens the family-professional relationship as well. Mindfulness can be used by adults as a strategy to restore calm when they feel challenged. Research suggests that adults can use mindfulness techniques to change the way they interpret and react to critical and judgmental thoughts and negative emotions (Jacob and Holczer 2016), for example, when facing a child's challenging behavior. Mindfulness may also decrease emotional reactivity and rumination by increasing present-centered-attention (Guendelman et al 2017).

Early care providers need to focus on developing social and emotional skills in the children they care for. They must scaffold children's development and co-regulate with children until children have the skills to manage challenges on their own. Ideally, this transition proceeds through everyday caregiver-child interactions, which provide children with age-appropriate strategies for emotion regulation. At the most basic level, providers help children understand their feelings and become sensitive to the causes and consequences of their emotions. The next level involves adults demonstrating and modeling specific skills, such as soothing, to calm the body. At the third level, adult providers cue the child verbally to initiate emotional self-regulation. Each level builds on the previous one. Children need competent models to show them how to notice, name, and respond to their emotional states. Developing these skills comprise social-emotional competence. At each level, caregivers match their response to what is happening in the moment to reflect their understanding of what the child needs. This contingent responsiveness is an essential aspect of a secure relationship.

As providers develop sensitivity for understanding and working with their own emotions through mindfulness, they can extend this sensitivity and competence to support children and families. In a randomized control trial by Geschwind et al (2011), Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy was associated with increased experience of momentary positive emotions as well as greater appreciation of, and enhanced responsiveness to, pleasant daily-life activities. This study highlights the idea that increased access to positive emotional experiences may be one way to strengthen self-regulation and offset chronic stress early childhood professionals may face. In ZERO TO THREE's 2018 Mindfulness in Early Childhood Member Survey, respondents practicing mindfulness reported that it helps with their self-regulation, promotes calm and patience, and improves their ability to be present with children and families.
"We 'download our calm' into the children and families we serve. When I am well, I can give my best to them and provide an environment conducive to mindfulness, self-care, and care for others."
MINDFULNESS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD SUPPORTS NEW INSIGHT AND PERSPECTIVE TAKING
When we practice mindfulness, it can become easier to take in new information, consider perspectives that are new or different from our own, and respond to our own or another person's experience empathetically and without judgment. The process of observing our own internal and external experiences non-judgmentally can enhance our ability to be more objective, recognize habitual patterns of thinking, and shift perspective. Through mindfulness we can thereby deepen skills for active and objective listening, receiving others' points of view without jumping to judgments or conclusions, and be better able to consider their perspective. Block-Lerner et al (2007) found that mindfulness interventions can increase empathic responding and support this type of healthy interpersonal functioning.

SELF-COMPASSION IS A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF WELL-BEING AND IS SUPPORTED BY MINDFULNESS
According to researcher Kristen Neff, PhD, "What distinguishes self-compassion is that it goes beyond accepting our experience as it is and adds something more-embracing the experiencer (i.e., ourselves) with warmth and tenderness when our experience is painful." Mindfulness helps us recognize when we are experiencing distress or being self-critical. We are then able to apply self-compassion. The recognition that we are all imperfect and make mistakes becomes a way to connect deeply with ourselves and others. There may be differences in our experience, yet there can also be a deep appreciation of similarity, even unity, of the human experience. In the practice of mindful self-compassion, we have an explicit way to broaden and expand our connection to self and other rather than contract and disconnect in the face of pain and suffering. We learn to cultivate openness to experience and, through this openness, we begin to discover a fuller range of responses in the face of challenge.

Increasingly, mindful self-compassion practices for health providers has become a focus of research. In a longitudinal study at a health care facility by Barsade (2014), a culture of compassionate love was associated with reduced employee emotional exhaustion and absenteeism, and with increased work engagement (i.e., teamwork and satisfaction). Recent research by Raab (2015) on the impact of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for health care providers suggests that mindfulness interventions, particularly those with an added mindful self-compassion component, have the potential to increase self-compassion among health care workers. These studies as well as others (Frost 2003) suggest that cultivating compassion offers potential health and well-being benefits at the individual level, stronger interpersonal relationships, and greater collective responsiveness overall to the unavoidable suffering that unfolds in complex ways at work. Dutton et al (2007) suggest that by elevating individual acts of compassion organizations can spread compassion as a normal response to suffering and ultimately build cooperation.

Potential Benefits of Mindfulness in the Early Childhood Workforce

We now turn to an examination of the ways that mindfulness and self-compassion can benefit your workforce as a whole. There is a rapidly developing base of scientific evidence that supports the inclusion of mindfulness in the workplace. This qualitative research indicates that mindfulness training at work can lead to important shifts in organizational culture, including:

enhanced employee well-being,

improved relationships between co-workers,

developing leadership capacities and

better performance at work, including improved job and task performance, citizenship, and safety performance (The Mindfulness Initiative, 2016).

WORKFORCE WELL-BEING
All organizations face issues like absenteeism, burnout, and turnover. In addition to these factors, early childhood professionals often work with individuals and families who have experienced trauma. They may feel overwhelmed in the face of such great need. These feelings, coupled with very real resource inadequacies, may cause professionals to question the purpose of their work. Providers experiencing burnout often report a growing sense of doubt that they are making meaningful contributions. Due to the demands put on early childhood professionals, they too often feel unable to take the time for the self-care necessary to re-establish balance and connect with feelings of purpose and meaning.

Secondary or vicarious trauma is a real concern for early childhood professionals. Vicarious trauma is characterized by extreme symptoms with persistent heightened arousal at one end and emotional numbing and withdrawal at the other. Making sure that staff have time and space to prioritize self-care, develop strategies to maintain healthy boundaries, and detect early symptoms are all ways to minimize the occurrence of vicarious trauma in this workforce. Supporting mindful and reflective practices within the work environment can promote the deepening of self-awareness and stress-reducing benefits, which are well-established and are particularly suited to prevent burnout and vicarious trauma.

Mindfulness Based Interventions are now being applied as a prevention approach for service providing organizations. In a recent analysis (Gilmartin et al 2017) of brief mindfulness-based interventions in health-care settings, nine of 14 studies reported positive changes in levels of stress, anxiety, mindfulness, resiliency, and burnout symptoms. Positive results like these provide encouragement for early childhood organizations to follow suit. Respondents to ZERO TO THREE's 2018 Mindfulness in Early Childhood Member Survey indicated they have used mindfulness or other contemplative practices within their work setting in many different ways, which are described in Chart 1.

WORKPLACE CLIMATE
Let's consider the benefits of practicing mindfulness across a whole system to share a positive emotional climate characterized by compassion and healthy social interactions. Workplace climate reflects the degree to which employees feel supported, motivated, and valued. Warning signs of a negative climate include unhealthy communication patterns, a hyper-competitive culture, hyper-critical evaluations, social isolation, unclear or poorly implemented practices and policies, and reluctant or inconsistent leadership. Overall, a positive climate is associated with organizational effectiveness (Cameron et al 2011).
Mindfulness training programs and team-based reflective practices offer a reliable and systematic method for improving workplace climate. Mindfulness training programs can be used to incorporate regular interaction with employees using clear and direct communication in a group. Training programs that use mindfulness practices offer an opportunity to identify existing team values and generate new shared values. The group training provides a chance to establish and maintain healthy social norms for everyone participating and to openly reflect together.

When mindfulness is practiced in the workplace, teams can achieve more cohesion leading to:

Enhanced employer-employee and peer relationships

Stronger, healthier team dynamics

Fewer reactive, emotionally driven decisions

Healthier strategies for preventing or addressing conflict when it comes up

A more positive work environment

Mindfulness training programs can be used to offer staff, children, and families a sense of psychological safety, which captures the extent to which a person believes others will give them the "benefit of the doubt" when taking risks (Edmondson 2004). It can take time and care to develop a sense of psychological safety among team members; individuals need to see that when they take healthy risks of self-expression, the group or team responds with support. Mindfulness can help us to be more intentional in our self-expression, be effective communicators, and increase our ability to consider others' ideas and points of view with openness and acceptance.

Mindfulness may broaden our capacity to remain in the learning zone and enhance workplace performance. In one study, individuals who rated themselves as naturally possessing dispositional mindfulness were more likely to demonstrate greater flexibility in their responses to others and an enhanced capacity to pause and consider options/ consequences before acting (Kaplan 2018).

MINDFULNESS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD AS A PROMISING BUSINESS MODEL
Just as schools have been looking at the return on investment (ROI) of social emotional learning, companies have been considering the ROI of mindfulness for employees. There is a growing awareness of the costs of missing work, being ineffective at work, and staff turnover associated with staff stress and mental health challenges. Companies are using mindfulness as a feature for stress-reduction programs, to change organizational climate, and anticipate employee needs before they arise.

Aetna recently opened the Mindfulness Center in Hartford, CT, to advance its commitment to mindfulness, which has been building since 2011 when the company offered its first mindfulness-based stress reduction program to associates. This program resulted in a 35% reduction in perceived stress and a 20% improvement in sleep.

In Germany, the software company SAP launched a mindfulness pilot program in 2013 for its employees. This program has become very popular and more than 6,000 employees and executives have participated. The training consists of a two-day mindfulness course that focuses on meditations and includes components on self-mastery and compassion. The outcomes have been particularly impressive with participants in the SAP mindfulness program reporting increased well-being and higher creativity. Over time, the initial program has been expanded to include guided meditations during working hours and a multiweek mindfulness challenge. Meditation "micropractices" are taught by internal trainers and offer a unique practical feature of the program. One "micropractice" invites participants to tune out of a busy workday for a few minutes and tune into their breathing. "For many managers, it has become the new normal to open meetings with short meditations," says Peter Bostelmann, the SAP's global mindfulness practice director (Greiser & Martini 2018).

Google's "Search Inside Yourself" (SIY) mindfulness course has been taught since 2007. The course became popular as a contemplative training program to help people better relate to themselves and others and to foster emotional intelligence. It is now offered through the SIY Leadership Institute and has become a model for many other corporate programs.

Application

Like the practice of mindfulness itself, integrating mindfulness in the workplace should be intentional, focused, kind, and open. It will take curiosity, patience, and practice. In this section, we present steps to bring mindfulness into the work environment. We offer a basic road map and some ideas to get you started. There are many opportunities to customize activities and approaches that will best suit your specific context. Selecting an approach and activities that meet the needs and interests of your organization will help ensure the success of your effort.

ROADMAP FOR BRINGING MINDFULNESS TO WORK
Steps for practical application and implementation in your organization

1. Start with yourself
Develop an authentic experience with mindfulness and share from that experience.

2. Assess interest
Ask questions to explore and discover what is already happening in your organization.

3. Internal champions
Seek others to help you move the effort forward and share responsibility for success.

4. Create collective intentions
Identify and connect to existing organizational values.

5. Implement your action plan
Build on and extend current structures and practices of your team.

6. Adapt your plan!
Make sure to acknowledge progress and learning as you continue to deepen your practices.

STEP 1: START WITH YOURSELF
The first consideration is to explore mindfulness yourself. Any time we share ideas about mindfulness with others -colleagues, parents or children-it's important that we have a solid understanding and authentic mindfulness experience. Examine your own existing ideas about mindfulness and other contemplative practices. If you haven't already, develop a mindfulness practice. Discover for yourself how mindfulness impacts your own well-being and capacity to be present and attuned with others. You are building your capacity for calm presence and this will be the foundation for spreading the reach and impact of mindfulness throughout your organization. In a 2018 ZERO TO THREE Member Survey, we asked early childhood professionals what supported their use of mindfulness in the workplace; the number one response was personally experiencing the benefits of practice. TO begin exploring mindfulness yourself:

Try these brief, informal practices (included in the resources section)-How am I?

-3-minute breathing space
-Extended Breath practice
-Calm Breath, Clear Mind Meditation

Listen to free, guided meditations through one of many apps or web resources such as:-Insight Timer

-Stop, Breathe, Think
-Calm
-10% Happier
-Mindful.org Guided Meditation
-UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center Guided Meditation

Read a book about mindfulness or self-compassion-
The Little Book of Mindfulness by Patrizia Collard
-10% Happier by Dan Harris
-Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn
-Self-Compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself by Kristen Neff
-Mindfulness: A Practical Guide by Mark Williams and Danny Penman
-The Mindfulness Revolution a book of essays by various authors

Explore the diversity of contemplative practices

Try a class at a local meditation or other contemplative practice center or studio

Try a mind-body movement class such as authentic movement, yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi, the Alexander Technique, etc.

Look for other programs available in your community or online that will introduce you - to mindfulness such as:-Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

-Free online MBSR course is available
-Mindful Self Compassion (MSC)
-Compassion Cultivation Training

STEP 2: ASSESS INTEREST
Before starting any major initiative with staff or colleagues, it is important to assess interest and motivation. Be curious! Start a conversation, share your story.

You can learn about what others in your workplace know about mindfulness and increase interest and motivation for integrating mindfulness into your workplace by starting with these questions.

How do you care for yourself so you can do great work here at our organization?

What concerns, if any, do you have about the wellness of our workforce?

How do you check in with yourself from time to time at work?

How do you take time to reflect back on your experiences at work?

Do you have ideas for how we can build our own resilience and increase the resilience in the children and families that we work with?

What desires or needs are there for improving team communication and cohesion?

What have you heard about mindfulness?

Do you have any interest in developing some ways for us to bring mindfulness into our organization?

Are you interested in learning more about the neuroscience of mindfulness that supports it as a powerful way to build psychological health and flexibility?

Do you have an interest in sharing mindfulness and contemplative practice with families or children you are serving?

There are many different perceptions about what mindfulness is, and some perceptions can be barriers to integration. Take time to consider the best language to use when talking about mindfulness with people in your organization. [Examples: creating healthy mental habits, being present and connected, brain training, skills to build self-awareness and emotion regulation, reflective practice, practices to support stress reduction and well-being]

It will also be important to determine the administration or leadership position around integrating mindfulness. Share this toolkit or other information about mindfulness to help leaders understand why this effort is important to you and how it can benefit the organization. As you begin this outreach-think about why mindfulness might be important in your specific context. Is workforce wellness or staff retention a concern? Are there desires or needs for improving team communication and cohesion? Is there an interest in sharing mindfulness and contemplative practice with families or children you are serving? There may be more than one reason that leadership and staff are interested. Understanding the current landscape in your workplace will give you helpful insights into making this effort successful. Make sure to include a diversity of voices in your exploration. Consider using the Tree of Contemplative Practices from the Center for Mind in Society to start the conversation or choose one of the other resources listed below.

To assess interest and motivation, you can:

Use the previous questions to start a discussion at staff, team, or supervisory meetings

Set up time to talk about this topic with administration or leadership [Key Questions for Leaders to Consider Handout in Resources]

Implement a brief staff survey on mindfulness (Brief Staff Survey Example in Resources) or workforce wellness

Share your own experience of mindfulness

After gathering information from staff, use the results from this effort to help guide your next steps and, be sure to report back what you have learned.

STEP 3: IDENTIFY INTERNAL CHAMPIONS, CULTIVATE BUY-IN
Find others who share your commitment! Use results from your assessment process to identify colleagues who have an interest in mindfulness. Are there others who practice mindfulness or another contemplative practice? What resources can they bring? What experiences can they share? Remember the best advocates for mindfulness embody and model the qualities of mindfulness. Build a small group who will work together to bring mindfulness into your organization. Ideally, this group will reflect diverse voices including leadership and administrators. Start by sharing and discussing the results of your assessment and obtain a commitment from all members to work on creating a vision for mindfulness in your organization.

Finding a champion within organizational leadership is important. Not only are leaders positioned to be influencers across the organization, they can also make important links between organizational efforts and priorities. Leaders often hold the authority to create the time and space needed to make integration successful. So, plan special outreach if leadership is not part of your group working to integrate mindfulness. Share the first sections of this toolkit to help you make the case. Discuss the findings of your assessment. Align your message to leadership with any specific interests or needs of your organization. For example, if employee absenteeism or turnover is a concern, include research demonstrating how mindfulness increases workplace satisfaction and employee well-being.

To further develop interest and cultivate champions:

Form a community of practice

Host an informational brown bag lunch, or brief presentation at the start of a meeting to introduce mindfulness or a related concept for discussion. Try these:-ZTT resources

-Watching a snow globe settle
-Mindfulness is a Superpower
-Using the Barrel of Monkeys game as a metaphor for how our minds get caught up in our thoughts
-Harvard Business Review Article

Provide basic information about mindfulness through internal newsletters or message boards

Tell your story, share how mindfulness has impacted your own work and well-being

Invite staff to share contemplative practices from their own cultures and traditions

Case Example: An interview with Dr. Holly Hatton-Bowers, Assistant Professor and Early Childhood Extension Specialist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln captured the insights and wisdom from her team offering the Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators (CHIME) program to early childhood educators in Nebraska. CHIME provides education and guidance on incorporating mindfulness, compassion, and reflective practice into daily routines, teaching, and caregiving to promote the psychological health, well-being, and social-emotional learning of both educators and young children.

The CHIME program consists of a two-hour overview followed by seven sessions for learning and reflection. Holly has been implementing this program with her coleader, Nebraska Extension Educator Jaci Foged, for family home and center-based early childhood educators since 2017. Almost two years into this work, Holly is excited to share her team's learning to inspire other organizations and programs.

Holly advocates starting with the adults, using compassion and mindfulness as an explicit relational tool, and cautions against a sole focus on sharing compassion and mindfulness activities with children. Many early care organizations have a clear commitment to reflective practice and supervision, so mindfulness can broaden the application of these practices throughout the organizational culture.

Holly recommends seeding compassion, mindfulness, and reflective practice into the culture of the organization. Once embedded, the culture can maintain the commitment to mindfulness and reflective practices without dependence on specific individuals. For example, when mindful moments have been modeled in meetings, leadership and staff feel more comfortable taking time for both group and self-reflection. When there are opportunities for institutional support such as ongoing professional training and reflective supervision, staff embrace these practices as part of their regular work approach. Additionally, taking an organizational approach ensures that we are not sending the message that educator well-being is the individual's responsibility. To ensure early childhood educators are thriving, not merely surviving, a systems approach is essential.

Holly shared a story of how compassion and mindfulness can increase staff capacity to be present and respond to children's needs. One infant teacher in the CHIME program expressed their anxiety and lack of confidence in caring for a refugee infant who was suffering from failure to thrive. The infant teacher was feeling frustrated and felt that the mother did not seem to treat this as an important issue. Through reflection and practicing compassion for self and the family, as well as mindfulness, the infant teacher identified ways to be more responsive instead of reactive. A mindful breathing technique helped the infant teacher relax during the bottle feeding. The infant teacher subsequently reported feeling calmer and more confident in supporting this child, which promoted effective feeding and weight gain for the child.

After completing CHIME, educators commented that they learned how to better manage their emotions, listen more, and communicate with co-workers more effectively. They also feel they have a calmer classroom and are finding more joy in their day-to-day work. As one educator wrote, "CHIME helped me find different ways to help regulate my emotions during frustrating situations. CHIME has also helped my classroom become a calmer atmosphere." After completing CHIME, another educator wrote, "The class has been a huge source of information for taking care of myself in many ways. All the practices to learn to live in the moment and practice gratitude each day have been beneficial. The listening practices with classmates each week helped me develop better listening skills. I have more awareness of thinking before speaking."

Through her experiences, and the preliminary data of delivering CHIME to 93 early childhood educators, Holly has identified effective strategies for implementing mindfulness-training at the organizational level:

Begin with an internal champion who has a strong commitment to bring compassion and mindfulness to the organization as well as a solid, authentic relationship to mindfulness.

Train leadership first. Without adequate trust in leadership and a positive rationale for doing the work, staff may be neither adequately prepared nor invested.

Follow up with direct staff training and provide ongoing support for continued practice.
-Provide ample time and space for training and ongoing implementation.
-Mindfulness groups work best during work hours as opposed to after hours.
-Pay staff to attend and offer mindfulness training as a way to invest in educators and support their well-being.

Integrate mindfulness into organizational culture through the following:
-Practicing reflective supervision.
-Instituting collective mindfulness practice at the start and end of meetings.
-Creating a space for educators to practice self-compassion and mindfulness, such as a wellness room, that conveys commitment to educator well-being.

Compassion and mindfulness-based programs may not be acceptable to all educators. There are other ways to promote educator well-being. Be open to having different approaches to ensure that a program doesn't send the message that mindfulness is the only way to promote well-being.

Holly adds, "People liked it when we linked mindfulness to compassion. This connection was helpful because the idea of mindfulness didn't initially resonate with everyone. Compassion resonated with people who felt hesitant to focus just on themselves and their emotional experience."

Holly offers these reflective questions to consider before implementing a mindfulness training program:

What is your understanding of mindfulness and what are your expectations for how it will impact your organization?

How will you build psychological safety as a foundation for the mindfulness training? Is there committed leadership within the organization?

Do internal champions have a solid personal practice and authentic relationship to mindfulness?

Will it be possible to train a cohort of educators together? How will you provide your staff with time away from their work and a clear space free from distractions? What incentives can you provide?

How have you prepared to provide emotional and psychological support for educators who have experienced trauma?

STEP 4: CREATE COLLECTIVE INTENTIONS AND DEVELOP AN ACTION PLAN
Using mindfulness in the workplace should be based in clear intentions for focused, kind and open engagement. Clarify your purpose! Once you have a committed group, develop your shared vision for integrating mindfulness into your workplace. Consider what you learned from your assessment process as well as any existing workplace initiatives or special projects. Are you focused on bringing mindfulness to a particular area of practice, for example, with caseload-carrying staff? Or, is the goal to shift the workplace culture toward more mindfulness where all staff have access and support for practice? Set goals that are connected to your current organizational values and build on existing structures and practices.

Create an action plan. Your action plan should include small meaningful steps that bring your larger vision to life. Describe where and how you will begin integrating mindfulness into your workplace activities. Bringing mindfulness into your workplace does not need to be time-consuming or expensive. Mindfulness practices can be brief, informal, and used at any time and with any activity during the day. Take time to identify opportunities within your current workplace structure and practice where mindfulness activities can easily be integrated. Make it easy and accessible for staff.

Anticipate barriers and have a plan for addressing them as they arise. Information from your assessment may be helpful in identifying potential obstacles. You may want to pilot the plan with willing volunteers, a small group, or for a limited time period-then integrate feedback from participants before introducing activities to the larger community. As part of your plan, describe what success looks like-and how you will know if you've achieved it.

Continue or extend the activities you initiated to gain buy-in and cultivate champions.

More ideas to consider are listed below:

Create time and space for individuals to practice-Secure a dedicated space for silent, contemplative practice

-Give explicit permission for staff to take mindful breaks, protecting this time in the schedule
-Offer contemplative retreat time as a professional development opportunity

Bring mindfulness into meetings. Use the following tools (in Resources):-Mindful Minute Meeting Opener--Curiosity is encouraged

-Hand-to-Heart Practice
--There is ample time and space for process
--All feelings, beliefs and perspectives are considered and respected
--Individuals recognize their behavior impacts others and are committed to understanding those impacts
--Common ground and shared values are sought.
-How to Use a Talking Piece
-Create collaborative agreements for team meetings that support a compassionate environment for open sharing and discussion such as:

Create a mindful partnership with a colleague or across your team. These exercises can help cultivate mindfulness and compassion with partners or groups:-Reflective Partnerships

-Just Like Me
-Sharing Feelings
-Moving Meditation: Felt Sense of Resilience
-Active Listening and Response

Periodically host mindful breaks-Silent "savor your lunch" break

-Mindful morning walk break
-Mindful movement break

Integrate informal mindfulness practices that staff can do with children-Balloon Breath

-Starfish Breath
-Calming Glitter Bottle
-Five Senses
-Pleasure Gazing

Begin supervision meetings or case conferences with a mindfulness practice-How Am I?

-Mindful Minute Meeting Opener
-Hand-to-Heart Practice

Start a mindfulness-based reflective practice group

Case Example: Simone Van Reeuwyk, an Infant Development Specialist at the Developmental Disabilities Association in Vancouver, British Columbia, highlights the importance of collaboration around efforts to integrate mindfulness within an organization. In 2018, Simone initiated a mindfulness-based reflective practice group in her organization. The voluntary group meets monthly to practice together and discuss their work through a mindfulness lens. Simone shares, "Discussing what you want the mindfulness space to be like is important. Coming together to create a shared vision and inviting people to express what they are hoping for, helps create a space where people feel more comfortable being open and vulnerable in the group." For Simone and her colleagues, this meant developing ground rules, which are reviewed at each meeting and edited as needed. Simone found starting the group this way helped make the environment safer and more inviting for collaboration. Simone adds that taking an inclusive and collaborative approach from the very beginning also helps others see a place for themselves in the group. Her recommendation: start with staff feedback to make sure your approach is a fit for your setting.

Sponsor a mindfulness-based training in your workplace
-Contact ZERO TO THREE to discuss customized opportunities

Bring in local mindfulness experts to speak to staff or as part of an event

Attend a professional retreat as a group to gain insights and momentum for your plan.

SPECIAL FOCUS: MINDFULNESS IN REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
If you are already engaged in formal reflective practice (supervision or groups), there are many opportunities to bring a fresh focus by adding mindfulness. A hallmark of reflective practice is to step back and see things as they actually are-to perceive what's present within the context of the environment and as part of the holistic experience of a person (child, parent, provider). This act of stepping back-examining things as they really are - takes practice.

One way that early childhood settings are creating opportunities for providers to strengthen emotional regulation and reflective practice is through reflective supervision. Mindfulness in reflective supervision expands self-awareness and strengthens providers' emotional regulation. Your organization may already be committed to reflective supervision as a distinct form of competency-based professional development. Emerging from a multitude of fields such as pediatrics, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and infant mental health, reflective supervision acknowledges that all early learning occurs in the context of relationships. In reflective supervision, the goal is to support the unique needs of the young child through relationships with competent adults. Attention is placed on all the relationships (supervisor and provider, provider and parent, and parent and child) that form a web of support around the child.

Parallel process is a foundational concept in reflective supervision and it recognizes that providers are growing alongside of the families they serve. Reflective supervision creates a supportive space, a holding environment, for understanding the simultaneous impact and influence of professional and personal experiences. On a practical level, reflective supervision means providers are given time to reflect on and consider conscious feelings, thoughts, and associations in the presence of a competent supervisor. It takes time to uncover and process unconscious material. Ongoing reflective supervision is well-suited for this task. Mindfulness is a powerful tool that allows thoughts, feelings, and interpretations to emerge in a non-judgmental context so they can be accepted and integrated. Supervisors can use mindfulness in the context of reflective supervision to help providers become skillful as they process and attend to the emotional material they naturally experience through caring for children and working with families.

When mindfulness practices are incorporated into reflective supervision, organizations lay a foundation for creating and sustaining nurturing environments, which gives children the warmth and security they need to feel safe. Nurturing environments allow children to discover themselves and their unique contributions to the collective. Nurturing environments support children as well as their families, care providers, and teachers. Promoting mindful, flexible, pro-social values is one of the four key principles of nurturing environments, according to researcher Biglan (2015). When organizations take the time and allocate the space adults need to explore and practice mindfulness and build their emotional regulation skills, these organizations are investing in children.

Resources and Tools to help bring mindfulness into Reflective Supervision with staff:

Case Example: The Division of Community and Family Support within the Colorado Office of Early Childhood (DCFS) offers an inspiring example of integrating mindfulness in a comprehensive way in a public institution. DCFS is demonstrating that relationship-based reflective practice can be embraced in a government setting.

The DCFS journey to integrate mindfulness and reflective practice started with reflection and strong leadership. Almost all of the programs supported by this division have model fidelity requirements that reflective supervision be practiced. "The first thing that caught my attention," reflects Mary Martin former Director of DCFS, "was the understanding of parallel process." Mary adds, "if this is what we are requiring of supervisors and managers in the field as a best practice-why are we not doing it for each other here in this office?" The second piece Mary noted was mindfulness. As an Infant Mental Health Practitioner, Mary found mindfulness a sensible option for workforce well-being.

Findings from an annual employee satisfaction survey showed a high degree of satisfaction at DCFS, but also evidence of work-related frustration and stress. Leaders in DCFS sought ways to improve. Jordana Ash, Director of Early Childhood Mental Health noticed a missing piece-ways of being present and reflective with each other. Jordana agreed with Mary, "reflective practice-was something we were promoting in the field, but we also wanted to use mindfulness and reflection to encourage and promote employee well-being internally in the office."

DCFS approached the innovation from a staff well-being perspective. In an administrative and governmental context, mindfulness and reflective practice concepts required a lot of translation for staff whose responsibilities do not include direct practice. DCFS used their continuous quality improvement process to get everyone on board. Heather Craiglow, Director of Colorado's Head Start Collaboration Office, offered, "Data was a critical component. We strongly believe in data and assessment of process, so using our data made sense and helped motivate staff." The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine publication, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation, also helped make their case around the importance of staff well-being.

Leaders within DCFS did a lot of work ahead of a pilot period to introduce foundational concepts of mindfulness and reflective practice. The staff who were providing reflective practice met weekly to learn about the topics through readings and discussions. During the one-year pilot period staff were asked to schedule dedicated time for reflective practice along with their regular twice-monthly 30 minutes of supervision time. Jordana added, "We did a lot of education, then let go. We truly believed that everyone has the capacity to do this. We believed in the potential for human growth and development-that staff would come along. We embraced a mindful approach to the process, allowing response flexibility, time, and space."

DCFS staff shared aspects they believe have been critical to the success of their project:

To roll out the pilot project, all staff received an introductory presentation lasting a few hours conducted by Mary, Jordana, and Heather, all of whom have experience providing reflective supervision. A breakout session at a staff retreat furthered staff understanding. Mary reflects, "[staff] hearts were in the right place, but some struggled with the process. One unit lead couldn't get past some resistance to reflective practice. I just decided it was going to be OK-that we wouldn't make a big deal about it and the slowing down and reflection emerged at a different pace."

The biggest barriers for DCFS were time and space. Effective practice requires privacy. For example, in one coaching group (for supervisors supervising other supervisors) confidentiality was hard to manage. This group shifted to using external scenarios, videos, and readings. instead of internal cases. One-on-one sessions with leadership were made available to retain confidentiality while continuing to reinforce the practice.

DCFS leadership continues to be reflective of the process. Because the employee satisfaction survey started with such a high baseline, staff are working through how to best measure and capture changes. They continue to explore questions about the utility of this approach. Ultimately, DCFS leaders agree, the project has helped everyone dig deeper into resilience and their own team relationships. Ways this project is in action at DCFS today:

Meetings begin with a mindful moment or centering activity

Staff participate in reflective groups

Information about reflective supervision and mindfulness in DCFS are included in orientation and onboarding materials.

Reflective supervision is a support for staff up and down the organizational chart (including for administrative assistants, communication technicians, and legislative and financial staff)

What does it look like when mindfulness and reflective practice are part of a culture? Mary offered, "I began to hear managers incorporating a reflective stance within their regular check-ins. Across staff, the language of slowing down is heard and mindfulness is modeled. Some Unit Directors have written in their own self-assessments how useful practicing mindfulness and reflection has been for them. DCFS leaders also see the appetite for these kinds of practices growing."

You are ready! Once you have articulated your collective intention for integrating mindfulness and identified the mindful activities you will introduce into your workplace, it's time to try it. Remember, practicing mindfulness requires slowing down and tuning in. This can feel unfamiliar and strange in our typically hectic and distracted work environments. Be patient, kind, and open with colleagues and staff as this process unfolds. Be the calm you are working to cultivate.

As you try different ways to integrate mindfulness into your workplace environment, consider the following checklist of tips and traps for bringing mindfulness to your organization:

Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
Some mindfulness practices can be triggering for trauma survivors or those coping with extreme stress-particularly sitting meditation and some breath practices. It's important, whenever we offer mindfulness practices, to have this in mind. Ways to help ensure mindfulness offerings at your work are safe and effective for everyone:

Practicing should always be voluntary, never forced.

Offer options for practices-for example, eyes open or closed, standing instead of sitting. If certain practices produce anxiety, offer alternative places to focus (listening to sounds instead of following the breath)

Let everyone know that it's always ok to modify (opening the eyes, practicing for shorter time periods, or taking breaks during an exercise) or stop the practice if they are becoming dysregulated.

Learn more about mindfulness and trauma, visit davidtreleaven.com.

STEP 6: MONITOR PROGRESS, ADAPT, CELEBRATE SUCCESS
To make mindfulness a sustainable part of your organizational or team practice and culture, make sure that you acknowledge progress along the way. This goes beyond merely accepting all levels of progress. It involves the understanding that cultural differences in the pace and ways we embrace mindful practices will exist because we live in a multicultural world. Periodically assess results and share what you learn. Celebrate success and honor any obstacles as teaching moments. Revisit your plan and make adaptations as needed. Information about a variety of mindfulness scales and measurement tools can be found here.

Consider expanding your organizational commitment to mindfulness, connecting to a larger network or professional organization, or presenting at a conference to share what you have accomplished.

Once mindfulness is being practiced consistently by staff, consider ways to expand the reach by sharing practices with families and children.

Case Example: Victor, a multi-site non-profit organization in California, is composed of two agencies that provide a wide array of services and support for people of all ages, including families with young children. Their services include early identification and intervention, wraparound services for children and youth with complex needs, Family Resource Centers, and many behavioral health programs. Victor has a long history of focusing on provider health and wellness and is committed to be a learning organization. In addition, there were several advocates for mindfulness across the organization. These factors helped create readiness for bringing mindfulness into this workplace.

One of the champions, Debbie Reno-Smith, LMFT, IFECMH-SP/RPM, Executive Director, was initially introduced to mindfulness through a colleague at Victor. After attending a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, Debbie developed a personal mindfulness practice and experienced many benefits, such as stress reduction. Debbie continued to develop her mindfulness practice and training skills by attending additional MBSR programming as well as a course in Mindful Self Compassion. During this journey and with the support of leadership, Debbie began to plant the seeds of mindfulness within her workplace by sharing information, including the science behind these practices.

Debbie began to talk about her experience with mindfulness to other staff. She shared information or a brief video during all staff meetings or opened the meeting with a few moments of mindfulness. This gradual introduction of concepts began to pique the interest of others. Debbie then created a program for staff, Work Life Integration, that was adapted from the MBSR curriculum. During the eight-week program, staff meet as a group for 90 minutes each week to learn about mindfulness as a tool for stress reduction in the workplace. Debbie explained, "Our staff are exposed to the many trauma stories of our families and I feel strongly about responding to the impact of this trauma exposure on staff. I find, time and time again, that support for the providers is what makes it possible for them to keep doing their jobs in the face of stress." Since its inception about six years ago, the Work Life Integration Program has been implemented five times across different Victor sites. The program fits well with the organization's strong focus on health, wellness, and continuous learning, and it's well-received by staff. Some have taken the program multiple times and others report continuing the mindful practices at work and in their personal life.

Dawn Fisher, LCSW, Executive Director of Victor Community Support Services - Victorville, explains that she was initially skeptical about mindfulness and wasn't sure it was a good fit for her. But, after hearing about Debbie's experience, she agreed to try it. "Once I took MBSR, mindfulness became valuable to me on a personal level." Dawn believes that others really need to experience the practice to understand the benefits.

Several staff who completed the Work Life Integration Program have gone on to be trained in the Mindful Schools curriculum and deliver that program in groups or during one-on-one work. Dawn reflects on the results for children who have participated in the Mindful Schools curriculum: "Their ability to settle, participate, and even lead is remarkably improved. Kids talk about using the practices at home to help with sleep, in moments when they feel anxious, or teaching [practices] to parents and siblings."

Debbie and Dawn offered tips for others interested in integrating mindfulness in their own organization:

Make it voluntary-focus on folks who are interested.

Carefully consider how it's presented-share the science and potential benefits.

Respect the diversity in your workplace. Ensure everyone feels included and that their personal values are being respected.

Share the effort with colleagues-it's hard for one person to carry the torch.

Balance education with experiential opportunities-offer videos, readings, and opportunities for discussion as well as time to slow down and focus.

Be creative and offer a variety of practices, including kindness and gratitude (which help team cohesion and morale), breathing, and mindful movement in the work setting on a day-to-day basis. At Victor, the practices are always linked to science and options are offered.

Start with staff first, then expand to sharing with children and families.

Conclusion

Whether you are just thinking about bringing mindfulness to your early childhood organization, or you have an already established program, we hope this toolkit offers helpful information and resources to support your efforts. We know that workplaces thrive when the health and well-being of staff is prioritized. And, that staff well-being is crucial to delivering effective services that support child and family well-being. The integration of mindfulness and compassion into the workplace is a powerful tool for creating and supporting healthy, high-performing teams and an organizational culture infused with awareness, intention, and success.

Glossary of Terms

Acknowledgements
WE ARE GRATEFUL TO THE MANY INDIVIDUALS WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS TOOLKIT
For their thoughtful insights:

For sharing their experiences with us:
And to the Maritz Family Foundation whose generous support made development of the toolkit possible.
Resources

There are different types of resources within this section. There are some resources to support reflection and inquiry. There are also mindfulness practice resources. Some are internal awareness practices while others are exercises meant to be done with a partner or group. There are also practices that can be done with children.

The internal awareness practices can be tried a variety of ways:

Read through the practice first, then try it.

Try the practice as you read.

Have another person read the script to you.

Read the script to a group.

Record yourself reading the script, then play it back and practice along.

The practices and exercises have approximate time frames which can be adapted to your own needs. Prior to starting, it's helpful to let participants know approximately how long each practice will take, particularly when guiding internal awareness practices. Becoming still and focusing inward can feel unfamiliar so also remember to go slowly, be gentle and give options:

Practicing should always be voluntary, never forced.

Offer options for practices - for example, eyes open or closed, standing instead of sitting. If certain practices produce anxiety offer alternative places to focus (listening to sounds instead of following the breath).

Let everyone know that it's always ok to modify (opening the eyes, practicing for shorter time periods, or taking breaks during an exercise) or stop the practice if they are becoming dysregulated.

After a practice, check in with participants and ask if anyone feels comfortable sharing how the practice felt. This is an opportunity to model open, non-judgmental acceptance of the experience.

Looking for more information and support?

ZERO TO THREE provides a range of consultation services, professional development experiences, and technical assistance designed to support organizations' use of mindfulness practices with staff and families. Our services can be customized based on your professional discipline or setting, and delivered via a range of formats including:

Onsite Workshops

Webinars and Virtual Interactive Workshops

Coaching for staff and supervisors

Communities of practice

Keynotes and conference presentations

Retreat development and facilitation

Technical Assistance

Consulting and customized ongoing support

Contact us to learn more about mindfulness-related content offerings including topics such as:

Becoming a mindful workplace

Workforce wellbeing and preventing burnout

Team building and communication

Enhancing reflective supervision

Supporting social emotional learning through mindfulness

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Getting Started with Mindfulness: A Toolkit for Early Childhood Organizations (now available in English & Spanish) - ZERO TO THREE

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WHAT IS MINDFULNESS? In this resource, mindfulness is thought of as intentional and non-judgmental present-moment awareness. This kind of awareness means we are purposefully paying attention to what is happening around us, what is happening inside us, what we are doing, and how we are doing and feeling without judging or analyzing.

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Pacific Southwest MHTTC | Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC) Network