Family Childcare Providers Learn About Asthma Using: Creating a Healthy Home and Managing Asthma Online Training
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MAAP’s Creating a Healthy Home and Managing Asthma is a free, four-part training designed for MA family childcare providers to learn how to maintain healthy childcare environments. Key learning topics include healthy home principles, lead poisoning prevention, and asthma management.
Since the release of the training, it has been used and adapted with great enthusiasm – with 119 Family Childcare Providers trained. Many trainers in the family childcare field are required to provide a certain number of training hours and have used the Creating a Healthy Home and Managing Asthma to supplement their trainings and/or provide trainees an alternative to in-person trainings for more flexibility.
Sharline Del Rosario, a training coordinator at Lowell’s Acre Family Child Care recently used the online training as part of a full day training for family childcare providers.
“This training is completely essential for all family educators to go through. I think it is a wonderful training to go through to not only learn the information for themselves, but to improve the health of the people we work with. I’m going to spread the word about how great it is.”
There were approximately 15 participants and they included a diverse group of family childcare educators, drivers, and systems staff. Sharline used the online training as a learning tool and went through it together with participants, pausing to emphasize key points and answering questions. The training was insightful, easy to follow, and participants became aware of how the home environment can affect a child’s health, and how to identify and prevent asthma triggers. Trainers and participants appreciated how the online training reference local data such as Lawrence and Lowell and make a link between old buildings and health.
Through the online training, it also became apparent that it could be used to educate parents as well since children can be exposed to asthma triggers in their own homes.
“I shared the training with my daughter whose son suffers from severe asthma. We learned about triggers we did not know existed and it has not only helped us learn how to help him but it has also helped me make sure my daycare is safe for all children entering my home. The information on Lead Poisoning was just as helpful. Thank you for sharing this information!”
The online training provides an opportunity to share practical knowledge and improve the health of children in the places where they live, learn and play. Currently, the information is only available in English, but it will be available in Spanish in the future. Please help spread the word about this training! For more information, contact Edgar Duran Elmudesi.