Resources & News

Courses, Webinars & Workshops

Hosted by Start Early Professional Learning Network

New Training Opportunity

Illinois Contraceptive Access Now (ICAN!) is a contraceptive accessibility initiative working with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) across the state to make sure that all people in Illinois can access high-quality, trauma-informed contraceptive care without financial barriers if they want or need it. ICAN! provides support to home visiting staff and other social service providers to help you refer your clients to partnering FQHCs for contraceptive and primary care needs. Watch ICAN!’s free, on-demand 15-minute training video on Connecting Communities to Birth Control (available with Spanish subtitles) to learn how to have a person-centered conversation with your clients on birth control and connect them to care. You can also use ICAN!’s birth control quiz to help clients learn about their options. Learn more at https://ican4all.org/. If you are interested in tailored support or a facilitated training for your team, please reach out to Isha Datta (idatta@alliancechicago.org).

Home Visitor Reflective Practice Groups

We continue to offer these opportunities for home visitors and doulas to gather virtually, across models and regions of the state to reflect on their work and a specific theme each month. Some folks attend regularly, others episodically—whatever meets the schedule and interest of direct service staff. The groups are offered in English and Spanish. Please share the flyer with the dates with your team. The July-September dates are now available for registration at www.startearly.org/PLN; HV RPG July-September; Grupos julio-septiembre

Start Early PLN Course Catalog:

You can find our most current Course Catalog with descriptions of our offerings here: PLNCourseCatalog-Spring2023

Resources to Expand Your Knowledge

Community & Family Resources

Community & Family Resources

Chicago Beyond has announced a $1.6 million, multiyear investment in Centro Sanar, a non-profit treatment center that provides bilingual and bicultural mental health services for Latinx communities on the Southwest Side of Chicago. This partnership supports Centro Sanar’s replicable, alternative model to the current mental health industry to address critical, nationwide mental health service gaps in Latinx communities.

Centro Sanar is committed to providing access to culturally sensitive, community-centered care. The team offers a wide range of mental health services, helps people to overcome barriers to seeking support, and provides treatment at multiple sites to increase accessibility to services. Learn more about Centro Sanar and its services here. 

Access to Doctor’s Appointments
Need help getting to a doctor’s visit? Use the Illinois Medicaid Managed Care Consumer Benefits Transportation Toolkit Link to learn how to set up a ride, what additional rides are covered by your plan, and what to think about when planning ahead. MCOMembertoolkit

Governor Pritzker Launches Illinois Cares for Kids Statewide Enrollment Campaign
“I Got Love / ¡Siento Amor!”
Governor JB Pritzker announced the launch of “I Got Love / ¡Siento Amor!”, the statewide enrollment campaign for childcare and early education services, featuring Illinois artists, musicians, and production partners. More information on programs is available at www.illinoiscaresforkids.org/

Affordable Connectivity Program
The Region 5 Office of Child Care has announced that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is now open. The ACP is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) program to help low-income households pay for internet service and connected devices. Eligible households can enroll in the ACP through an approved provider or by visiting one of two simple and easy-to-use websites: ACPBenefit.org or GetInternet.gov.

Keep Medicaid Coverage
Starting May 2023, we must ask Medicaid customers in Illinois to renew their healthcare coverage. People who use Medicaid have had continuous coverage since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Congress has ended the pause on annual eligibility verifications, known as redeterminations, or simply, renewals. Visit the website for more information.

Programs & Staff Resources

• July is BIPOC Mental Health Month. You can download resources from Mental Health America: https://www.mhanational.org/bipoc/mental-health-month  
• Home Visiting Services for Refugee, Immigrant, Migrant, and Dual Language Learner Families: The National Home Visiting Resource Center has just released this brief highlighting five home visiting programs across the country using innovative, strengths-based practices. Program staff discussed strategies for supporting these families, such as removing barriers to program enrollment, leveraging community partnerships, and recruiting home visitors who represent the community’s culture and language.
• Family Voices Launches Prosperity in Health Care Toolkit: A toolkit website designed to support the important work of promoting prosperity for all in health care. The website offers concrete tools designed to support organizations and individuals to become more culturally competent and responsive by building meaningful engagement with Black children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) and their families. 
• Reflective Supervision: A Planning Tool for Home Visiting Supervisors: The Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation has published this tool as part of The Supporting and Strengthening the Home Visiting Workforce project, which seeks to understand reflective supervision in the home visiting context: how it should be defined, measured, and bolstered to improve staff, program, and family outcomes. Another product of this project is a report titled Improving Home Visitor Professional Well-Being: A Resource for State and Tribal Home Visiting Programs, Model Representatives, and Local Programs.

Research Opportunities

General Information

• Addressing Common Challenges with Children: The ChildMind Institute has published some helpful information on tantrums and meltdowns.childmind.org-How to Handle Tantrums and Meltdownschildmind.org-Cómo manejar las rabietas y las crisis emocionales
• Rapid Response Webinars: These webinars explore important topics such as mindful self-compassion, changes to Medicaid; supporting family economic mobility, and others. You can find the recordings here.
• Crisis and Suicide Lifeline: “988” National Dialing Code
  Earlier this year the US launched “988” to access the National Crisis and Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The Lifeline is a national network of over 200 local, independent crisis centers equipped to help people in mental health-related distress or experiencing a suicidal crisis via call, chat, or text. The Lifeline provides free and confidential support to people in suicidal crisis or mental health-related distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across the U.S.
• Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development e-Newsletter: Interested in checking out the e-newsletter from the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development? Click here to register to receive the e-newsletter or briefings in the future.
• Home Visiting Strategies with Parents with Cognitive Challenges:
  Brookes Publishing Blog Post:https://blog.brookespublishing.com/9-ways-home-visitors-can-support-parents-with-cognitive-disabilities/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=exacttarget&utm_campaign=040623-ec-newsletter
• Forgiveness research: The latest research on the health and well-being benefits of forgiveness.https://wapo.st/3Nl8zog
• DIB Resources: Raising awareness about transgender people
  • https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/us/transgender-visibility-awareness-support-iyw/index.html
  • https://www.nypl.org/books-more/recommendations/trans-reads/kids
  • https://www.hrc.org/resources/international-transgender-day-of-visibility
  • https://www.glaad.org/tdov
• New infographic from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child on the environment of children:
  • Place matters: what surrounds us shapes us – HCDC_Infographic
  • El lugar importa: Lo que nos rodea nos define – HCDC_Infographic_Spanish