This month the Lamoille Council meeting hosted Michelle Salvador, the Vermont Department of Health’s Substance Abuse Prevention Consultant for the Lamoille Valley. The Council has worked with Michelle over the years on critical supports for young families in need, be it efforts to start a homeless shelter in Hyde Park, advocate for early prevention at the Accountable Community for Health or spread the word about medication and needle disposal. At our meeting this month at the Lamoille Family Center, Michelle reviewed the current research on marijuana use in pregnancy along with Robin Rieske her colleague from Brattleboro.
Other areas of focus at the standing room only meeting included a review of the upcoming legislative session and the process of agenda setting – presented by the inimitable Matt Levin, of the Vermont Early Childhood Advocacy Alliance, and the regular exciting review of all the events, trainings and activities going on for young families in the region. The Council is particularly happy to be helping the Family Center to sponsor a water based playgroup at Northern Vermont University, Johnson.
Last fall, the Lamoille Council and the Central Vermont Council began to get a number of questions about where Child Care Centers might find CPR and First Aid training that met their licensing requirements – Both Councils were able to leverage small amounts of discretionary funds, including those from our Help Me Grow partners, in order to offer a number of trainings – some quite expensive.
In Lamoille, we worked together with DJ Masi at Creative Workforce Solutions, Joanne Rouleau at Northern Lights, the Green Mountain Technology and Career Center and the Hardwick Rescue Squad to train more than twenty child care providers. Each organization contributed resources and staff time to make the certification very affordable for students.
One of the attendees, Ashley Brown of Elmore – who runs Capstone Head Start’s Home Visiting program, took the class and was inspired to become an instructor herself. As many of you know, changes in licensing were announced earlier this summer which shortened the time in which a Child Care provider is required to get their CPR and First Aid training from six months to three months from starting work in the field. At the same time Ashely offered to the Council that she had become certified to teach Infant First Aid, CPR, and AED use by Vermont EMS.
The collaboration worked again, and this fall, thanks to the work of all the same partners, we’re rolling out three trainings for Child Care providers and the public – meeting the licensing requirements, providing training, making our region safer, and integrating multiple partners. That’s what we strive for!
Next month, we’ll focus on our work supporting the regional voices around Universal PreK and describe our exciting Council expansion. Thanks for all you do for young families in Vermont!
