Early childhood educators are grappling with social, emotional, and behavioral issues in their classrooms, particularly since the onset of the COVID pandemic. Research has shown that social-emotional skills may be enhanced by high quality early care and education (ECE) programs. This reality led Kylie Garber, PhD, a research scientist at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), to conduct a landscape analysis of current North Carolina programs that support child care providers, specifically with social-emotional development. Her work is detailed in Supporting Social-Emotional Development in North Carolina Child Care Programs: A Landscape Analysis of Programs for Child Care Providers, Technical Assistance Providers, and Children and Families with Disabilities. 

Garber, an early career scholar, is a member of FPG’s Research-Policy and Practice Collaboration, which has an ongoing collaboration with the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. DCDEE supports children’s social-emotional development by providing support to the child care workforce through technical assistance (TA.) This service helps ECE facilities improve programs, standards, and quality. 

In 2022 and 2023, DCDEE—with the help of an FPG team led by FPG Senior Research Scientist Sandra Soliday Hong, PhD—conducted an evaluation study on the implementation of the pyramid model. This framework for early educators offers evidence-based practices to help support children's social-emotional development. This model had been implemented in a few classrooms across the state. While the study found benefits from using the pyramid model, the crisis in the child care workforce—including low wages and high teacher turnover—made implementation of the model challenging. 

With the desire to reevaluate its priorities to support social-emotional development, DCDEE asked Garber’s team to conduct a landscape analysis of current programs to better support child care providers in their work on students’ social-emotional development. Between January and September 2024, Garber explored existing programs in North Carolina designed to support the ECE workforce in providing nurturing environments for social-emotional development, focusing on resources freely available to providers or paid for by state or federal funds.

In addition to providing an overview of current programs, Garber compiled recommendations on needed services. To do that, she conducted interviews with 16 early childhood professionals from across the state, primarily those in leadership roles and/or TA specialists who work in classrooms helping teachers on a day-to-day basis. With support from FPG Hong and Project Coordinator Jada Walker, MEd, Garber compiled available resources into a document that for dissemination to child care providers and policy makers involved in teacher training and workforce retention.

“The job of an early educator is not easy―especially when our nation is still healing from a global pandemic,” said Garber. “It has been so rewarding for me to have spent so much time connecting with leaders in policy and practice who are so passionate about supporting early educators to help children and their families achieve the best possible developmental outcomes. I feel a lot of hope among the early care and education community in North Carolina.”

The work has already had an impact. Garber and her colleagues offered two webinars in 2024, aimed at the child care community, which shared an overview of existing resources available to help children, especially those who are exhibiting challenging behaviors in the classroom. The more than 300 people who registered for the April webinar received the list of resources gathered through the landscape analysis process. In August, the second webinar focused on resources designed for children with disabilities and their families.

Garber said that it is important for people to know that there are many excellent programs in the state. She mentioned the Healthy Social Behaviors Program, in which TA providers with knowledge specific to social-emotional development work directly with teachers to address challenging behaviors. “The only issue is that they can't serve everyone,” said Garber. “There's still a lot of room for growth in this state to help support child care programs, especially those in rural areas, or in family child care homes.”

She cited that as one example of where the state needs to move forward in expanding access to services. Garber suggests another important next step is mental health consultation in which a provider with more specialized knowledge, such as a licensed clinical social worker, works in the classroom to help teachers with strategies, especially for children who are struggling more than others or who may be at risk for later mental health conditions.

Since getting the word out about these resources to child care providers is a hurdle, Garber is working to share the information with as many people as possible who can then share the resources with others in their communities. She and her colleagues have disseminated the information through the registrants of the webinars as well as through early care and education leaders throughout the state who can disseminate through their networks. 

In addition to sharing the longer report, Garber created a one-page sheet listing the major programs in the state, which has already been used by at least one community to create a more county-specific contact list.

“The job of an early educator is not easy―especially when our nation is still healing from a global pandemic,” said Garber. “It has been so rewarding for me to have spent so much time connecting with leaders in policy and practice who are so passionate about supporting early educators to help children and their families achieve the best possible developmental outcomes. I feel a lot of hope among the early care and education community in North Carolina.”