Exploring Family Child Care
Development and Marketing Intern Jonathan Oei shares an interview where he spotlights one of our other Izzi Early Education programs.
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Hi Izzi family! I caught up with Nancy Pantoja, our Family Child Care Manager to dive deeper into our Family Child Care program and what makes it so special.
J: What is Family Child Care?
N: What it is is, our agency actually contracts with independent contractors which are our family child care providers. They are independently owned so they run their own contract and everything with the family. What we do is we contract them, provide them with the children and the families, and they provide the care.
J: What kind of services do you provide?
N: With our contract with them, they have to provide everything that a center would be providing. So they would be providing the help. We have a family services specialist, who is Isabel. She actually supports the family care providers making sure that the families all receive our services. Those families still make sure they get the health component, mental health, dental, and everything that’s done with the Head Start program, because that's our children.
J: How do you assess and monitor children's progress and development?
N: What we do is we get reports from the DRDP, and those are put into the reports from the providers. They actually put up the DRDP results that they get from the child. As they are observing and having activities and know where the child is from their academics, they create an ILP (individual learning plan), and they provide the activities to work on what the child needs.
J: What makes FCC unique?
N: It makes it unique, because they’re in a family's home and get that individualized care in a smaller setting. It is set up like a preschool or a daycare with all the learning centers like a science area, math area, they’ll have manipulatives in there, you know different areas for the children to learn. They have activities, menus posted, and they have a license. The provider also has a degree, an associated degree. It's very similar to the center, but it's different because it's in someone's home. I think it's so important to say they are in a smaller setting so they can get that 1 on 1.
Our FCC program is such a unique experience. Thank you so much to Nancy for taking the time to talk to me and for letting me interview you!
