Project Description
The Infant-Toddler Trauma-Informed Care Project 2.0 (ITTI Care 2.0) is a “next-level” version of the original ITTI Care Project, modified based on lessons learned during six years of implementation with teachers and administrators at all levels of early childhood infrastructure. The ITTI Care team has worked intensively to train, coach, and support teachers, directors, family child care home professionals, and the coaches and organizations that form their infrastructure of support. Built around promotion of adult capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation, this model centers workforce wellness as the fundamental component of high-quality early care and education (ECE). Participation in ITTI Care produced significant outcomes for coaches, teachers, and children. However, teacher turnover continues to be a substantial problem, particularly in infant and toddler classrooms, resulting in inconsistent care and difficulty building the secure attachments necessary for early relational health.
ITTI Care 2.0 modifies the ITTI Care model to focus more intensively with child care directors. Directors are ECE leaders, which best positions them to create meaningful change in center climates for educators, children, and families. They are also more likely than teachers to remain in the same position across many years, increasing their capacity to promote sustainable change. By focusing on the center-level changes that directors can facilitate and maintain, we hope to more broadly impact classrooms, teachers, children, and families.
Project staff will train and support child care center directors and ECE coaches to become experts in trauma-informed child care. Center directors can use their knowledge about trauma and center climate to promote workforce wellness and guide teachers in providing trauma-informed care to the children in their classrooms. ECE coaches will consult with and support directors to make center-level changes that promote relationship-based practices within the centers.
Project Goals
- Build a professional development framework for the early care and education (ECE) workforce across the state of North Carolina that will promote workforce wellness and trauma-informed child care, with an emphasis on center-level change through directors and administrators.
Improve knowledge about trauma, classroom structure and climate, caregiver/child relationships, co-regulation, and self-regulation development in early childhood. - Evaluate the effects of ITTI Care on:
- Director knowledge, stress and wellness, and center policies and practices
- Teacher stress and wellness, retention, perception of workplace climate, and use of relationship-based practices
- Classroom climate, based on observer ratings
- Child social-emotional development and relational health