(upbeat music) (Graphic bubble Pops) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

The Lima YWCA Child Care Resource & Referral offers a wide range of programs to help children and parents grow together.

The focus is on children from zero to six years old.

We're joined by Lisa Morales, who is an Early Childhood Education Specialist, and Dave Zuber, who is an Outreach Parent Specialist.

So thank you both for being here.

Lisa, tell us overall what the program is.

So for people who aren't extremely familiar with it, get an overall view of all of the things you offer, and then we'll talk in detail about the specifics, because you guys do an incredible amount of different things that deal with families and children.

- Yes, thank you so much for having us.

Well, the YWCA of Northwest Ohio is in Lima, where we are located in Mansfield and Toledo.

And we cover 20 counties in northwest Ohio, where we do a variety of things.

We specifically work in childcare resource and referral, where we'll talk about that in a minute, but our agency as a whole does a variety of things really just to help the community as a whole.

We have a domestic violence shelter.

We have a sexual assault services, where we provide support for those persons.

We have youth development, which right now during the summer has great summer camps for teenagers all over the place; racial justice, where they're doing advocacy and equity work with workshops, webinars, some of them even online, so anybody can participate.

One thing we're just now starting is called Amend Together, which is a prevention initiative for men and boys to help with ending violence against women before it even begins, which is fantastic.

Also, Healthy Connections, which as a woman, I really appreciate.

They do breast cancer screening services for free and all sorts of women health services.

So we do a variety of things beyond the childcare resource and referral work that we do, really just to help promote wellness and justice and equity in all of our communities.

- And Dave, I know when you look at these things, obviously, they're all focused on being family-oriented.

But as you mentioned, I think, to Lisa, but Dave, you're an outreach specialist dealing with parents and families all the time.

So talk about some of the things that you do when you start to deal with people or get people into these programs.

- [Dave] Some of the stuff that we do here at the Lima YWCA, but also up in Toledo and Mansfield office, we do parent classes.

So we have a little wide variety of it.

We do act raising safe kids parenting classes and nurturing parenting classes.

So if it's a court appointed the judge, they need to do anything along the lines of that that is appointed by them.

Then it's a eight session class that they have to abide by and there's little homework little throughout the time.

And throughout the time, once they graduate, then they get a certificate and it's up to the agency that referred them to us what their next step would be.

Along with those two parenting classes, I am starting up a fatherhood class, so there's not really much of a need, at least in the Lima area for fatherhood classes.

So we're starting that up and hopefully getting that up and going up in August and September time for our first class.

So once we get that started, hopefully, we can get some fathers that's connected.

It's through the National Fatherhood Initiative.

So it can be a one-day class, but I'm breaking it up into a two-day class.

So we have fathers show up for both sessions and just have a healthier connection for the fathers to be able to connect with one another, because some of the fathers might not have a connection whatsoever of outside.

- So it's a way for maybe people who are fathers who may have not had a role model or a mentor or someone to kind of share experiences and kind of learn from each other, and you guys are there to kind of help enhance that, in other words?

- [Dave] Yes, sir.

And it goes through five traits or characteristics.

- [Steve] Okay.

- And then there's 12 key behaviors that go along within those five key characteristics.

Then help build them, not just as a father, but helps connect as a husband as well.

So in the long haul of it all.

- So what would some of those traits be?

What would be the thing if I walk in there and you say, "Okay, here's what we're gonna talk about."

What would you highlight for me?

- The first one is kind of, I would like to think of the most important one is your self-awareness of what you need to be aware of.

Yourself, obviously, and just be able to, because if you take care of yourself first and foremost, then therefore, you can help take care of your loved ones around you.

So that would be my first and foremost, be able to concentrate on that.

And then from there, you're just building as a better caregiver, a better husband, just to be able to have a better connection overall with them all.

- Well, and one of you mentioned too, the fact that you're getting referrals from other agencies and other organizations.

So talk a little about some of the other people you work with, because obviously, you guys do specific things.

One of the things we'll talk about too is in fact, you aren't a childcare provider.

You're a resource and a referral for that.

But who are some of the other people that you work with, other agencies?

- [Lisa] Well, part of the work we do is in the foster care world.

So that is new to us in the past few years.

We've been around for over two decades actually doing the work we do.

But we help recruit qualified foster families, and we assist with their retention and their support and with supplies that they need.

So each of our offices, each of the three offices does that sort of work.

One of the things that Dave does in his work too is when people are searching for childcare, we provide services for that.

So if you wanna talk about that process.

- [Dave] Yeah, if they ever need any search of childcare for any of our 20 counties, they give myself a call in the Lima area or up in Toledo, Mansfield, and there's one person at least designated to be able to help them out.

- [Steve] At each location, yeah.

- [Dave] It takes around 10 minutes or so of their times just to call with the questions that we ask 'em, ask if there's any special needs, the location that they're at, if they wanna have like a radius of where they're at their house, their work, the ages of the child, obviously, and then there's two different types of childcare.

There's childcare centers, which is kind of just like a business-run in a separate building, and then a type A and type B that we ask.

And if there's certain preferences or they have just something that they prefer more that we kind of help narrow that down for.

- [Steve] No, I'm sorry.

So what are the difference between like a type A and a type B facility?

- [Lisa] Oh, that's a family childcare.

So that's based in a home.

They're both licensed by the county.

And type A, they have up to 12 children with two staff members.

And type B is up to six children with just one staff member.

And we work with all of the type of programs.

And we do work with the licensing specialists.

We work with other resource and referral offices.

This is something that is available across the state.

So not just in the 20 counties we work, but every single county has resource and referral offices.

So anybody can find these services elsewhere if they're not close to us.

- Now, when you get a referral from someone or someone just calls, makes a cold call to you, a family member or a parent or whoever, what's the process they go through at that point?

You obviously get information from them.

Do you find it difficult to get people simply to become aware or call?

Or is it becoming easier, I guess?

- [Dave] The word is getting out better.

- [Steve] Okay.

- [Dave] Because here in the Lima office, we used to be a big mansion on Market Street, and a lot of people that tore down and what they didn't think the YWCA existed.

- [Steve] Was around anymore, okay.

- [Dave] But now we're in a building just a block over, and the word's getting out more.

We go out to different events, we go out to the providers.

So we're able to get the YWCA word out of- - [Lisa] Social media is very helpful.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- [Lisa] Getting our word out that way.

- [Dave] So they're contacting us more, people are dropping by to our office, just be able to help out with whether they're childcare providers or they're families that are in need of whatever they might need that they have at this certain time.

- Okay, when we come back, we can talk more, because obviously, there's a lot more things we can talk about in detail too.

We're with Lisa Morales and Dave Zuber from the Lima YWCA Childcare Resource & Referral.

Back in just a moment here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

We're with Lisa Morales and Dave Zuber from Lima YWCA Childcare Resource & Referral.

And Lisa, when we were talking that last segment, you mentioned the fact that you work with a lot of the childcare providers.

So talk about the scope of that and the things you do and what you provide them and the challenges of course that they have and you have as we work through childcare, because it's at the top of everybody's list on things that we aren't providing as well as we ought to.

So talk about what you do and how you help make that better for people.

- Well, I wear a lot of hats, as do childcare providers.

We do a lot of things.

My favorite thing that we do is provide what we call technical assistance.

I think of it more like mentoring or coaching, where we go into the classroom, we work with the teachers, we work with any staff, we work with administrators.

We do a variety of things.

We can work with anything from lesson planning to specific behavior challenges to classroom setup and materials to working on how do you write a lesson plan, any of those things, especially new teachers coming in that are very green or seasoned teachers that are just like, "I don't know what to do now.

I've tried everything."

So we can come in and help with strategies with those things.

We help administrators with a lot of the paperwork.

A lot of the changes that come down the line, especially with things like the quality rating improvement systems or step up to quality, as our state calls it, any of the changes that come along with that.

Any initiatives that come down from the state.

Any sort of funding that comes from grants, any of the applications, the reconciliation process, how do you spend the money, what can we do with it.

We get all the information from that.

We take trainings and webinars so we can help with that process.

We do trainings.

So we do professional development.

We do that online, we do that in person.

We do private trainings where a center can close down for the day or do it on a weekend so that their staff members and their families don't have to find childcare.

They can just have us come in off hours and teach their staff, because the state does require ongoing training for all childcare teachers every year.

So we can do that.

- What are some of the things, as you've been in this for a while, what are some of the things that have changed for, you know, you're talking about training for providers.

What's different now than it was, say 5 years ago, 10 years ago that you now keep them up to speed and make sure they're in line with what's supposed to be happening.

- Yeah, well, COVID has happened.

- [Steve] Ah, okay, yeah.

- So health and safety has been a big one for us, making sure that everybody is following those rules.

We do a lot of business supports, and we have a whole entity, part of our agency that works with business supports.

And working with sustainability with staffing has been really big on the administrative end.

Just making sure that that's happening.

Children were home for a very long time.

So making sure that children that are in the early childhood world are ready for kindergarten, because they miss some critical years of classroom skills and development.

- [Steve] And socialization, yeah.

- [Lisa] So yes, a lot of that behavior management sort of thing.

And how do you act?

You just hit somebody when somebody takes your toy.

How do you learn to use your words?

How do you express yourself when you have big emotions?

So a lot of that has definitely changed.

But kids are still kids.

- [Steve] Sure.

- [Lisa] Kids still need developmentally appropriate practices.

Kids still need open-ended activities.

None of that has changed in the past 20 years that I've been doing this work.

But just really- - Yeah.

Now, Dave, I know you have a lot of programs that you deal with specifically.

Talk about some of the specific things, because we were talking about some really kind of interesting, like the resource libraries and things like, but you have a lot of other specific programs that you implement and participate in.

- [Dave] Yeah, like, so one of the things for the resource library that all three of our offices provide, if you want to come in and check something out of our office, it just works just like a regular public library.

Like where they check out something for a book.

But they can come into our office, they can check, there's no limit.

But we try limit it to around 10 items, usually max.

But families and childcare providers can come check educational items out, helps their kids, whether they're out of childcare or they're at home, they need something to do during the summertime, because right now, there's a lot of families that are starting to come in for a resource library.

So they can come in, check out.

We have several hundred items that they can come in and check out.

And then 30 days later, they bring it back.

They can check other items out as well.

So that's in all three of our offices.

So if they ever wanna stop by the Lima, Mansfield, or Toledo office, they're more than welcome to.

- It's a great resource, because obviously, it allows them to learn on their own time as well.

And because you guys obviously are providing other instruction or referring them to other agencies.

I know you do a lot of other things that are maybe a little more active, fun sounding, because resource library's a very good resource, but it doesn't sound super exciting to some people.

You guys do a lot of things out there that really are enthusiastic sounding.

So talk about some of those things.

- [Dave] One of the things, it's called Family Fund Learning Group that's in a Lima office that I do specifically.

It's through the United Way of Greater Lima.

And it's something that's, per COVID, like she was mentioning earlier, that it took a backseat.

And now that people are finally starting to get out more and more, that I've made it my own since I've started at the YW.

And Family Fun Learning group, families can show up once a month.

And we have five different sessions throughout that month at 10:00 AM during the weekday, 1:30 in the afternoon on a weekday, 5:30 or the Saturday at 11:00.

So we try to get families as much as possible.

Right now, we average throughout the month, we average about 35 families that show up throughout the month.

And it's a free service that we provide through the YWCA, because it's funded through the United Way of Greater Lima.

And I have six to seven families that show up each session.

And I hand out free books, free activities.

Some of the months I've done during, I try to do it month-appropriate kind of long lines like- - [Steve] Theme to something that's going- - [Dave] November has been Thanksgiving, January snowman, in preparation for Dr. Seuss's birthday in March, in February, do Dr. Seuss.

And then we just had a solar eclipse happen in April.

So in March, we did the solar eclipse, just the whole space theme, a long line of that.

We handed out solar clips classes.

And with that, whenever I do my themes for the month, I do my best to dress up as a character.

- [Steve] You do characters.

- [Dave] I have pictures.

- [Steve] We have pictures, okay, good.

- [Dave] The parents love it.

The kids show up whenever they walk in the door.

I always greet them whenever they show up to try to enjoy it, to make it interactive.

- [Lisa] As both of us are our former early childhood educators and teachers, that's a great way to show parents too how you can embed learning within play.

And that's what we do with our teachers.

That's what we try to do with all of our parents as well.

When you're playing with Play-Doh, when you're building with blocks, when you're painting, there's learning that happens during all of that.

And teaching the general public that when you're playing with children, it's not just babysitting, that the work that we do, it's very professional work, and it takes a lot of skill, a lot of patience.

But it's also a lot of fun and a lot of great learning takes place.

And Dave does that with his work, and we do that with all the work we do with our providers as well.

- [Steve] Yeah, we come back, 'cause obviously, what you see on the front of this, there's behind that is all the other preparation, all the things.

And just the idea too that what you're trying to do is not basically teach in a direct way in terms of saying, "Hey, we're gonna lecture you today on this."

It's to make it involving and make it so it's enjoyable and it's fun and you're learning without even, to some degree, maybe know you're learning, which is good for all of us in some ways.

So back in just a moment with Lisa Morales and Dave Zuber from Lima YWCA Childcare Resource & Referral.

Back in just a moment.

Here with us on The Journal, our guests are Dave Zuber and Lisa Morales from Lima YWCA Childcare Resource & Referral.

Lisa, we've talked a lot and we've talked about some specifics generally about what you folks do, but there are a lot of other specific programs that people should hear about in detail because it might kind of pique their interest.

Say, "Oh, wait a minute.

I didn't know you guys did that specifically.

That's perfect for what I need, the resource that I need."

So talk about some of the specific programs again.

- Sure.

So if you're somebody who's interested in providing childcare, we do have starting a program.

So we have a great need for childcare in our state.

All over the country, we do.

So if you're interested in starting family childcare business in your home, being a business owner, or even starting a center, your own childcare program, we can help you with all of the resources for that.

Just contact us.

If you're interested in furthering your education, we have CDA classes, which is the Child Development Associate.

We can help with those classes.

We provide a ton of business supports.

If you're already in the field as an administrator, we would love to help you with anything, with your marketing or your payroll, any of those sort of business things that you need.

But also, just any sort of teaching classroom supports too.

We have a lot of programs for that.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, you make an interesting point because obviously, people that are providing childcare, many of them are in it because they like to work with children.

The business part is something that maybe, like a lot of us, maybe that's not our strong point, but yet they have to have that part functioning correctly in order to then be able to stay in business to deliver this service, which is what they wanna be doing specifically.

So yeah, it's good to know that that sort of support is there, because as we all know, paperwork is the thing that wears you down after a while as well.

Now Dave, you obviously too, you were talking about some of the things, but you have a lot of collaboration that you do with people and other organizations as well.

So talk about some of the other things that you do also.

- Yes, as the outreach parent specialist, it's my job for the YWCA to get our name out there and try to make connections through the community, different agencies, whatever it might be.

One of the things that I'm happy about that we get a start is we work through the Apollo Career Center here in Lima.

And we're helping out giving 'em some space, and everything goes along the lines of that with ESOL classes.

English speakers of other languages.

So they're coming in here, starting at the end of August, and we're gonna be hosting classes.

They have instructors through the Apollo Aspire program, and they'll be doing that starting the end of August.

And it'll be going through, they have three different sessions going on from end of August to June of 25.

So that is one nice collaboration that we're able to have a good connection with.

Another thing that we like to work with is the Autism Life Center in Lima.

But they're not just in the Lima area.

They also spread out to the other counties around the Lima area.

So we go to events, try to help them out.

Tera Viola, the executive director that is there, that founded it, she comes to our office.

We try to work with her as much as possible, try to encourage whatever we can do to help as the YWCA to help them out.

And other ones that we are a part of, we like to be a part of the, here in the Lima area and Findlay area, we have a influx of, it's a Haitian Creole population.

So we're a part of the new meetings that are starting up in the Lima and Findlay area.

So we're trying to help out for the YWCA, which is like the education aspect of it, trying to see what we can do to try to help mend- - [Steve] Acclimate and kind of get- - [Dave] Yes.

And that's also goes along with Apollo Career Center, the Aspire program that is a part of that as well.

Just because there's a lot of Haitians that are in the Lima-Findlay area trying to connect, not just the Haitians for learning the English, but what they do is also they help piece together of what the culture is around here for that.

- [Steve] Yeah, I was gonna say culturally, because obviously, there are differences.

They're going to be, that's normal, that kind of thing.

So yeah, make it sort of easier for them to feel comfortable here and understand and for other people to understand their culture as well.

So yeah, that's an important thing.

Talk a little about, and you mentioned the LENA program, which is actually not an acronym.

- [Lisa] Nope.

- [Steve] It's a name.

So talk about that a little bit.

- [Lisa] Right, that is from one of the grants that we've been working in the last few years.

It is one of my favorite programs we've been working in with childcare programs.

And this is a program to improve quality conversations between children and their caregivers.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

- So what happens is it's a five-week program where children wear these little devices inside of a vest, and it's like a pedometer, but it counts words.

So if I talk and you talk and you talk, it counts conversational turns.

So you can see, as a teacher, we upload all the data, we get reports, spreadsheets, printout.

And you can see how often we speak back and forth- - [Steve] The interaction.

- [Lisa] We can see, yeah, how often each child speaks, how often the teacher speaks.

It's broken down by hour.

So you can see, "Oh, this child's really active in the morning, but in the afternoon, they don't talk so much."

- [Steve] Yeah, they slow, they back.

Yeah.

- [Lisa] And as a teacher, it's very valuable data because it's in black and white.

It's very objective.

You can think you talk to all children equally, but when it's right there on the paper in front of you, you can see, "Oh, maybe I don't speak to this child as much."

And really, the aim is just to increase the amount of quality conversations we're having with children, because the more we speak to children, the more language they understand, the more learning opportunities they have, and the better relationships we build with them.

And there's also a LENA at home program that families can sign up to do.

It's fantastic.

And we're gonna continue this as the next school year, as we get closer and closer to that, as the summer comes to an end.

- Yeah, that's an incredible thing, because obviously, as you said, anecdotally, we all feel, you know, if you've ever taught, you feel like you've reached every, you try to reach everybody in the room.

And you believe you have, because you try to make an effort to do that.

But yeah, we probably all fall into little grooves, and obviously, some children are more reactive and are more involved, so they tend to draw a little more attention that way.

When we were off the air, you mentioned we were talking about some things and we used a qualifier, we used the word, "everything's good, but then there's this."

You said, that is not a word you should use as a qualifier to say, "Hey, you're doing fine but."

Just kinda give us, we've got just a couple of minutes.

So kind of tell us a little bit about that.

- One of the trainings I did last week at one of our local programs in Fostoria, a training we did is called Difficult Conversations with Families and Staff Members, because that's something we have to do as educators.

We have to communicate a lot, and especially with children that aren't able to communicate for themselves, and things happen in childcare programs.

Children aren't ready for kindergarten.

Children are having issues potty training or things like that.

And we have to have these hard conversations.

So when we say, "Well, they're great in class, but."

- [Steve] Yeah, okay.

- [Lisa] That kind of makes a parent feel- - [Steve] That's not the way to go about it.

- [Lisa] Right.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Lisa] So one example of a training that we have with teachers.

We practice and we model, how do we do that?

So trainings like that.

Another training we did that day was how do we increase large motor play?

We need more movement, right?

We have a country struggling with obesity.

How do we get children active and moving, but also make it fun and incorporate learning into it?

The next day on Facebook, I saw that center, they were doing obstacle courses.

Even though it was a rainy day, they did it inside.

So proud of them.

- [Steve] Yeah, it all worked out.

Well, thank you guys so much for being here because it gave us a lot of insight into what goes on behind the childcare that we see when we're participants and how much it's helping families who need to get involved in those programs and the kind of things you provide.

It's really great, because obviously, as you talked about childcare development, child development, all of that, and you guys see it on the front line every day with the people who are delivering the services and the families are involved.

So we appreciate that very much.

So thank you so much for being here.

- [Lisa] Thank you.

- [Dave] Thank you.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org, and you can watch us Sunday at 10:30 AM on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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