| Tip of the Week |
Celebrate you! May 7th is National Provider Appreciation Day. It's a day set aside to recognize the important work you do every day to care for and educate our community's children and families. Take this opportunity to do something good for yourself. You deserve it!
We're celebrating Provider Appreciation Day with a summer's worth of FREE workshops for you, members of the I-Care virtual community. See the coupon below. |
| Upcoming Events |
Solutions for Parent Partnerships
12 hour series
Saturday, May 22nd AND
Saturday, June 26th
8:30 am - 3:30 pm
HCC
$45.00
Applying for the Maryland Child Care Credential
Monday, May 17th
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
APPLES
$5.00
Options for Accrediting Your Program
For Family Child Care Providers and
Center Directors
Monday, June 21st
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
APPLES
$5.00
What is Tiered Reimbursement?
Monday, July 19th
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
APPLES
$5.00 |
| Contact Us |
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6 West Washington Street, Suite 210
Hagerstown, Maryland 21740
301-733-0000 or 800-924-9188
FAX: 301-733-0886
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Greetings!
Happy Wednesday.
Change is all around us this time of year. The flowers are blooming. The trees have leaves. Grass needs mowing.
There are changes at APPLES this month, too. Beginning this week, the LOCATE call center will be centralized at our Network's Baltimore office. This is a statewide decision to allow the 12 Resource Centers to focus more time and resources on you - our child care community. We are looking forward to these changes, but as you all know, change does not come easy. For some of us, it is more difficult than for others. Beginning next week, we will begin a series about change and how to better adjust to those changes in quickly changing times. For this week, read on to find out more about how APPLES changes affect you.
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"Everything flows,
nothing stands still."
- Heraclitus, Greek philosopher
APPLES for Children, the Western Maryland Child Care Resource Center, continues to be your first stop for child care solutions in Allegany, Garrett and Washington Counties. However, in order to focus our resources on training and individual assistance to child care programs, the services provided by LOCATE: Child Care will now be centralized at Maryland Family Network. There, a single statewide counseling center will provide both individual phone counseling and online self-search capabilities.
What does this mean for you?
Child care providers will continue to receive their annual questionnaires by mail, ensuring that their LOCATE database information is current.
Child care providers updating their vacancy information can continue to use the website to update vacancies or call the APPLES phone numbers. The calls will be routed to the centralized call center.
Child care providers needing information about local market rates will continue to call the APPLES phone numbers. The calls will be routed to the centralized call center.
You may talk to a different person than you have in the past, but as you can see, you continue to have access to the local information you need. And for some people, for example parents who live in one county but work in another, access to a statewide data base will be particularly helpful.
Child care providers will benefit from this increased focus on training and individual assistance. We plan to offer MORE workshops in specialized areas, and will continue to be available for your questions through our Help Line by phone or email. Watch for your Courier or your I-Care e-newsletter to find out more about the new professional development options.
If you would like more information, please call us at 301-733-0000 or 800-924-9188, or email us at help@applesforchildren.org. |
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