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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Over the past two years, Navy Child & Youth Programs (CYP) have been steadily shrinking its childcare wait list by increasing enrollment on base and growing capacity for childcare in the community through the Navy Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN) fee assistance program. However, Navy CYP’s most effective strategy for growing capacity has been increasing its cavalry of child care professionals, explained Maryann Coutino, director of Navy CYP, during the DOD Child Care Summit in Alexandria, VA on September 15.
“Over the past year, we’ve dedicated a lot of effort towards increasing enrollment through bolstering our work force with salary increases, recruitment and retention incentives, strategic marketing of our positions and childcare discounts for our CYP Professionals,” said Coutino during the summit’s ‘Child Care Best Practices and Lessons Learned’ military services panel. “In September of 2022, we had 76% of our child care billets filled and enrollment was at 70% capacity. We’ve since grown staffing to 87%, which has allowed us to increase enrollment to 84% of our infrastructure’s capacity, which is a great improvement but there’s still more work to do.”
Before they can work directly with children, new Navy CYP Professionals must complete 40 hours of standardized training and then additional mandatory training for 15 Child Development Core Competencies within 24 months of onboarding. This degree of training results in a particularly skilled workforce, ensuring children receive an exceptional quality of care.
“Our workforce of professionals touch the lives of children in so many different ways each day and the impact of that work reaches far beyond the classroom, often in ways we won’t ever see,” said Coutino during the Military Services Panel. “It’s important to me and to the Navy that our Child and Youth professionals receive the appropriate compensation and respect for the essential work they do.”
During the panel discussion, Coutino went on to explain Navy CYP’s talent retention efforts.
“In order to retain top talent, we need to make sure we’re giving our people the right resources at the right levels,” said Coutino.
Navy CYP will soon roll out updates to its staffing model and increase opportunities in professional development to better support CYP professionals. Some of these changes include efforts such as increasing the number of direct care staff and establishing additional management positions to support CYP programs.
“Our focus is to take care of the people who are taking care of our children,” said Coutino. “By improving education opportunities and support to our CYP Professionals, we hope to maximize retention and continue to grow our workforce. My goal is to make this a place where top talent wants to work and I believe these improvements will help get us there.”
Those interested in pursuing a career with Navy CYP can find more information about employment opportunities by visiting https://www.navycyp.org/careers.
Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC) is responsible for worldwide U.S. Navy Shore installation management, designing and developing integrated solutions for sustainment and development of Navy shore infrastructure as well as quality of life programs. CNIC oversees 10 Navy regions, 69 installations, and more than 43,000 employees who sustain the fleet, enable the fighter, and support the family. Follow CNIC on social media: Facebook, Facebook.com/NavyInstallations; X, @cnichq; and Instagram, @cnichq.
| Date Taken: | 09.28.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 09.28.2023 13:52 |
| Story ID: | 454574 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Web Views: | 299 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Navy CYP Director Says Taking Care of Providers is Key to Growing Navy Childcare Capacity, by Destiny Sibert, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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