Goal I Case Study: Fontana, California
The city of Fontana, California, population 203,000, has earned a gold medal for its work on Goal I: Start Early, Start Smart of Let’s Move! Cities, Towns and Counties (LMCTC), a key part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative. As part of their efforts, Fontana partnered with community organizations to promote health among Fontana’s youngest residents by providing professional development trainings that incorporate healthy practices to early care and education (ECE) providers in their city.
LMCTC Goal I: Start Early, Start Smart
To provide children with a healthier start, local elected officials commit to helping early care and education program providers incorporate best practices for nutrition, physical activity and screen time into their programs.
Early Care and Education in Fontana
The majority of early care and education centers in Fontana are privately-run, including in-home daycares, franchise daycare centers and church-based child care programs. In addition to private ECE providers, Fontana has a Head Start Program, as well as city-run programs for three- to five-year-olds at community centers.
Prior to participating in LMCTC, the city government had very little interaction with the city’s private ECE providers and did not hold professional development trainings. To establish relationships with ECE providers, the city identified individuals to contact using a county database of licensed child care providers in Fontana. The city of Fontana has used their work with LMCTC Goal I: Start Early, Start Smart as an opportunity to reach out to and build relationships with ECE providers, as well as to connect them to a range of community organizations and provide professional development opportunities.
Community Collaboration and Promotion
The Fontana Community Services Department, which runs Healthy Fontana (a city-led initiative focused on improving the health and well-being of its residents), works with a number of community partners to promote and hold their professional development training for local ECE providers. These partners include the local Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinic, the Dairy Council of California, and the San Bernardino County Human Services’ Transitional Assistance Department (TAD), as well as local health providers and educators. These partners provide support by presenting at the annual professional development training and by promoting the training to their clients.
In addition to collaborating with community organizations, Fontana works with local ECE providers to obtain their input in preparation for the yearly training. This collaboration helps city staff tailor the training to best suit the schedules and needs of providers. To receive their input, Fontana surveys the network of ECE providers that the city has built since joining LMCTC. The survey includes questions to see how knowledgeable ECE providers are about Let’s Move! Child Care, and whether ECE providers are aware that city-led professional training is available. Let’s Move! Child Care is the component of the Let’s Move! initiative that focuses on early care and education providers and helps them make positive changes in their programs to help children develop healthy habits.
Fontana extensively promotes their annual Let’s Move! Child Care professional development training. To get ECE providers to attend the training, staff from the Fontana Community Services Department consistently reach out to ECE providers in the months and weeks leading up to the training, sending emails, letters and even visiting to the providers to talk about the training and the benefits of attending.
Professional Development Training
The annual training educates providers about the five goals of Let’s Move! Child Care. The training, which lasts approximately an hour and a half, is held in the evening after most child care centers have closed, because that is when most Fontana ECE providers and their staff are available to attend.
The training opens with a light dinner and time for ECE providers to connect with local organizations and businesses. Organizations such as Kids Come First, a community health center, talk with ECE providers about the work they do and the programming they can offer families, particularly low-income families. Businesses, including Costco and local supermarkets, donate food for the training and share promotional materials about healthy products they sell that may be of interest to ECE providers. Prior to Fontana’s implementation of LMCTC Goal I, there was no opportunity for city-facilitated interaction between ECE providers and the greater health and business community.
Following dinner and the exposition, community partners present on each of the five goal areas of Let’s Move! Child Care. For example, a representative from the Dairy Council of California presents on the health benefits associated with limiting children’s consumption of juice and other sugary drinks in connection to LM Child Care Goal II: Providing Healthy Beverages. Similarly, a representative from WIC talks about the importance of supporting mothers who choose to breastfeed their children and strategies for accommodating breastfed babies in line with LM Child Care Goal V: Support Breastfeeding.
In addition to learning about the five LM Child Care goal areas, ECE providers have the chance to learn a new activity that they can share with the children they work with. As a break during the training, someone leads the ECE providers through a sample physical activity. One year, a presenter had the providers moving throughout the room, even crawling on the floor at times, mimicking the transition a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly. If they choose to, providers can incorporate the activity into their own programming.
Promoting Let’s Move! Child Care
Outside of the annual training, the City of Fontana promotes Let’s Move! Child Care in a variety of ways. One way is advertising Let’s Move! Child Care and the five goal areas with a commercial on Fontana’s local access television channel. Another is the distribution of press releases through the mayor’s office about Let’s Move! Child Care. Fontana also promotes Let’s Move! Child Care on the Let’s Move! page of the city’s website. To encourage ECE providers to sign up for Let’s Move! Child Care, Fontana offers registered providers public recognition at a yearly Fontana Parks and Community Services Event, which city residents are invited to attend.
Lessons Learned
The biggest challenge that Fontana has encountered in their implementation of LMCTC Goal I: Start Early, Start Smart has been recruiting ECE providers to participate in the annual professional development training. Many ECE providers have limited resources and cannot afford to pay their staff to attend the training, especially because attendees are not eligible to receive continuing education units (CEUs) for the city-run training. To address this challenge, Fontana Community Services staff try to come up with creative incentives for ECE providers. These incentives have included free dinner for attendees, guest presenters from partner organizations who are knowledgeable about their topic area in the context of the Fontana community and the chance to interact with community organizations whose work is relevant to ECE providers.
Fontana city staff say that LMCTC Goal I is a good opportunity to connect with private ECE providers, a network that many cities, towns and counties often have little or no interaction with. In addition, taking advantage of the opportunity to educate ECE providers about strategies for promoting nutrition and physical activity is a great way to make a lasting, positive impact on a community’s youngest members.