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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Improving Child Care for MN Infants and Toddlers

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Wednesday, August 1, 2012   

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has introduced a bill that aims to improve the overall quality of child-care programs for infants and toddlers. It would allow states to use existing appropriations on strategies that have been shown to improve care.

Lisa Thompson, a child-care provider and president of Minnesota's AFSCME Child Care Providers Together, says the bill would help with training and accreditation programs.

"It would be an enormous help in supporting family child-care providers in the work that we do with children, because these supports can be very expensive, and they can often be endlessly difficult for family child-care providers to access."

Improving care for infants and toddlers is vital, Thompson says, since the majority of a child's brain development happens in his or her first few years.

"Family child-care providers know this. We have children in our homes and in our care for a significant amount of time during those first three years, and the most that we can make of that, the better."

With recent news reports about the number of SIDS deaths in family day-care settings in Minnesota, Thompson says the bill could also help providers stay current on the latest guidelines to prevent such tragedies.

"Everyone wants children to be safe, no matter where they are, and the priority is making sure that all bases are covered - in making sure that we have all the resources we need."

She says the union helped Franken craft the Infant and Toddler Care Improvement Act, which also would allow funding to be used for programs that rate child-care providers and to create networks of family-care providers to help them with technical assistance and administrative support.

More information is online at gpo.gov.


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