What is ECELS Healthy Child Care Pennsylvania (HCCPA)?

ECELS-HCCPA is funded to provide health and safety (H&S) training and technical assistance to early care and education providers. ECELS assists caregivers with immediate needs as well as short- and long-term change to improve overall health and safety within a child care facility.

• Technical Assistance Warm-Line (800-243-2357) - Health Professionals are available 9:00-5:00, Monday through Friday, to discuss your health and safety needs and concerns.
• ECELS-STARS Resource Kits - The STARS self-study packet contains a request form for prepackaged ECELS-STARS Resource Kits. These kits contain self-learning modules,  educational materials, and references that DPW and ECELS selected to help you meet the health and safety requirements for each STAR level. 
• Self-Learning Modules - ECELS has over 20 self-learning modules to train providers in health and safety topic areas. Each self-learning module has assignments that providers return to ECELS for review. Upon satisfactory completion of the assignments, ECELS issues DPW training credit. A complete list of self-learning modules is on the ECELS web site and is distributed as a pamphlet with each copy of the newsletter, Health Link. 
• Health Link Newsletter - Health Link, and Health Link Online, publications of ECELS that address new developments in best practice, seasonal issues, and current events in health and safety. Health Link and Health Link Online contain many helpful articles and are on the ECELS website. 
• Workshop Training - ECELS will arrange workshop training on a variety of health and safety topics. The list of on-site workshops ECELS can arrange is on the ECELS web site. There is a registration fee for this training. 
• Preventive Health Services - ECELS helps providers with meeting requirements for documentation of up-to-date preventive health services, including assisting providers in working with parents and health professionals to obtain needed information. ECELS has tools (The Immunization Dose Counter) and Internet-based software (www.wellcaretracker.org) to ease the burden of keeping children up-to-date with preventive health care. 
• Audio-Visual Lending Library - ECELS has an extensive lending library of videos and other educational resources on a wealth of topics. A list of these resources is on the ECELS web site. These resources are not designated for DPW training credit. 

Please visit the ECELS web site at http://www.ecels-healthychildcarepa.org/ to find out more about the resources described above.

The American Academy of Pediatrics worked with the Healthy Child Care Consultant Network Support Center to create a list of essential books, manuals, articles, policies, and web sites for improving health and safety in group care settings. Click HERE to view this excellent compendium of up-to-date information.

You may also preview may of the items in the ECELS-STARS resource kits. E-mail ECELS at ecels@paaap.org or call at 800-24-ECELS (800-243-2357). Other useful H&S web sites to visit are the National Resource Center for Health and Safety: http://www.nrc.uhsc.edu/, the web sites of Health Child America: http://www.healthychildcare.org/ and http://www.healthykids.us/.