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ᏧᏪᏅᏒ ᏗᏂᏩᏛᎯᏙᎯ

Cherokee Connections

Cherokee Connections focuses services on relatives who are caring for children while their parents work or go to school. The program strives to improve the quality of child care for children who are cared for in relatives’ homes, through a variety or learning opportunities for the relative caregivers and the children in their care. Program components include a year-long home visiting program.
Cherokee Connections is available to relative (license exempt) child care providers in the 14-county service area who are registered and contract with our Cherokee Nation Child Care Licensing Program. Early Childhood Educators make monthly visits to the homes of providers who are caring for their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews and/or siblings. This program serves all children in the home through 12 years of age. Using the Parents as Caregivers Curriculum. “Supporting Care Providers through Personal Visits,” educators work with providers to encourage the school readiness skills that begin in infancy through six years. Each visit lasts approximately one hour. Providers choose 12 topics of interest, one for each month. The educator takes materials and information about the topic to the home, along with learning activities, toys, music, and children’s books that correspond with the topic for that month. The next month the educator exchanges those activities and brings a new topic and themed activities to correspond to the next topic.

Cherokee Connections has two main components:

1. Incentives – Participants may earn financial incentives.
   There are four areas to earn incentives:
   1. Improving health and safety
   2. Providing school readiness skills
   3. Strengthening Cherokee Connections (Language & Culture)
   4. Completion of 25 hours of training
      
      Points may be earned for completing activities in each area, and the incentives are available to the provider for completing various activities related to the focus area.
2. Materials Check-out
   Upon completing the 12 month home visiting program, providers can continue in the program by coming to a designated site and picking up activities to be used in the home with the children. A variety of kits and materials may be checked out including:
   
   • Learning activities
   • Books
   • Toys
     
     Activities may be kept for one month and returned to the lending library.

Cherokee Parents

Cherokee PARENTS is a 20 week, in-home, parent support program offered to Native American Families in the 14-county service area. Participants in the Cherokee PARENTS program will receive a weekly visit from a parent educator that will last approximately one hour. These weekly visits are scheduled at the convenience of the parent or caregiver. Cherokee PARENTS uses a curriculum called SafeCare, which teaches three modules: Home Safety, Health, and Parent-Child (PCI) or Parent-Infant Interaction (PII). Each module lasts approximately 6 weeks, with a week in the beginning for intake and the end for discharge. Participants will not only gain valuable knowledge but also earn monetary incentives and invaluable tools and resources that accompany each module based on the family/household needs.
How do I qualify?

• Live in the 14 county service area
• Have a child 0-5 years of age
• Does not have an active DHS or ICW case
• Child or Parent must be Native American

For more information or to sign-up please complete the referral form in the downloads section.