The California Department of Social Services, the California Department of Education, and WestEd have collaborated to create and operate the Program for Infant/Toddler Care (PITC), a state-of-the-art training system with a comprehensive library of resource materials. Beginning in 2021, CDSS and WestEd have been collaboratively providing PITC professional learning and technical assistance, and resources.
The PITC Guides to Infant/Toddler Caregiving help infant care teachers and providers implement high-quality, relationship-based care in family child care homes and child care centers. A central, guiding principle emphasized throughout these PITC resources is the importance of family involvement, starting in infancy and continuing through the school years.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Social-Emotional Growth and Development, Third Edition
This third edition builds on the concepts presented in the previous edition of the guide related to early brain development, responsive relationships and socialization, guidance and discipline, and it expands on the understanding of temperament based on current research. This third edition also explains the central importance of racial and cultural context in early social-emotional development and describes the development of empathy in infants and toddlers. The concepts presented in this guide are drawn from current research, and the corresponding caregiving practices ensure a supportive high quality care environment for infants and toddlers.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Setting Up Environments, Second Edition
This guide offers tested ideas for setting up a child care environment that fosters early learning and is safe and healthful. The second edition includes updated resources, sample layouts of exemplary child care settings, and a new section on ways to accommodate children with disabilities or special needs. It contains practical ideas for designing an environment suited to both mobile infants and active toddlers. The needs of caregivers are also considered in the environmental design.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Routines, 2nd Edition
Caregiving routines are opportunities for caregivers to build a close personal relationship with each child while attending to the child's physical, emotional, and other developmental needs. Concepts presented by Janet Gonzalez-Mena include greetings and departures, feeding, diapering and toileting, dressing and bathing, sleeping and naptime, health and safety, record keeping, and special issues with children and families. Lists of appropriate and inappropriate practices and suggested readings are also included.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Cognitive Development and Learning, Second Edition
Six experts on early development provide guidance on supporting cognitive development and learning in early care and education programs for infants and toddlers. There are practical ideas on how to create relationships with children that encourage exploration and discovery and help them to become confident learners. Chapters on the positive effects of caregiver responsiveness on cognitive development and the formative role of the family’s culture reflect the latest research findings. The guide includes an appendix that presents California’s infant/toddler early learning and development foundations for the domain of cognitive development.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Language Development and Communication, Second Edition
Child care programs increasingly have children of diverse races and cultures. This second edition is an update and contains the latest research findings about the role of a family's culture in the child's development of communication. A new chapter adds a discussion of how parents and teachers can build a foundation for literacy in infants and toddlers. One of the new appendixes contains the infant/toddler learning and development foundations for language development. You may order the above resource directly from the California Department of Education.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Creating Partnerships with Families, Second Edition
The second edition offers program directors, teachers, and providers of child care programs expanded information on working with families of infant/toddlers from diverse backgrounds and cultures. It provides strategies to ease family concerns about using out-of-home care and to address their feelings about leaving their young children with others. Five appendixes, including sample forms, help to make this guide useful for addressing the many elements of engaging families in high-quality child care programs.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Culturally Sensitive Care, Second Edition
The second edition provides up-to-date information and perspectives on the influence of culture and language on children’s development. It offers practical ideas on how to create collaborative relationships with families from diverse cultural backgrounds and connections between the home and early care setting.
For those PITC Guides not available digitally, print copies can be ordered from CDE Press, click here to order.