Home Visitor Corner

The Impact of the Home Visitor CDA® Credential: Expert Perspectives from the Field

Are you interested in earning your Home Visitor CDA® credential or learning more about home visiting? We invite you to watch the recording of our recent event, The Impact of the Home Visitor CDA® Credential: Expert Perspectives from the Field!

This special event included remarks from Dr. Calvin E. Moore, Jr., Council CEO, as well as a dynamic panel of home visitor experts from three leading organizations: Parents as Teachers, Children’s Equity Coalition (former HIPPY USA), and the Office of Head Start, Administration for Children and Families. Each panelist discussed the impact of their programs on the professional development of home visitors, and their perspective on home visitation across the United States.

If you want to take a deeper dive into the data that backs up the power of home visitation, delve into our white paper Home Visiting Programs Get Heartwarming Results. It discusses different approaches to this vital social service and the training home visitors need to lift families up where they live.

Our special event will also bring home the value of home visiting programs and the Home Visitor CDA® credential. You’ll get heartfelt insights from the field as you listen to our panelists and guest speakers:

Dr. Calvin E. Moore Jr., CEO, The Council for Professional Recognition (Introduction)

Dr. Calvin E. Moore, Jr., an accomplished leader in early childhood education, was appointed CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition in May 2020. He’s the Council’s first CEO to hold its early education credential, the Child Development Associate® (CDA), and a former member of the Council’s governing board.

Dr. Moore learned the value of early care and education when he participated in Head Start as a child. He also has vast professional Head Start experience, having served in large and small, urban and rural, center-based and family child care-based programs, as well as programs focused mainly on Hispanic families.

Throughout his career, Dr. Moore has held senior roles directing complex federal and state departments that improve outcomes for underserved children and families. Most recently, Dr. Moore was the regional program manager in Atlanta for the Office of Head Start within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His responsibilities included providing oversight, monitoring, training and technical assistance to over 350 Head Start and Early Head Start grantees with a portfolio of over $1.6 billion. He’s the author of The Thinking Book Curriculum: For Early Childhood Professionals, Men Do Stay: Recruiting and Retaining Qualified Male Early Childhood Teachers and many other books. Dr. Moore has received a literary award from AIM and New Light Ministries for his book, Agape Declarations, the Maria Otto Award for Leadership from the National Family Child Care Association and the Billy McCain, Sr. Memorial Award from the Alabama Head Start Association.

Dr. Christa Haring Biel, Vice President of Research and Evaluation, Children’s Equity Coalition (Panelist)

Christa Haring Biel, PhD is the Vice President of Research and Evaluation with the Children’s Equity Coalition, a nationally focused non-profit serving families from under-resourced communities. In this capacity, Christa is primarily responsible for evaluating the efficacy, effectiveness and feasibility of early language and literacy interventions implemented to improve interactions between children and caregivers. She also oversees the identification and implementation of assessment tools to capture changes in attitudes, beliefs, and practices of parents, children, and childcare providers. In collaboration with other national home visiting and child welfare models, she disseminates findings at symposia, conferences, and publications. Prior to joining the Children’s Equity Coalition, she served as a Speech-Language Pathologist, a special educator, a university professor and as the National Director of Research and Education for the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY USA) home visiting model. She currently serves a consultant on projects with the University of Virginia (Virginia Department of Education) and University of Texas Health Science Center and writes curricula for several different early childhood and early elementary school projects. Christa holds a PhD in Special Education with emphases in learning disabilities and behavior disorders from The University of Texas.

Patricia (Patty) Marickovich, Senior Program Analyst / MIECHV Coordinator, Office of Head Start | Administration for Children and Families | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Panelist)

Patty is the MIECHV Coordinator for the Office of Head Start (OHS). She first joined Head Start as a program director, after earning a Master’s of Science degree from Virginia Tech located in Blacksburg, Virginia. Patty’s early childhood career spans Head Start, Early Head Start and child care in various capacities. She has extensive experience providing Head Start T/TA services in Regions III and XI and was Head Start Director for an agency with a home-based Head Start option. As a way to support infant and toddler programs, Patty was part of the first cadre of Infant and Toddler Specialists in Virginia, providing on-site consultation, mentoring and support for child care providers in home-based/family child care and center-based settings, including Early Head Start. As a way to provide linkages to professional development opportunities, Patty was an adjunct faculty member at two community colleges, having taught courses and having written early childhood course curricula for Virginia Department of Social Services’ Division of Child Care. As MIECHV Coordinator for the Office of Head Start, Patty supports regions and states providing Early Head Start Home Visiting services to families.

Donna O’Brien, Vice President of Professional and Program Development, Parents as Teachers (Panelist)

In her over 25 years in the field of early childhood, parenting education and family support, Donna Hunt O’Brien has always had a close connection to Parents as Teachers (PAT). After receiving her degree in child and family development at the University of Missouri-Columbia, O’Brien worked at the St. Louis Community College Child Development Laboratory for eight years. There she had the opportunity to mentor college students, learn from master teachers, study and implement different approaches to early education, and became a certified Parents as Teachers parent educator. She continued her graduate study in child and adult education at Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville. Soon after, O’Brien became adjunct faculty teaching a number of early childhood courses, while coordinating a family child care program for the state of Missouri.

Since coming to the Parents as Teachers national office, O’Brien has served in many roles. As a national trainer O’Brien has instructed hundreds of early childhood professionals. As child care training coordinator, O’Brien supported the implementation of Parents as Teachers in child care settings. She has been the principal writer for major Parents as Teachers curricula and, as training director, developed training manuals and procedures for training support, as well as mentored a cadre of trainers and training teams nationally and internationally. Currently, O’Brien oversees the training of thousands of parent educators worldwide, oversees the development and updating of Parents as Teachers’ trainings and curricula, and works to sustain and grow Parents as Teachers through new partnerships and innovation. She has shepherded the design and implementation of many PAT initiatives such as a Trainer Professional Development System, a learning management system, and Virtual Parent Education Services.

Vilma M. Williams, Manager of Multilingual and Special Programs, The Council for Professional Recognition (Moderator)

Vilma Williams, who is trilingual in Spanish, English and Portuguese, was born in Lima, Peru and has been in the early childhood education field for over 35 years. Vilma oversees all special programs at the Council, ensuring that multilingual and special programs needs are a top priority in all the Council for Professional Recognition does. Vilma has presented at many events worldwide— in Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Brazil, Panama, Germany, Korea, Japan and the UAE— on a wide array of ECE topics, including curriculum, dual language learning and bilingual/multicultural issues, credentialing, adult/family education, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Vilma has received numerous awards for her continuous work and dedicated service to the field of early childhood education, particularly for her work with Latinx children, families and communities, migrant communities and indigenous nations in the United States, the military community and for her international work on behalf of the Council for Professional Recognition. In former years, Vilma studied ECE in Washington, DC at Howard University, Catholic University and the University of DC.

Clinton Boyd, Jr., Ph.D.: Empowering Black Dads

Clinton Boyd, Jr., Ph.D. is on a mission to empower Black dads. He knows the roadblocks they face because he became a father at the age of 15, is currently co-parenting a young child, and has worked with Black dads to navigate barriers to fatherhood. “I was a young father without access to the structural supports that would allow me to thrive as a parent,” he recalls. “What got me through was the love of my family. I will always be indebted to them for supporting me while I was struggling to find my way.”

As a former home visitor and fatherhood scholar at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University in Durham, NC, Clinton used his experience as a young father to build a career standing by other men in similar situations. His current research and policy work examine parenting in Black families, with an emphasis on fathers. We must value a father’s impact on a child’s well-being, he pleads, since “children with involved, caring fathers have better educational and developmental outcomes.”

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CDA^® Credentialing System for Home Visitors

This free webinar will provide timely information about the Childhood Development Associate® (CDA) credentialing program for educators working as home visitors. We will discuss the importance of the CDA® credential and the opportunities it offers for professional growth.  You will get information on eligibility, how to apply, the assessment and renewal processes—along with the chance to ask questions. Tune into our live event and learn more about this important credential.  Register today!

Join Us

Friday, August 20, 2021

English Session: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (EST) Register Now

Spanish Session: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (EST) Register Now