PD Essentials (formerly Virginia Cross-Sector Professional Development Team [VCPD]) evolved from multiple projects and initiatives that focused on high quality professional development for early childhood practitioners.
The Virginia Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (VECCS) grant was a public private partnership whose mission was to implement a comprehensive early childhood system that promoted the health and well-being of young children, enabling them to enter school ready and able to learn. VECCS was supported by the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau to support states’ efforts to build comprehensive early childhood systems.
The VECCS grant developed Virginia’s Plan for Smart Beginnings, which provides a strategic plan to improve, integrate, and evaluate all early childhood services, infrastructure, and public engagement efforts in the Commonwealth and addresses the professional development needs of the early childhood workforce.
The Governor’s Working Group, developed out of Virginia’s Plan for Smart Beginnings, advised and recommended activities to Governor Tim Kaine based on information from the Smart Beginning’s goal groups and task force groups (the Alignment Project, the Home Visiting Task Force, and Professional Development [PD] Task Force).
- The Alignment Project focused on aligning children’s skill development, teacher competencies, program quality evaluation, and assessment of program policy, funding and planning. Products of the Alignment Project include The Milestones of Child Development, Competencies for Early Childhood Professionals, and the Virginia Star Quality Initiative (VSQI).
- Virginia’s Home Visiting Consortium (now Early Impact Virginia) is a collaboration of statewide early childhood programs that serve families of children from pregnancy through age five and who provide their services using home visitation. State coordinators of each home visiting program comprise the Consortium membership.
- The Professional Development Task Force submitted a report to the Governor’s Working Group in August 2009. In response to numerous administrative changes in state government, members of task force work groups wanted to assure that their efforts were continued during transitions.
Key recommendations included:
- “Develop a statewide cross-sector professional development system that provides a continuum for the Virginia early childhood (EC) workforce.”
- “Virginia state level agencies need to develop and adopt a MOA/MOU/Charter or other partnership agreements to establish permanence and sustainability of the VCPD system.”
Anticipated benefits included:
- “Resources are saved through lack of duplication of services among programs, coordination which leads to more efficient work between programs and agencies – cost savings.”
- “Better trained EC professionals stay in the field longer. This creates stability in the early childhood workforce.”
- “Higher quality EC settings for families and children result in increased graduation rate, decreased retention and special education referrals for children.”
- The Infant Child Mental Health Task Force developed as a subcommittee of the Virginia Head Start Advisory committee to address concerns about child mental health.
With funding from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Head Start, Virginia became one of ten SpecialQuest State Leadership Teams, implementing cross-systems early childhood professional development for inclusion of children with more significant disabilities ages birth through five (pre-kindergarten) and their families, particularly those in Head Start, along with child care, early intervention/Part C, early childhood special education/619, family support, and other related programs.
Virginia was selected as one of eight states to receive support from the USDOE-funded National Professional Development Center on Inclusion (NPDCI). NPDCI provided technical assistance to support the development of a cross-sector system of professional development through a team of state level early childhood agencies.
With this support, the Infant Child Mental Health Committee (ICMHC), Head Start, SpecialQuest and the Virginia Child Care Resource and Referral Network (now Child Care Aware) banded together and invited other relevant early childhood professional development providers to join them to create the Virginia Cross-Sector Professional Development Leadership Team (VCPD).
In 2021, VCPD became PD Essentials. PD Essentials participants hail from over 20 state agencies and organizations who prepare early childhood personnel to support all children (birth to age five) and their families in home, school, and community settings. This includes infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with disabilities and special health needs; and children who experience risk factors for school readiness, economic disadvantages, and/or cultural and linguistic diversity.