Are you currently a Child Care Infant Nurse Consultant?

Are you interested in becoming an Infant Nurse Consultant?

I am currently working on a legislative report describing the current state of Nurse Consultation (aka. child care health consultation) in licensed child care. I am hoping to collect the names and contact information of the nurses who are currently offering this service. If you are interested in helping in this process, please read on!

As you are probably aware, we have been successful in reinstating the childcare WAC that requires infant nurse consultation in center care. One of the main complaints expressed by childcare providers that originally led to the WAC being removed during the Negotiated Rule Making (NRM) process was a lack of access to nurses by the childcare centers. In some regions, we know this is a problem, in others the problem may be a marketing/communication problem. The most common comment I get from nurses in the field is that they didn’t know that this was an option! In other areas, it may be something else entirely that we have not yet discovered.

To be prepared to be able to request further money from the legislature to support the quality services that you are all offering to child care centers, I need to gather information from as many nurse consultants across the state as I possibly can. I would love to speak with you in person, via Zoom, over the phone, or through email. I know that this is a busy time of year, but if you email me, we can set up a time to talk in the next few weeks.

I would love to hear about your practice, your successes, your challenges, your suggestions for improvement, how the state might be able to support your practice better, and anything else I might be able to help you with as we go forward with an unprecedented (at least in recent years!) amount of support from the state for child care health consultation. I look forward to talking with you soon!

Jennifer Helseth, MPH
Health Systems Analyst
Family Support Programs
Department of Children, Youth, and Famlies
(Formerly the Department of Early Learning)
PO Box 40970 | 1110 Jefferson St. SE | Olympia, WA 98504-0970
jennifer.helseth@dcyf.wa.gov | o: 360.725.2839 | c: 360.522.6256
Pronouns: She/Her