Iowa
AIR Training Solutions is approved to provide professional development for DHS child care credit. These courses are also entered into the Iowa Child Care Provider Training Registry for credit.
What is I-PoWeR?
Iowa’s Early Childhood and School Age Care Professional Workforce Registry (I-PoWeR) is a professional development registry system for individual professional achievement as well as new opportunities for learning. I-PoWeR was created to keep track of statewide DHS trainings, trainings completed by participants, and allows regulators, programs, and systems, to track individual and group professional development progress.
According to the I-Power website the goals of the Iowa Early Childhood and School Age Care Professional Workforce Registry (I-PoWeR) are to:
- Allow participants the ability to: search, view, and enroll in approved trainings
- Allow participants to track their own training history
- Allow the public to view Registered Child Development Home Providers or Licensed Child Care Center staff training history
- Allow professional development providing organizations to approve adult educators for a training
- Promote approved training opportunities
- Display approved training opportunities in a centralized location
- Allow the display of credentials and accreditations
I-PoWeR offers professional development and quality improvement tools in one centralized website in order to support early childhood educators in Iowa. I-PoWeR offers a wide variety of childcare training courses. I-PoWeR manages all of your trainings and keep the records all in one place. The system allows you to locate training by a specific trainer or by specific keywords. AIR Child Care Training Solutions has multiple courses listed in I-PoWeR.
Iowa Childcare Training Tools
While there are many great tools available to childcare professionals, here’s two that we’ve found to be very useful.
Advanced Filters in the I-PoWeR search tab allows users to search for trainings and trainers based on a variety of subjects. Users can search by professional development organization, length of training, competency area, and so much more.
The Organization tab allows users to access information pertaining to their organization. As an administrator or director, this tool is especially useful to monitor employees and track their professional development progress.
How many training hours are needed?
According to the Child Care Resource & Referral Child Care Licensing Handbook all staff members must complete certain ongoing training requirements per year.
Within the first year of employment, staff members must complete preservice hours in Mandatory Child Abuse Reporter Training, Universal Precautions, Infant/Child/Adult CPR, Infant/Child/Adult First Aide, Essentials Child Care Preservice Series as well as 10 hours in the core competency areas.
After the first year of employment, providers are required to maintain certifications in preservice courses and take six hours of ongoing professional development in more than one of the competency areas.
Center Directors and supervisors are required to complete eight hours of training annually.