The Program for Infant Toddler Care Guides
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
Available in English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese
Approaches to nurturing the social and emotional growth of infants and toddlers. Current research about brain development and its relationship to children's emotional growth and socialization is also discussed. An appendix of the social-emotional development foundations is included.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Setting Up Environments, Third Edition
Tested ideas for setting up a child care environment that fosters early learning and is safe and healthful, including updated resources, sample layouts of exemplary child care settings, and ways to accommodate children with disabilities or special needs.
Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Routines, Third Edition
Presents caregiving routines as opportunities for caregivers to build a close personal relationship with each child while attending to the child's physical, emotional, and other developmental needs.
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, Third Edition
Information on working with families of infant and toddlers from diverse backgrounds and cultures, as well as strategies to ease family concerns about using out-of-home care and to address their feelings about leaving their young children with others.
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.