LINC’s new training program for early childhood workers was barely as old as the infants in their care when the pandemic turned the work inside-out.

The first cohorts of some 35 child care workers were just getting started in learning the magic of relationship-based care taught by the Infant and Toddler Specialist Network.

Then they and their trainers essentially had to adopt one of their meditative training mantras and, as program director Jimmarie Smiley said, “Relax . . . breathe.”

“Good self-care,” she said. “That’s where it starts.”

Hardly missing a beat, the work has continued on, giving child care workers free training to become nurturing adults to the children who parents entrust to them.

“Good relationships,” Smiley said, “shape a child’s sense of self in life. Positive attachment builds security, exploration skills — developing a child’s sense of self at three.”

Missouri’s Department of Social Services turned to LINC to be the regional programmer of the Infant and Toddler Specialist Network for a seven-county area around Kansas City. Its purpose is to make child care services stronger allies in helping families raise healthy, imaginative children who are ready for school and childhood.

The industry is under stress, with weak funding streams that lead to underpaid staffs that are vulnerable to high turnover.

LINC was eager to take on the effort to give the front-line child care workers more skills and confidence to play their critical roles.

The Infant and Toddler Specialist Network particularly teaches respect between the child care providers and the family home — and that’s important, said Renee Asher, LINC’s special projects coordinator.

The program emphasizes the importance of relationships with children when they are outside the home, but also stresses the importance of supporting the relationships in the families.

Care givers are encouraged “to respect the family culture, to learn the routine of the family home,” Asher said. “It fits LINC’s Caring Communities guiding principles — building on our communities’ strengths.”

The work began late last fall, as Smiley and her team trained themselves in the methods of ITSN and began recruiting among child care centers to enroll the first cohorts of students.

They gathered trainees from a half-dozen centers in Kansas City’s midtown area and in the Northland and had just started the first trainings in February when the pandemic forced a major strategy shift in March.

There are six stages of training in a curriculum developed in partnership with the Missouri Department of Social Services and WestEd, combined with weekly visits to the classrooms between sessions to help put the new skills into practice.

The LINC team took the training modules and turned them into Zoom virtual trainings, Smiley said. The follow-up visits also went virtual. LINC provided some of the participants who needed them iPads to be able to stay in the program. The participation in the training didn’t slip at all, she said.

“There’s engagement,” she said. “They’re unmuting their mikes. They’re in the chat.” Attendance has been nearly perfect, even 100% in some of the sessions. And the program is voluntary.

The child care centers that sent students to the training stayed open through the pandemic, having to take on fewer children to be safely spaced, but prioritizing providing care for the children of essential workers.

Smiley said the trainers recognized that child care workers — essential themselves — were under higher stress, which is why she increased the emphasis on self-care.

The child care workers seem to thrive on the training opportunity, Smiley and Asher said. They expect the enthusiasm to continue as the program broadens into the next stages, reaching farther into the seven-county area.

It gives child care workers pride and confidence, and supports them in gaining child-development specialist credentials.

“We tell them, ‘You are professionals,’” Smiley said. “This can be a career.”

And a very important one.