🎁 FREE Mental Health Resources

Today’s Issue: Bye Bye Annoying Fruit Stickers; Reader Polls; Free Mental Health Resources; ECE in the News = 1 cup of coffee.

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🍎 Ugh, Those Pesky Stickers on Fruit: Do you catch yourself spending more time peeling stickers off apples during snack time than actually letting kids eat? Well, that may be a thing of the past. InPhocal, a Dutch laser beam tech startup, raised $5.8m to expand its specialized food and beverage lasering program. Their lasers accelerate the process of putting on all the codes (bar, QR) and expiration dates on cans and bottles super fast. Next phase?! Print directly on avocados, apples, bananas, you name it. Here’s to hoping…

👩🏽‍💻The Poll Results Are In!!!

We had a lot of FUN replies to our adventurer poll last week. And it looks like with 40% of our pollsters chiming in, most of us secretly would like to be Indiana Jones. Queue up the Indiana Jones theme song 👉🎧👉🎧👉 HERE if you need a little extra motivation. This may be stuck in my head for the rest of the week….

📣 We Need Your Input!

The Ecential Team is dedicated to not only finding quality content and updates for our readers, but we also want to find great deals and discounts for products and services that can help you grow your center operations. We’d love to know what kind of products you are most interested in.

💬🆓 FREE & Low Cost Mental Health Services

Our Reader Responses

Over 70% of our readers from our poll last week stated they do not have the budget to support their staff’s mental health needs. 😨 Here are some quotes:

“We offer some but not enough. I would like to know more on how I can support our teachers and parents.”

“I also don't know where to go to get the support.”

We did some research to find either FREE or low-cost mental health options for ECE leaders and their staff. Here is a list of those services and tools we were able to dig up! 🪏

1. SAMHSA Helpline & Resources

• Website: samhsa.gov

• What it offers: 24/7 free and confidential support for emotional distress. Offers local referrals and materials tailored to educators.

2. Mental Health America (MHA)

• Website: mhanational.org

• What it offers: Free mental health screenings, wellness toolkits, and resources for managing stress, anxiety, and burnout.

3. Head Start/Early Head Start Programs

• Website: eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov

• What it offers: If your center partners with Head Start, many programs have access to mental health consultants for staff and children.

4. Mental Health First Aid Training:

• Website: mentalhealthfirstaid.org

• What it offers: Often available for free to nonprofits or at low cost to community educators

Being able to provide even just a little bit to your team can make a world of difference!!

If you think this could be of use to others, please feel free to FORWARD it to whoever may benefit!

ECE In The News

💵🧾 Expanding Childcare Tax Breaks: Looks like there may be bigger tax breaks on the horizon! Until recently, the Employer-Provided Childcare Tax Credit allowed companies to offset 25% of the cost of building or operating a child care facility for employees, or contracting with a qualified provider, for up to a $150,000 per year! But according to data from the IRS, just 176 businesses claimed the tax credit in 2021. That’s a tiny portion of millions of businesses in the US. The new bill will now triple that tax break. This might provide some opportunities to partner with some companies to help expand ECE access.

🌻 A New ECE Exchange: Kansas is launching a new exchange to help share ECE costs across families. They are developing a new program, called the Child Care Exchange, to share the cost of care among families, employers, local organizations and the state. The exchange would help cover the cost of care for children in child care, pre-K and after-school programs offered by registered child care providers. This will be an interesting one to keep an eye on! 👀

The Internet is a Playground:

🗓️ On this Day in History: In 1934, outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, notorious criminal John Dillinger—America’s “Public Enemy No. 1″—was famously gunned down by federal agents. Dillinger and his associates robbed 11 banks for more than $300,000, broke jail and narrowly escaped capture multiple times, and killed seven police officers and three federal agents. He definitely had it coming…

🖊️ Free Online Tools: Editing and merging PDFs can be a nightmare. Check out this free tool that makes it a snap!

🧐 Daily Quiz Time!: Need to kill some time? Here is a daily quiz to test your smarts!

🦌 Not Scared of this Little Guy: A real life Bambi?!

YOUR VOICE COUNTS

Is there a topic you want more info on or want to share a funny story? Then let us know! Shoot us a quick email at [email protected]. This newsletter is for you, and well, you should have a say, don't’ you think?

📚 Sources

1. Forbes Tax Break

2. Kansas ECE Exchange