Three UW-Madison child care centers earn national accreditation

Eagle’s Wing Child Care, UW Preschool Lab, and Little Chicks Learning Academy recently earned National Early Childhood Program Accreditation (NECPA), after a more than yearlong process of surveys, classroom and playground updates, policy review and site visits, the UW–Madison Office of Child Care and Family Resources (OCCFR) has announced.

While all of the OCCFR’s campus child care centers have maintained annual accreditation by the City of Madison’s Child Care Unit over the years, this is the first time the centers have garnered NECPA status, national recognition as an exceptional site for children.

Since 1991, NECPA’s focus has been to ensure that each child is supported and encouraged in every aspect of their environment. Their standards encompass the whole child by assessing child-teacher relationships, program-family relationships, and program-community relationships. NECPA standards have been developed to represent the current, best practices in the field of early care and education, as well as the results of the past 30 years of research in the field.

The Office of Child Care and Family Resources promotes the academic and professional goals of the University of Wisconsin community through the administration of early education and family support programs.

OCCFR congratulates the center staff and families, as well as University Housing and the School of Human Ecology, on this accomplishment.