The Preschool Development Grant (PDG) Inclusion & Universal Design Project is a Colorado program designed to increase inclusion and diversity through accessibility in home- and center-based child care. The goals of this program are to expand Colorado child care providers’ capacities and ensure children with a wide variety of delays and disabilities are included in these settings. The program is recruiting 48 new participants for the third cohort of licensed child care providers. Participants will be offered training, technical assistance, and kits containing equipment and resources to support the development of inclusive learning environments.

The cohort will run from April through October 2022. This project is implemented by the Center for Inclusive Design and Engineering through the University of Colorado Denver and supported by the Colorado Department of Human Services - Office of Early Childhood’s PDG Unit. Read more about the project on the website.

The second project, called Project Include: Early Childhood Access through Adaptive Technology, builds on the first and will provide a statewide system of support to licensed child care programs throughout Colorado. Like the first project, CIDE will offer training, technical support, technical assistance, and equipment to support the development of inclusive learning environments in licensed Colorado preschool, early learning, and child care settings. The project is funded through stimulus funding received by the Colorado Department of Human Services-Office of Early Childhood and will launch in April 2022. The project will offer numerous online resources and an option to borrow four universal design and inclusion kits: communication/literacy, behavior/cognition, hearing/vision, and fine motor/gross motor. Each kit contains materials that can be used to make simple adaptations in early childhood environments to increase inclusion and participation by young children with delays and disabilities. The materials are also linked via QR code to a series of quick tip videos of less than 5 minutes each to describe how the material can be used.  Once programs receive introductory training and check out a kit, they are eligible to seek customized technical assistance and materials grants. For more information visit the Project Include website.