Supportive housing for families with young children is an ideal environment to increase parent/caregiver understanding of how they can positively impact early learning. Being exposed to a safe, stable, and developmentally appropriate environment while young is important to healthy child development. This new tool contains recommendations for making supportive housing, both scattered site and single site, safe and developmentally appropriate for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Recommendations in this tool can be applied to community rooms, offices of service providers and property management, conference rooms, class rooms, lobbies and other shared spaces in supportive housing. Many of the recommendations can be carried over into goal and service plans developed with parents and caregivers and practiced within their individual family units. (For instance, during move-in, orientation, home visits and parent coaching.)