In Standard 7: Health, Safety, Nutrition, and Physical Activity, beginning at Star 3, programs are required to complete an annual nutrition and/or physical activity baseline self-assessment and then develop and implement an action plan.

• Programs at Star 3 should develop an action plan to achieve one strategy for improvement.
• Programs at Star 4 should develop an action plan to achieve two strategies for improvement.
• Programs at Star 5 are recognized as having met this requirement through the appropriate accreditation standards.

Programs can choose a self-assessment tool that meets their needs and can choose a goal(s) related to health, safety, physical activity, and nutrition. Maine programs have access to two free, high-quality programs that can help them develop goals:

• Go NAPSACC is an online tool for programs serving children from birth through age five. Go NAPSACC provides self-assessments, action-planning steps, family handouts, and training videos. Go NAPSACC can be used independently, or programs can receive support from a trained consultant. To learn more about Go NAPSACC, watch this video. If you’re interested in starting an account, email karen.bergeron@maine.edu to receive a registration invite.
• Let’s Go! from Maine Health provides healthy tips and tools to help children live by 5-2-1-0 every day. As part of a community approach, it provides resources for early care and education and out-of-school time settings. Let’s Go! provides a self-assessment focused on a variety of health and nutrition topics, a program goal template for planning strategies, family handouts, and training videos. Programs can learn more on the Let’s Go! sites for out-of-school time or early childhood programs.

Revisiting self-assessments and action plans annually allows programs to celebrate the success of the changes made and to plan for more improvements.

Programs can keep their self-assessment and goals within the program’s overall Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) plan or upload the documents separately for this Standard.

As always, reach out to risingstarsforme@maine.edu with questions.