Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

Child care on the national agenda

Research demonstrates that child care supports benefit families: low-income parents who receive help paying for child care are more likely to be employed, to have higher incomes, and to remain off of welfare.  A study of 17 states found that in 11 communities, families without any help paying for child care could only afford 10 percent or less of the center-based care in that community. Receipt of a child care subsidy made child care centers and regulated family child care homes more accessible for these low-income families.  Yet child care—the high costs, the lack of quality settings, the large number of children on waiting lists—continues to be missing from national debates.   Across the country, only one in 7 children eligible for help is supported by the child care subsidy program; and the GAO has reported that 19 states have made it more difficult for working families to get help with child care costs over the last several years.

Recently, Senator Hilary Clinton announced a new agenda for working families as part of her Presidential Campaign.  One component of the proposal is expanded access to high quality child care through increased funding for subsidies to low-income working families and an expansion of the Dependent Care Tax Credit, as well as investments in licensing, training for providers and quality rating systems.

Every day, working families send their children to child care.  They hope that their children will be safe, happy and healthy.  These families are thinking, and worrying, about child care.  Hopefully, all of our politicians on the national stage will take this opportunity to come forward with new proposals to increase and expand access to child care that will help put parents' worries to rest.

Indiana provides example of how state policies can promote continuity of care

Babies and toddlers in child care need consistent, ongoing relationships with caregivers who understand and are responsive to their cues and can support, nurture, and guide the child’s growth and development.  Indiana has codified the importance of this relationship in its licensing rules; the state first required centers to make a "reasonable effort" to provide continuity of care for children under 30 months old in 2003. On October 1st, 2007, the Indiana Bureau of Child Care reaffirmed this commitment by releasing new Child Care Interpretive Guidelines that will help state licensors recognize whether programs are successfully implementing the requirement. Centers may meet this requirement by:

• Moving the teacher with their children to another classroom as the children mature;
• Modifying the classroom as the children mature;
• Creating mixed age groupings of children, ages six weeks to 36 months; or
• Creating intentional transitions that prepare children as they move into the next age classroom.

States also use child care quality enhancement and subsidy policies to increase access to continuous, high quality care for infants and toddlers. For example, in the Educare model, private partnerships with state agencies such as in Omaha, Nebraska provide ongoing subsidies and supports to assure low-income babies and toddlers can attend high quality, comprehensive early childhood programs using the continuity of care model in disadvantaged neighborhoods. And, Indiana is one of 19 states with an infant-toddler specialist network that provides technical assistance to providers caring for children under age three.

Who should be licensed? Ohio examines rules for family child care

A new bill in the Ohio state legislature would require any provider caring for 3 or more children to be licensed by the state.  Currently in Ohio, providers caring for 7 children or more, up to a maximum of 12, must be licensed by the state. (Although family child care providers caring for fewer than 7 children are not state-licensed, they must be certified by the county in which they live before receiving public subsidy funds. Each county designs its own certification process, which may include health and safety requirements, background checks, and/or child development training.)

Which family child care providers should be licensed? States vary in their licensing requirements. Ten states license family child care providers caring for 1 or more child.  The National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) benchmark is: "Both child centers and all family child care homes caring for even one unrelated child on a regular basis for a fee are required to be licensed."  The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) recommends that: “Any program providing care and education to children from two or more unrelated families should be regulated.” The Center for the Study of Social Policy recommends that adults (except parents or guardians) caring for three or more children should register with the state as a child care provider. Licensing is one vehicle that states use to impact key indicators of quality in child care, such as group sizes, child to staff ratios, and health and safety measures.

Families choose family child care settings for a variety of reasons—including cultural and linguistic preferences, work schedules, and preferences for mixed age groupings or keeping siblings together.   Current Census data show that approximately 10 percent of children under 5 with employed mothers are in family child care. Among families who receive some help paying for child care, federal data show that approximately one-third (32%) of families receiving child care assistance use family child care for their children ages birth to 13. Parents rely on family child care every day.  Yet in too many states, family child care providers caring for large numbers of children remain unlicensed and without oversight.  As Ohio re-evaluates its licensing rules, the state has an opportunity to give more families the peace of mind they need, knowing their children are safe.

State-by-state TANF spending analysis

CLASP has posted Analysis of Fiscal Year 2006 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Maintenance-of-Effort (MOE) Spending by States, showing how states, and the nation as a whole, spent funds from the TANF block grant in the previous fiscal year. According to the analysis, child care (including both TANF funds spent directly on child care and TANF funds transferred to the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) remained the second largest use of TANF funds nationally. Nineteen percent of all federal and state funds were used for child care assistance. As in prior years, basic assistance was the only category of spending to which states directed more funds.  State-by-state worksheets show how individual states chose to direct their portion of funds. Read more about TANF funds used for child care.

Child care costs consume family budgets

Every working family with young children knows that child care is expensive. A report released yesterday by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies confirms just how high the costs of child care are in every state. The report, based on a 2006 nationwide survey of State Child Care Resource & Referral Networks and local Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies finds that the average annual price of full-time, center-based child care for an infant ranges from $4,388 to $14,647 and the average annual price of center-based child care for a 4-year old ranges from $3,794 to $10,920. The report ranks the states on affordability for infant and 4-year old care. Throughout the country, the price that families pay for child care can exceed other household expenses, including rent or mortgage payments. In 43 states, child care costs for infant care commonly exceeds the costs of public college tuition.

That's not all. Still too few families are receiving assistance to pay for the child care they need. According to new analysis by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the Center for Social Policy (CSP), only 25 percent of those eligible for child care subsidies in 10 study states were actually receiving any assistance.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2003 that only 28 percent of children eligible for assistance under state CCDBG eligibility rules (which are more restrictive than those permitted by federal law) received subsidies.  Earlier analysis from CLASP, based on 2000 data, found that only 14 percent of children federally eligible for child care assistance receive any help. Read more.

Indiana increases access to child care subsidies

In the 2006 Indiana Bureau of Child Care Annual Report, Governor Mitch Daniels noted that, “Access to quality child care is an important factor in economic development.” As of this month, more low-income working families in Indiana will be able to get the help they need to afford that care.  On October 1, the state Department of Family and Social Services announced that $10 million was being transferred from TANF to increase funding for the state child care subsidy program, growth that will allow nearly 2,000 more children to be served.   The new funds will also allow the state to raise the amount paid to providers by 3 percent, and will allow families to continue to receive help with their child care costs until their income reaches 170 percent of the federal poverty level.

In addition, the new funds will be a critical support for statewide implementation of the “Paths to Quality”, the new voluntary Quality Rating System designed to help improve the quality of child care for all children in Indiana through mentoring for providers and other supports, and incentives such as tiered reimbursement rates of up to 10 percent above the regular subsidy rate.

Title I and Early Childhood Programs

CLASP's new paper explores the wide range of ways in which school districts are using funds from Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for early education through kindergarten and examines how the implementation of NCLB has impacted those investments. It also makes recommendations for local educational agencies interested in creating Title I-funded early education programs or thinking about how to sustain these types of investments in the face of policy and funding challenges.

Education Week focuses on federal early childhood proposals

An article in this week's edition of Education Week (free registration required) discusses three preschool bills that have been put forward in Congress. Legislation proposed separately by Sen. Clinton (D-NY), Sen. Casey (D-PA), and Rep. Hirono (D-Hawaii), would authorize varying sums of money to expand state pre-kindergarten programs, the vast majority of which serve primarily 4-year-olds.

CLASP is concerned that a federal preschool bill would draw attention and resources away from the full range of birth to five early childhood programs that many states are currently investing in, as well as away from existing federal early childhood programs, including Head Start and child care subsidies, that have been severely underfunded for years. Quoted from the article:

“We have a federal preschool program, and it’s called Head Start,” said Danielle Ewen, the director of child-care and early-education policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy, based in Washington. “And Head Start only serves half of the eligible kids.”

She added that she was disappointed that following Speaker Pelosi’s May summit meeting—which Ms. Ewen described as a “wonderful day of science” that focused on the comprehensive needs of children from birth through age 5—most of the proposals being offered focus only on preschoolers.

“The message from the summit was invest early,” Ms. Ewen said. “A 4-year-old program doesn’t do that.”

The preschool debate at the federal level is being linked to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). CLASP's research in this area, however, reveals that school districts already have the ability to fund preschool programs through Title I of NCLB and districts are taking advantage of that flexibility:

Ms. Ewen of the Center for Law and Social Policy pointed to school districts’ existing option to use Title I money to serve young children, either in classroom-based pre-K programs or through other approaches, such as home visits or health screenings. Integrating preschool into the NCLB law, she warned, could imply that those funds should be used only for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Guaranteeing child care for all low-income families

The Future of Children’s latest publication, The Next Generation of Antipoverty Policies, focuses on eight policy proposals for reducing poverty in the U.S., including a proposal to restructure federal child care subsidy programs and federal tax policy related to child care.  This proposal is detailed in an article titled "Next Steps for Federal Child Care Policy" by Mark Greenberg and is based on the premise that current U.S. child care strategies fail to meet four policy goals: that every parent who needs quality child care should be able to afford it; all families should be able to place their children in settings that foster education and healthy development; all families should be able to choose among child care providers; and a set of good child care choices should be available to families.  After demonstrating that these goals are not being met by current child care policies the article asserts that they can be achieved by making the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable and expanding it to cover 50 percent of child care cost for low-income families and replacing the federal child care block grant with a guarantee for child care assistance to families earning below 200 percent of poverty.  This guarantee would be administered by the states through a federal-state funding formula in which families pay a co-payment that increases with their income, and states pay the remaining cost of care.  States would also be responsible for improving the quality of child care through the use of a federally funded Early Care and Education Strategy Fund.   It is estimated that the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit changes would cost nearly $25 billion over five years and the child care guarantee and Early Care and Education Strategy Fund is estimated to cost $18 billion annually.