Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

CLASP'S Breaking Down Barriers National Summit was a success!

On December 4 and 5th, 75 policymakers, advocates, and researchers convened in Chicago, Illinois for CLASP's Breaking Down Barriers National Summit on Improving Access to Early Care and Education for Immigrant Families. With funding from the Joyce Foundation and the McCormick Tribune Foundation, CLASP brought together this diverse group of actors to explore how state policies can support immigrant families and to strategize policy solutions to improve access to high-quality early care and education for immigrant families.

Collectively, summit participants represented 24 states and included representatives from 14 state child care and early education agencies, national policy and advocacy organizations, and state and local immigrant serving organizations representing diverse communities. State agencies represented included State Departments of Education, Departments of Human Services, Public Welfare, Children and Youth Services, and Offices of Child Care and Early Education. Many summit participants commented on the value of participating in a meeting with a diverse group of actors and the rare opportunity that it created to forge new partnerships and learn from each other.

The opening panel set the stage for the summit through presentations by a number of speakers highlighting the importance of coming together around the issue of access to early care and education for immigrant families. Read more about the meeting and view materials.

California’s working parents struggle to find licensed child care

The California Child Care Resource and Referral Network has published its biennial analysis of the supply of licensed child care in the state.  The results underscore the lack of investments in child care: there are only enough licensed child care slots for one-quarter of children with working parents.  For families with babies, the results are more distressing—only five percent of all licensed slots in child care centers are for children under age two. The lack of licensed child care choices means many parents may have to place their children in unlicensed settings, which may or may not be what they would otherwise choose. 

The report also notes that even families who can find licensed care cannot afford it.  The report looked at the cost of care by county, and found that the average annual cost for full time care for an infant in a licensed center is $10,745, consuming 69% of earnings for a single parent making minimum wage. In 34 counties, the combined cost of infant care and housing exceeds the income of a minimum wage earner.

Licensing matters for babies. For example, provisions in state child care licensing, such as the child-to-staff ratio and group size, affect the amount of time a child care provider can spend with children, and thus the likelihood that an infant or toddler receives the nurturing, responsive care essential to forming a secure attachment with their caregiver. Licensing standards are also important to the health and safety of infants and toddlers, who require additional care that older children do not, such as diapering, feeding, holding, bathing, and sleeping on their backs to prevent SIDS. The training, technical assistance, and monitoring embedded in state licensing systems assist licensed child care providers in providing quality care.

California is not the only state facing these shortages in licensed care.  Recent reports from NACCRRA highlight the high cost of care across the country and identified failings in state licensing systems.  The California report provides an important policy and advocacy tool for understanding the need for substantial new state and federal investments in the child care system—both to help low-income working families afford the care they need to work and to improve and expand the supply of licensed care, particularly for babies.

State policies that improve access to high-quality child care and early education for immigrant families

State policies can promote, or impede, access to high-quality child care and early education for immigrant families. CLASP recommends that policymakers and other actors look to improve child care and early education policies and programs in the following ways:

1. Promote coordination and collaboration between the child care and early education and the immigrant- and refugee-serving communities.
2. Design child care and early education programs and policies that intentionally address the needs of immigrant families with young children.
3. Strengthen child care and early education systems to improve and expand access to high-quality services for young children in immigrant families.
4. Build the linguistic and cultural competency of state and local agencies and child care and early education programs.

CLASP has created a technical assistance tool for states that lists recommended policies that states can implement to address immigrant access to high-quality child care and early education programs.  Policymakers will want to evaluate the current set of policies they have in place that support these recommended courses of action as well as to plan for future policy changes and improvements.

Examples of recommended state policies include:

• State encourages and supports local coordination and collaboration between child care and early education programs and agencies and immigrant-serving organizations. This may include incentives for child care and early education programs to partner with immigrant serving organizations and funding for these partnerships. Examples of local collaboration include: mutual representation on governing boards, joint training opportunities, joint development of documents and materials for families, and joint applications for creating and expanding programs to meet the needs of immigrant families. Read more.

Learning from state experiences with building comprehensive prenatal-to-five early childhood systems

From the first day of life through entry into school, young children are developing foundations – built into the architecture of the brain - which will have an impact on their development and success later in life.  Although children develop holistically from the pre-natal period to age five, the federal, state and local government agencies and programs that exist to help them and their families along the way are often spread across multiple state agencies, with different funding streams, and rules.

A new report coauthored by ZERO TO THREE and Pre[k]Now examines five states’ efforts to build cohesive, comprehensive early childhood systems, suggests a set of cross-cutting components necessary for success, profiles the five states’ experiences (California, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania), and makes recommendations for state policymakers. The two groups, whose work focuses on different age groups of the prenatal-to-five spectrum, together call for a time when this nation “supports the healthy development of all children within their states and communities by providing comprehensive, coordinated, well-funded systems of high-quality, prenatal-to-five services that foster success in school and life.”  Model state early childhood systems should address physical and mental health, family support, and early care and education needs of young children and their families.

Now is an important time to take heed of the call for a birth to five approach. The newly signed Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 requires states to have State Advisory Councils on Early Education and Care in order to determine needs across programs serving children birth to age of school entry and to develop recommendations for coordination and collaboration between early childhood programs at the state and local level, and other tasks. If funding becomes available, the bill authorizes new federal incentive grants to promote the development and expansion of state early education systems. This provision may act as a catalyst for new and existing efforts of state policymakers to improve their early childhood systems. The new report joins other resources that can be helpful to move this important work forward.

2006 CCDBG participation data are now available

On December 7, 2007, the Child Care Bureau released preliminary federal fiscal year 2006 participation data for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). The data include the number of children served, the ages of children served, the types of child care settings used, and the reasons families receive assistance for each state. According to the data:

• Approximately 53,200 additional children were served in CCDBG (including TANF transfers) in FY 2006.
• The average monthly number of children served increased from 1.75 million in 2005 to 1.80 million in 2006.

In FY 2006, states received an additional $200 million in federal matching funds. CCDBG expenditure data for 2006 are not yet available.  The Administration for Children and Families does not report on the number of children receiving TANF-funded child care; therefore, an updated figure on the "total" number of children receiving child care assistance through all sources is not available.

Click here to read CLASP's fact sheet on CCDBG participation in 2006.

CLASP previously reported a preliminary analysis of TANF spending on child care in FY 2006. We will provide additional analysis on national child care spending trends as in prior years, as well as updated state-by-state child care spending pages when CCDBG expenditure data are available.

Head Start children more likely to receive recommended immunizations

Child Trends Data Bank has released new 2006 estimates on child immunizations, noting that, "The proportion of children ages 19 to 35 months receiving the combined series (4:3:1:3) vaccines increased from 69 percent to 83 percent between 1994 and 2004. Since this time, however, progress towards full immunization of all children ages 19 to 35 months has stalled, standing at 82 percent in 2006." 

The 2006 data did not show significant differences by race and ethnicity, but did show significant differences by poverty status, with 78 percent of children living below the poverty level having their recommended vaccinations, compared to 84 percent for children not living in poverty.

Yet not all poor children are falling behind: in 2006, 93 percent of young children enrolled in Early Head Start had received all immunizations appropriate or possible by the end of the program year.  Working with families to ensure access to medical services, including immunizations, is a legal requirement of all Head Start programs. This comprehensive focus on all aspects of child development makes a difference, yet only about 3 percent of eligible infants and toddlers, and about half of eligible preschool age children, get access to Head Start. 

Children living in poverty face many risk factors to healthy development.  Staying on schedule for immunizations helps to prevent illness and potential delays to development.  Head Start and Early Head Start help these children stay on schedule, and provide other needed supports, such as identifying disabilities, linking families with a medical home, and finding dental services.  Yet current funding levels limit the reach of these important programs; without substantial increases in funding for Head Start and Early Head Start, the data will continue to show that poor children are falling behind.

Report documents local need, barriers to accessing child care subsidies

Fewer parents in Monroe County, New York are accessing the child care they need to work and support their families. The Center for Governmental Research, in Rochester, NY, recently released a report documenting a nearly 40 percent decline in children receiving subsidies since 2001--from 13,575 children served in an average month in 2001 to 8,400 children on average during the first four months of 2007. According to the report, over 12,000 children in Monroe County are living in families that are potentially eligible for child care assistance and are not receiving it.

The report drew on multiple sources including Census data, State and County data, and focus groups and interviews with parents, providers, Department of Human  Services staff, and child care advocates. Several policy changes at the county and state levels have contributed to the decline in children receiving assistance:

• Since 2002, income eligibility for child care subsidies in Monroe County has fallen from 200 percent of poverty to 165 percent.
• While fewer families are income-eligible for assistance, more parents seeking child care subsidies are being denied. The rate of applicant denial increased from 11 percent in 2001 to 50 percent in 2006. A contributing factor to this increase in denials was failure of applicants to comply with a 2004 New York State law that requires applicants to seek child support payment as a condition of receiving child care assistance. (Federal law does not require parents to seek child support from a non-custodial parent in order to obtain a child care subsidy although several states have this requirement.)
• Finally, the county has decreased spending on child care in recent years, contributing to an accumulation of approximately $5 million in unspent child care funds.

Interestingly, the report found that the overall decline in children receiving assistance occurred both among low-income working families and families receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) assistance—even while the number of families receiving TANF increased slightly. The report was unable to conclude why a large number of TANF child care cases were of a short duration or why few families transitioned to the income-eligible child care assistance program.

States and localities can benefit greatly from conducting local assessments such as this one that map the need for child care assistance and determine where there is a need for child care subsidies, whether it matches the location of licensed providers, as well as what challenges parents and providers face in navigating the child care subsidy system. Interviews in Monroe County revealed that in addition to demographic and policy changes, perceptions of a burdensome and unfriendly application process also contributed to fewer families seeking and retaining. Information, such as that included in the CGR report, can help determine what policies could be put in place to better support families and their access to child care subsidies.

Questioning the candidates for the kids

Do you have questions for the presidential candidates about their positions on children's issues, but don't have the opportunity to ask them because you don't live in New Hampshire, Iowa, or South Carolina? A coalition of 20 Iowa organizations has leveraged their location in one of the key states in the presidential race to ask them for you.

A new website, www.itsaboutourkids.org, has posted the results of this effort to survey all the Republican and Democratic candidates on a set of questions on child care, preschool, afterschool, health care, services for children with disabilities, child abuse and neglect, family economic security and success, immigration policy, and ensuring equal economic opportunity.  No Republican candidates have responded thus far, but all the Democratic candidates have submitted their answers. The website also contains links to all the candidates’ websites, guides to finding child and family policy positions on the websites, and tools for citizens on how to find out more information about the candidates.

No matter the candidate, child care and early education policies should receive serious attention during this election season.   Working families need child care, and children need high quality, nurturing early learning experiences. Three-quarters of children under age five with employed mothers experience non-parental child care regularly, often full time. Babies and toddlers under age three are not excluded from this trend, and there is evidence the care they experience is more likely to be of low quality. But quality is expensive, and the average cost of full time care for an infant in a child care center is as high as $14,647 depending on the state. Stagnant federal funding for child care and early education programs has meant fewer children get access to the assistance that helps their parents pay for child care. A federal commitment to helping more low-income families choose the best care for their children – that would get our vote.