Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

New Resources in Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care project

The Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care project presents 15 recommendations that state policies can address to improve care for infants and toddlers. CLASP is writing research-based rationales to support each of the recommendations. Newly released:

• Continuity of Care: Research-Based Rationale supporting Recommendation #3: Support continuous relationships between providers and caregivers and the children they care for, from when they enter child care to age three.
• Center Ratios and Group Sizes: Research-Based Rationale supporting Recommendation #6: Ensure that babies and toddlers in centers are in small groups with sufficient numbers of providers.
• Family Child Care Ratios and Group Sizes: Research-Based Rationale supporting Recommendation #7: Ensure babies and toddlers in family child care are in small groups with sufficient numbers of providers.

See the project page for additional project resources, such as the Framework presenting all 15 recommendations, and additional related research papers.

Family child care and state pre-kindergarten programs

As states create and expand their pre-kindergarten programs, a key question is who can be a provider of the program. While some states limit the program to public schools, most include some community-based providers in an effort to expand access to the program for working families and to build the quality of these programs.

However, states are still struggling with ways to include family child care providers into their programs. While data shows that many children are served in these settings, especially children from low-income families, pre-kindergarten programs are often set up to require a traditional classroom model and exclude family child care.

Several successful models have emerged that include the children in family child care programs in state pre-kindergarten programs. Illinois Action for Children has published a new report that summarizes the success of one promising model, known as the Community Connections Preschool Model. In this program, children in regulated and unregulated home-based child care and their providers are included in the state pre-kindergarten program.

State-Funded Preschool and Home-Based Child Care: The Community Connections Model describes the model, in which preschool aged children in home-based care settings are transported to a half-day center-based preschool program. The home-based providers receive supports through project coordinators, who provide monitoring and technical assistance to the centers and to the home-based providers.

Several features have been critical to the success of the model, including an agreement with the state child care subsidy office to continue to provide a full-day subsidy to providers when children are in the state pre-kindergarten program. The project has shown significant benefits, for children and for providers, and other states may wish to replicate its successes as they move ahead with state pre-kindergarten implementation.

New report on state child care subsidy activities

The Child Care Bureau recently released the CCDF Report of State and Territory Plans FY 2008-2009,  a summary of activities reported in individual biennial state plans required for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program. As in previous years, the report includes information on a range of state child care policies related to access to child care assistance and quality initiatives, such as how states determine provider payment rates, set income eligibility thresholds, and the types of outreach services offered.

The FY 2008-2009 report differs from prior years as it includes profiles for each state. In addition, this State Plan report includes information on how states are addressing the needs of parents and providers who are limited English proficient. In December, CLASP released a report on state activities to support LEP and immigrant parents and providers based on information in states' 2006-2007 state plans. According to the Child Care Bureau's Report:

• 37 states have bilingual caseworkers available or other translation services (such as language lines) for LEP parents.
• 28 states have information and applications for child care subsidies available in at least one language besides English.
• 7 states provide training and technical assistance for providers in a language other than English.

While more actions are needed to fully meet the needs of linguistically diverse communities, highlighting states' policies regarding LEP populations is a positive development in moving towards child care policies that meet the needs of diverse language groups.