Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

New language access resource for states

All agencies that receive federal funds are required to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964  to take reasonable steps to provide limited English proficient (LEP) individuals with meaningful access to their programs, activities, and services. This includes most agencies that administer child care and early education programs, including school districts, state government agencies, and Head Start programs. Yet, inadequate language access remains a significant barrier to accessing programs for many families with young children.

Ensuring language access may include the use of competent interpreters, hiring of bilingual staff, translation of materials, and the use of telephone language line services. Agencies may conduct assessments to review their language access policies and to create plans for improving service delivery to LEP individuals.

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has created a language access portal, which is a digital library of hundreds of resources for state and local social service agencies. The portal includes federal and state laws and guidelines, service models, and related research on language access and LEP populations. It also includes information on policies such as bilingual pay differentials, contracting for translation services, and best practices for interpreters. Finally, the portal includes a searchable database of state and local documents that can be used to find examples of translated materials and applications, policy guidance, and other resources. The database is searchable by state, service area, and languages.

State reported activities to support immigrant and LEP families in child care programs

For CLASP’s new policy brief, CCDBG State Plan Reported Activities to Support Limited English Proficient (LEP) and Immigrant Communities, CLASP reviewed FY 2006-2007 Child Care and Development (CCDBG) state plans for references to initiatives that could support immigrant families and/or providers, LEP families and/or providers, and English Language Learners (ELLs).  The state plans set out the policies and initiatives the state expects to implement over a two-year period using the direct service and quality set-aside funds in the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

Some examples of state-reported activities include:

• Utah assembled an early learning guidelines’ development team that represented diverse cultural groups. The team included Centro de la Familia, a nonprofit organization that works to meet the needs of the Latino population in the state;
• Arizona’s and South Dakota’s guidelines contain specific information or strategies addressing their use with ELLs.
• North Carolina’s Division of Child Development web site is available in Spanish
  New York’s application for child care assistance is available in six languages—Haitian-Creole, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and English.

CLASP found that state reported activities to support diverse families and providers were often vague.  Few states reported a comprehensive approach by planning for multiple strategies.   

To better serve the child care and early education needs of LEP and immigrant families, CLASP recommends that states  develop comprehensive strategies that are clear in their intent to meet the needs of LEP and immigrant families and providers and specific in their plans for implementation.  Some examples of recommended policies include:

• provide materials on child care services to language minority communities, including information about eligibility for child care subsidies;
• ensure that child care subsidy intake procedures and materials are linguistically appropriate, culturally sensitive, and accessible for those living in immigrant communities; and
• use contracts and grants to expand access to high quality child care programs for children in immigrant families, and support partnerships with immigrant serving organizations to provide information and direct services.

No country for young children

On Sunday, January 27, The Washington Post featured a story on the economic opportunities and struggles of retirees and the aging baby boomers. The article focused on the need for new careers, additional education and training, and help in making transitions to second or third careers for this population.  Government policies that support adults as they age are an important component of our country’s social safety net, but, what about the children? While an agenda that looks at the career prospects for our oldest citizens is interesting—and gets a prime position in the Washington Post—it does raise the question of whether our youngest citizens are being supported with opportunities that ensure their future success.  Is this really a country for young children? Multiple indicators of child well-being suggest that it’s not.

Many children living in low-income households are at risk despite their parents’ best efforts to work and support their families. Over half of young children in low-income households have a parent who works full-time throughout the year and an additional 27 percent have a parent who works either part-time or for part of the year. We need public policies that help these families so that that their children have all that they need to thrive—help with health insurance, food security, quality early care and education and other supports. Read more.

Hispanic children show substantial benefits from Tulsa’s pre-kindergarten program

Researchers at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University sought to determine how much Hispanic children benefited from participation in the Oklahoma state pre-kindergarten program. They also set out to understand whether there were demographic characteristics of some Hispanic students that helped them benefit from the program. The results of the study are reported in The Effects of Oklahoma’s Pre-K Program on Hispanic Children. The researchers administered an academic skills assessment test in English and in Spanish to a group of Hispanic students who had attended pre-kindergarten in Tulsa, Oklahoma the previous year and to a group of Hispanic students who were about to enter the same pre-kindergarten program.

Results showed that the group of students that previously completed the program had substantially higher pre-reading, pre-writing, and pre-math skills than the group of students that had yet to experience the program. The analysis also revealed that children whose parents spoke Spanish at home and whose parents were born in Mexico benefited the most from the pre-kindergarten program. These children had higher test score gains in all three areas, compared to other Hispanic children. Hispanic children who were tested in both Spanish and English showed gains in both languages, although stronger gains in English, which suggests the benefits of the program extended beyond English language acquisition alone. Finally, while the Tulsa pre-kindergarten program is an English immersion program, Hispanic children performed better on the test if their teacher spoke some Spanish. Related research shows that pre-kindergarten students’ social and language development benefits from being in classrooms with Spanish-speaking teachers.

This study is part of a growing body of research that shows that children in immigrant families and English Language Learners can benefit from high-quality early childhood education programs that prepare them to learn and succeed as they enter elementary school. While at least 15 states include ELLs among their targeted at-risk populations or use ELL status to prioritize enrollment among eligible children for targeted state pre-kindergarten programs, the reality is that children of immigrants and ELLs remain less likely to participate in all early care and education programs. To further meet the needs of young children from diverse backgrounds, early childhood education programs should be culturally competent and facilitate access to high-quality comprehensive services and family support, and that include opportunities for providers to receive training to support the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of these families.

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.

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.

Minnesota funds community-based supports for family, friend and neighbor caregivers

The Minnesota Legislature has appropriated $750,000 to be used for grants to organizations to provide community-based supports to family, friend, and neighbor caregivers and the children in their care. This funding will allow community-based organizations, nonprofit organizations, libraries and Indian tribes to work with caregivers to promote children’s early literacy, healthy development and school readiness, and to foster community partnerships to promote school readiness. The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) expects to award the first grants by the middle of November.

The state will conduct an evaluation of the effort, as required by the legislation, in conjunction with early childhood experts from the University of  Minnesota.   

In Starting Off Right: Promoting Child Development from Birth in State Child Care and Early Education Initiatives, CLASP recommended that states adopt efforts like Minnesota's.  Many families choose care with family members, friends or neighbors, either as their primary care setting or as a second or third caregiver for their children, especially low-income parents and parents of children under age three.  Including family, friend, and neighbor caregivers in state strategies to improve the quality of child care and to ensure children are ready for school is a critical component of state birth to five strategies.

The state strategy to involve family, friend, and neighbor caregivers in promoting school readiness has included:

• supporting research on the state population of non-licensed family, friend, and neighbor caregivers;
• integrating supports for FFN providers into contracts the department has child care resource and referral programs to develop and implement plans to reach out to family, friend, and neighbor caregivers and offer health and safety training, Play and Learn groups, fun events for caregivers and children with an informational focus, library story-time, clinics for screening or immunization, consultation and home-visiting; and
• addressing the cultural and language diversity of children and family, friend, and neighbor caregivers by partnering with immigrant-serving community resources, translating materials into multiple languages, creating informal social networks for FFN providers in specific cultural communities.

Policy choices that support providers in immigrant communities

As the young child population is rapidly growing in diversity, the early childhood field is facing a critical shortage of bilingual and bicultural providers. To most appropriately serve young children from immigrant families, the early childhood workforce must be more representative of the children it serves. Additionally, providers of all languages and cultures need training in cultural competency and second language acquisition strategies.

One way to increase the supply of qualified, bilingual and culturally competent early care and education providers is to assist providers from immigrant communities to gain the skills to become licensed child care providers, as well as to provide supports to immigrant providers in order to retain them in the early childhood field and to encourage further professionalization and credentialing. Targeted outreach and supports can help providers access professional development and higher education, which is essential to increase and sustain the diversity of the early childhood workforce.

A variety of policies are necessary to support immigrant providers with a wide range of educational backgrounds and levels of English proficiency. While some individuals need access to ESL classes and basic GED education, others have extensive training, education, and experience working in early childhood education in their home countries and just need their credentials to be recognized and validated in the US.

CLASP has created a checklist of selected policies that support immigrant providers, particularly those with limited English proficiency. Read more.

New reports focus on children of immigrants

Two new reports, from Children Now and Latinos United, emphasize the importance of focusing attention on how children of immigrants are accessing early care and education, the subject of CLASP's recent report, The Challenges of Change. From California to Illinois (and across the rest of the nation), children of immigrants are a growing group of young children and yet, they are being left out of preschool programs. A data brief provides basic information on California's immigrant families, including that children of immigrants in that state are 10 percent less likely to attend preschool compared to children in non-immigrant families. (In April, another analysis of Census data found that the same was true in 37 other states, to varying degrees.)  The second report, A Critical Policy Imperative, identifies the access barriers preventing Latino families, the largest immigrant group in Illinois, from participating in early care and education programs, including a deficit of programs and facilities in Latino communities. 

As CLASP's research shows, immigrant families face an overwhelming number of barriers to accessing high-quality early care and education. Yet, there are steps that can be taken to improve access for families. We hope that policymakers are paying attention to all of the critical information coming out!

Spanish early literacy parent-child activity materials available

As we continue our work on the Breaking Down Barriers project, CLASP's research shows that young children of immigrants need experiences that support their home- and second-language development, that respect their families’ culture and traditions, and that offer meaningful opportunities for parents who speak languages other than English to be involved.

Yet, we found that there is a wide range of education levels, experience, and training among family, friend, and neighbor caregivers, and few supports for those providers.

Focus groups of license-exempt care providers in immigrant neighborhoods in San Jose, California found that providers were interested in information, resources and training in child development, and assistance in supporting the school readiness of children in their care. (Exempt Care Collaborative: Mayfair and Seven Trees/Solari Neighborhoods: Final Report and Recommendations)

Therefore, we were excited to notice that the Spanish version of Supporting Early Literacy in Natural Environments: Activities for Caregivers and Young Children has recently been updated. It includes forty-six home and community activities designed to address the three key skills of 1) language development, 2) phonological awareness, and 3) general print awareness. The activities are appropriate for children with disabilities as well as children who are developing typically.