Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

Upcoming Webinar: How states are Building on the Promise of Early Head Start to expand access for babies and their families

Less than 3 percent of babies and toddlers who are eligible for Early Head Start (EHS) - a federal program with promising results - are reached at current federal funding levels.  Some states have stepped into the breach but more can be done.  The federal Early Head Start program was created to help minimize the disparities caused by poverty by supporting the healthy development of expectant mothers and low-income infants and toddlers in the context of their families and communities. 

A forthcoming joint report by CLASP and ZERO TO THREE - Building on the Promise: State Initiatives to Expand Access to Early Head Start for Young Children and their Families – finds a number of states using one of four main approaches:

• Extending the day or year of existing EHS services. 
• Expanding the capacity of existing EHS and Head Start programs to increase the number of children and pregnant women served.
• Providing resources and assistance to child care providers to help them deliver services meeting EHS standards. 
• Supporting partnerships between EHS and center-based and family child care providers to improve the quality of care. 

You can find out more about the study and hear from state policymakers in Iowa and Kansas about their initiatives in a webinar hosted by the ZERO TO THREE Policy Center on Tuesday, April 22, at 2:00 pm eastern (1:00 pm central, 12:00 pm mountain, and 11:00 am pacific).

Click here to register! 

States increase child care and early education appropriations

State appropriations for child care and early education programs increased over $1 billion from FY 2007 to 2008, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ first-ever survey of state child care and early education state appropriations. The survey asked state fiscal staff to report state appropriations in the areas of child care, pre-kindergarten, parent education/home visiting, and other early learning strategies.  The survey found increases in all four areas:

• Child care appropriations increased by over $672 million ($400 million of which was reported in California) with a total of 47 states reporting increased funding. NCSL notes that the increases in child care appropriations in actuality may not have outpaced the funding challenges that have daunted states for years. 
• Pre-kindergarten appropriations increased by nearly $510 million with a total of 30 reporting increased funding.
• Parent education appropriations increased by over $20 million with a total of 17 states reporting increased funding.
• Appropriations for other early learning, including Head Start/Early Head Start, infant and toddler initiatives, and early childhood mental health programs, increased by $26 million with a total of 19 states reporting increased funding.

Eight states—Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington—reported increased funding in all four areas.

While state pre-kindergarten programs have been increasingly popular in recent years, growing in popularity, size and funding, this survey shows that states are funding a wide range of early education programs vital for young children from birth to school entry and their families. In particular, increasing state appropriations for child care is ever important with stagnant federal funding in recent years.  CLASP's analysis shows that state child care spending (including federal and state funds) decreased in 2004 and in 2005, the most recent years data are available.  States can't do it alone; and federal funding should also demonstrate a recognition of the vital importance of early childhood programs that help families work and help children prepare for school and life.

Strong child care systems help working families and the economy

The Mississippi Economic Policy Center (MEPC) has released a new report titled Broadening the Base: Strengthening Mississippi's Working Families, Businesses and Economy through Strong Child Care Systems. MEPC highlights the importance of child care to the state's economy and to working families, yet investments in child care are insufficent. In Mississippi:

• The cost of infant child care for 9 months is more than a year of tuition at a state four-year college.
• More than 80,000 eligible children under age 13 receive no child care assistance.
• Child care providers who accept subsidized certificates receive 68% of the market rate for infant care - the most expensive care to provide.

As parents fight to keep their subsidies and providers struggle with low payment rates, MEPC makes several recommendations for strengthening child care to provide this critical work support to low-income working families.  Mississippi could increase its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) dollars spent on child care; help child care workers increase their skills through the Workforce Investment Act; reward increases in skills, education, and quality through their Quality Step System; and increase the reimbursement rate, use Community Development Block Grant funds to help support investments in child care and make investments in child care facilities that serve low-income families.

The MEPC report makes clear that Mississippi has many opportunities to leverage funds to invest in child care and help support low-income working families.  Now the state has to find the will to fulfill this potential.

Utah increases quality infant and toddler child care

Using funds from the quality set-aside within the federal child care subsidy (CCDBG) program, Utah’s Office of Child Care (OCC) within the Department of Workforce Services is offering an Infant/Toddler Start-Up and Expansion Grant for Center-based Infant/Toddler Child Care Services. Centers may apply for grants up to $9,999 to create new quality infant/toddler rooms and to support staff development. OCC developed this grant project after its annual child care needs assessment identified infant/toddler child care as a critical, unmet need throughout Utah. Grantees must meet criteria on staff training and classroom environment, be evaluated using the ITERS-R rating system, and participate in Utah's ongoing quality improvement program for infant/toddler classes (the Baby Steps project). With this grant, Utah is demonstrating the importance of establishing state policies to both increase the availability of infant/toddler care and ensure that it meets high quality criteria at the same time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.