Abridged Version
Starting Points
Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children

Guarantee Quality Child Care Choices

n a very real sense, parents and child care providers are jointly raising many of this nation's youngest children. In 1965, only 17 percent of mothers of one-year-olds were in the labor force; in 1991, fully 53 percent worked outside the home. More than five million infants and toddlers are now in the care of other adults while their parents work. More than a third of these young children are looked after by relatives, either at home or elsewhere. A quarter spend their days in child care centers; close to another quarter in family child care. A relatively small percentage of infants and toddlers are in the care of in-home providers or spend their days in other situations.

How well is the current system of child care meeting the needs of our youngest children and their families? In some well-run settings, competent child care providers attend to small numbers of children, and infants and toddlers experience a happy and stimulating day. But in many other settings, each provider looks after five, six, or even seven infants. Children (and adults) in these settings--which probably constitute the majority--are overstressed and unhappy.

Many parents of infants and toddlers have few child care choices. Many would like to stay home longer after their baby is born, but someone must pay the bills, and the United States stands alone among major industrialized nations in not ensuring income protection for parental leave. When they do go back to work, too many parents are forced to "make do"--to accept care that is safe and affordable but that falls short of the quality they would like for their young child. Many find themselves searching again and again for new arrangements as their initial "choices" prove unreliable or unsatisfactory. The disruption to the child, the family, and the parents' working life is immense and costly.

This child care crisis means that many of our youngest children miss early experiences that are necessary to the development of healthy intellectual and social capacities. Their well-being is jeopardized not only by poor-quality care and the lack of affordable care, but also by a fragmented system of delivery and high turnover among providers due to inadequate compensation and working conditions.

The task force strongly recommends that our nation make the availability of quality child care choices to all parents of infants and toddlers a high priority. Parents need options about when to begin child care, and they need child care arrangements that are high-quality, accessible, and affordable. These options include a continuum of parental and nonparental forms of care throughout the first three years. This nation will ensure that parents have genuine choices about the care of their young children when we

Improve parental leave benefits

Ensure quality child care for infants and toddlers

Provide parents with affordable quality child care options

Develop networks of family-centered child care programs for infants and toddlers

Improve Parental Leave Benefits

Infants' early experiences are critical to healthy development. Experts can now substantiate the benefits of allowing ample time for the mother to recover from childbirth and for the parents to be with their new baby during the first months of life. Infants have a better chance at a healthy start in life when parents are able to stay at home during the early months. Breastfeeding and in-home care offer protection from infection before the infant has developed a mature immune system.

Parents and families also need time to adjust. The birth or adoption of an infant is a sensitive moment in the family's life. Parents need time to get to know their infants, to understand their babies' rhythms, patterns, and preferences. Mothers and fathers learn to respond appropriately through these earliest interactions, and early success helps parents to become confident in their new roles. Such success is especially difficult to achieve when both parents have demanding work schedules. When adequate parental leave benefits enable infants and parents to have sufficient time together, everyone profits.

When new mothers are surveyed on how long a parental leave they would prefer, they say six months. They want time to get to know the baby, time to adjust to the baby's schedule, to find quality child care, and to phase in their return to work. Experts generally recommend a four- to six-month parental leave as critical to fostering healthy infant development.

As employment rates have soared among women with young children, public support has grown for parental leave policies, and this support has gradually influenced many sectors of our society. Some employers now voluntarily offer parental leave, albeit usually unpaid. Many states require employers to provide basic parental leave benefits. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)--the nation's first family leave legislation, enacted in 1993--requires employers of fifty or more people to provide to all eligible employees twelve weeks of unpaid, job-guaranteed leave with existing health benefits.

The task force recommends that the next step should be to strengthen existing legislation in three ways:

First, by including employers with fewer than fifty employees under the legislation. Currently 50 to 60 percent of the workforce is excluded.

Second, by extending parental leave. A twelve-week leave, while helpful, is far less than the four to six months preferred by parents and recommended by child development experts.

Third, by providing partial wage replacement. Because the Family and Medical Leave Act and current employer leave policies do not include wage replacement, many parents--especially women from low-income households--must return to work much sooner than they wish.

Financing a paid national leave policy is not impossible, if it is phased in. The costs should be shared by employers, government, and employees. Possible policy options for financial support are

Expanded temporary disability insurance

A modified unemployment compensation system

A special benefit for parents with newborn or newly adopted children

The private sector has an important role to play in improving family benefits and policies. Employers, especially those in the Fortune 1000 group, are increasingly finding it good business to respond to parents' needs. And smaller companies complying with state parental leave policies incur no greater costs than larger employers.

The task force recommends that all employers assist parents in ways that are consistent with the needs of both the workplace and the family, by implementing a range of policies such as improved parental leave, flexible work schedules, job sharing, child care information and referral assistance, and on-site or nearby child care.

Ensure Quality Child Care

For healthy development, infants and toddlers need close relationships with a small number of caring people, beginning with their parents and later including other adults in child care settings. Quality child care programs offer care to young children in small groups, in environments that are safe and comfortable. Each adult worker is responsible for only a few children, and personnel are well prepared and adequately paid. The program encourages parent involvement and is linked to comprehensive health and nutrition services. Unfortunately, these programs are the exception rather than the rule.

Most parents describe quality child care as "good parenting"; they believe that caregivers, not regulations, ensure high quality. But child care professionals emphasize the enforcement of consistent standards as the key to high quality. A few consistent standards--appropriately monitored and enforced--can help achieve exactly what parents want. For example, a program that assigns a small number of children to a sensitive and trained staff member goes far toward achieving individualized attention for every child.

Despite the evidence that standards establish the preconditions for quality child care, government policy lags behind. At present, regulation of child care rests largely with state governments; the standards are varied, weak, or even nonexistent. For example, most states allow infants and toddlers to be cared for by providers who have not completed high school and who have no specialized training whatsoever.

The task force recommends that states review, upgrade, and implement consistent child care standards. Regardless of funding sources, the standards should ensure quality by addressing

Child:staff ratios

Group size

Preparation and qualifications of staff

Health and safety

Linkage to parents and community services

In working toward better quality child care, many partners must work together to specify and support these baseline standards: community groups, professional groups, states, and the federal government. In supporting consistent standards for group child care, it is not our intention to impose hardships on informal arrangements that are working well in communities and neighborhoods. Rather, we encourage communities to develop mechanisms to include these informal providers in local child care networks and to facilitate their compliance with the standards.

In many cases, child care providers are the only adults other than parents who have daily contact with infants and toddlers. They thus play a critical role in fostering the child's healthy development. Currently, however, many providers of child care lack specific preparation for their jobs; moreover, few incentives exist to encourage training. To ensure that child care settings nurture children, protect their health and safety, and prepare them for later school success, better-qualified staff are essential. [See New Careers for Childcare Professionals sidebar.]

The task force recommends that providers of group care for infants and toddlers be required to receive specific training to meet the needs of children in this age group; it also recommends that federal, state, and community funds facilitate such training efforts. Better training cannot resolve all the complex problems of child care, but research shows that it is an effective, relatively inexpensive strategy for improving quality, particularly if training initiatives are linked to career development, with trainees receiving credit toward associate and bachelor's degrees. The implementation of statewide training systems and the dissemination of training materials would go a long way toward improving child care services to young children throughout the United States. However, the task force recognizes that attracting and retaining high-quality individuals to the child care field will always be difficult as long as salaries are so low.

Experienced child care providers who love their jobs leave them in large numbers because of low salaries and inadequate benefits. Studies show that annual turnover for child care providers is nearly three times the rate reported by U.S. companies, and nearly five times the rate reported for public school teachers. High turnover rates compromise the quality of care.

To maintain quality child care services, we must improve the compensation of child care providers. In 1990 the average annual salary for providers in centers was about $11,000. Half of family child care providers earned less than $8,000 per year, and nonregulated providers received less than $2,000 per year. Even providers with college training or degrees are woefully underpaid. The goal should be to establish pay levels that are competitive across professions that call for equivalent educational qualifications and job responsibilities. Staff also need to receive such benefits as health insurance, sick leave, retirement, paid vacation, and workers' compensation. The task force recommends two strategies for improving provider compensation:

First, tie higher salaries and better benefits to the completion of specialized training.

Second, provide incentive or salary enhancement grants to child care centers and family child care networks that provide quality care as defined by state standards or by professional organizations if state standards are inadequate.

Business and government are beginning to turn their attention to child care, but a larger, more sustained commitment is necessary. Corporations can help by creating public–private partnerships to sponsor individual child care providers or centers that serve the communities from which they draw their labor force. Federal, state, and local governments all need to contribute to narrowing the gap between the costs of quality care and what is now affordable for many families. They can do so through incentives and innovative partnerships with nonprofit agencies and the private sector.

Provide Parents with Affordable Child Care Options

This country is just beginning to realize just how expensive quality child care actually is. Estimates of the value of the services and goods devoted to the care and education of young children range from $120 billion to $240 billion annually. In the past, these costs were covered largely by mothers' unpaid labor. In recent years, as mothers more often work, parents have increasingly paid--in actual dollars--for nonparental child care services.

When they realize how much child care costs, most parents are astonished. Costs for one child range from $40 to $200 per week. All families want to give their children the best care possible, but these outlays are too high for most. Overall, the less families earn, the higher the proportion of their income that is spent for child care. Families with incomes under $15,000 per year spend 23 percent of their income on child care, whereas families with annual incomes of $50,000 or more devote 6 percent to child care.

Overwhelmingly, today's parents would like to see both government and business assist all families by ensuring access to an adequate supply of affordable child care. Parents want businesses to offer benefit plans that include on-site or nearby child care and flexible work schedules. [See Tapping New Resources for Quality Child Care sidebar.]

The federal government already offers some assistance with child care to families at all income levels. Middle- and upper-income families receive assistance largely through the Dependent Care Tax Credit (DCTC); lower-income and poor families receive subsidies through the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the Social Services Block Grant, and the Family Support Act. But these measures are not enough.

In today's difficult economic climate, the task force recommends that preference be given to providing financial support to poor and moderate-income families so that they can choose quality child care. We propose two strategies.

First, the federal government should channel substantial new money into child care in order to make it more affordable for parents, possibly through supplementary block grants to the states for child care. This money should go to child care programs, especially those caring for children under age three, permitting them to expand facilities, adopt sliding fee schedules, and improve quality. To promote quality, we recommend that all new and reauthorized federal funding for child care be modeled after the 1990 Head Start reauthorization, which mandates that 25 percent of new funds be spent on quality enhancements. This money should be coordinated at the state level and dedicated to promoting quality child care programs for infants and toddlers through investments in stronger standards, improved training, better facilities, and higher staff compensation.

Second, the federal government should make the Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable in order to provide greater financial benefits to low-income families. The additional costs of refundability could be made up by lowering the income levels at which the DCTC phases out or by decreasing the benefit levels for high-income families.

Develop Networks of Family-Centered Child Care Programs

Virtually every American community has produced a patchwork of child care, including licensed centers, regulated family child care, unregulated family child care, and informal care by relatives. Yet all too often the seams that hold this quilt together are frayed. In most communities, providers function in almost total isolation--they have little opportunity to share ideas, learn new skills, or provide support and guidance to one another. This isolation is particularly apparent in family child care and care by relatives--the types of care most popular for infants and toddlers.

The many patches of American child care can and must be stitched together. Local child care networks have proven effective, alleviating the isolation experienced by many child care providers, offering them significant professional development opportunities, and linking them with a wide variety of related health, educational, and social services. At the same time, these networks give parents a well-known, accessible, unbiased source of information and advice as they sort through various child care options. This is especially important for parents who may be new to a community or to the country.

This concept is already working successfully in France, where family child care networks link from six to as many as thirty-five homes. Each network is directed by a specially trained pediatric nurse who coordinates services, hires qualified child care providers, supervises their training, matches each provider with two or three children, and facilitates parents' and providers' access to other services and supports. Similar efforts are under way in the United States. For instance, some areas of Los Angeles have a network system that connects center and family child care.

The task force recommends that every community develop a comprehensive child care network linking all child care programs and offering consumers a variety of child care settings. In order to be effective, a child care network should have three key features:

It should be comprehensive, encompassing all existing child care services and enabling children with disabilities to participate fully.

It must be developed and operated locally and funded through a combination of public and private sources.

It should have as its hub an institution that is central to its particular community.

Clearly, to be effective, the network must draw on the energy of the community, involving people who know best what its parents and children need.

Part II Chapter 2 Sidebars

New Careers for Child Care Professionals

Those who enter the child care field find few opportunities for training and career development: Funding for training is limited and sporadic. As a result, most caregivers have no access to training. Where training programs exist, incentives to participate are few or nonexistent. Beyond the entry level, few programs offer a sequence of training activities linked to career advancement steps. Most training situations fail to prepare caregivers to work with a wide range of children and families. They do not offer specialized training needed to care for children at particular developmental stages, or with particular life experiences. Caregivers in general cannot earn college credits by enrolling in a training program. There are signs of progress, such as financial support for training under the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant program enacted in 1991. Federal and state policymakers are beginning to show interest in caregiver training, and planning to improve training has begun in several states. Fortunately, examples of promising practices do exist: Since 1985, the California Child Care Initiative has been recruiting and training family child care providers. As of March 1993, it has generated 3,600 new licensed family child care homes, making 14,100 child care spaces available to children of all ages.

More than 22,000 providers have received basic and advanced training at thirty-four sites across the state. The program offers incentives such as paying providers' membership fees to join professional associations, paying stipends for transportation to training, supplying vouchers for toys and equipment, and placing providers' names in local referral pools. The initiative has recently made more family child care materials available in Spanish and has developed a new recruitment initiative responding to the crisis in infant and toddler care. Families of children with disabilities who live in rural settings face particular difficulties in finding appropriate child care. In Montana, the Educational Home Model Outreach Program provides training and technical assistance to child care centers and family child care homes that care for children with and without disabilities. The program offers the particular skills needed to care for children with motor impairments. The project offers advice to other providers via a toll-free telephone line and a newsletter. In 1989, Delaware inaugurated the nation's first comprehensive statewide plan for career development in early care and education. The program has opened a resource center for child care providers in each of the state's three counties. It has involved the eight colleges in Delaware that offer early childhood curriculum in a pilot project that enables caregivers to earn college credits.

Tapping New Resources for Quality Child Care

New partners are beginning to take the lead in helping parents to find quality, affordable child care. These new initiatives may foretell dramatic shifts in the way America's vital institutions accommodate family and workplace responsibilities in the future. The following initiatives represent important new ways of promoting quality child care. Corporations can provide for their own employees and become models for approaches that the business community can take in creating more family-friendly working conditions. For example, in 1988, the Dayton Hudson Corporation began "Family-to-Family" as a collaboration with local nonprofit child care resource and referral agencies to train and accredit family child care providers. By 1992, Dayton Hudson recognized the value of a nationwide public awareness and consumer education campaign on quality child care, and launched "Child Care Aware" in collaboration with leading child care organizations. Child Care Aware encourages parents to consider quality issues in selecting child care services through innovative marketing techniques such as shopping bags that explain the value of quality child care. It helps them locate such services with advice from local resource and referral agencies, helps develop strong parent–caregiver partnerships, builds recognition of child care as a profession, and educates the public about the importance of quality child care for society. State governments can support innovative financing arrangements to provide capital to child care providers. For example, the State of Illinois has entered into an arrangement to issue tax-exempt bonds, repayable in ten years, with a philanthropic guarantee as collateral. The resulting Illinois Facilities Fund will provide capital to develop ten centers run by child care providers, who will lease the facilities for ten years and will assume ownership when the bond issue is paid off. The financing is expected to strengthen and improve child care centers in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The ten large centers will be fully equipped and curriculum-based and will have support for staff development and training; they should serve as laboratories for further understanding of the economic growth of child care and the needs of families.

Banks can add child care programs to their activities under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The act requires federally insured mortgage-lending institutions to make funds available for community and neighborhood reinvestment at affordable interest rates. If banks identify child care as a "community need" under the CRA, they can make loans to providers as part of their obligations to assist low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Affordable capital is chronically short in many such neighborhoods. Philanthropic and nonprofit organizations, including private and community foundations, can take the lead in identifying child care as a critical community issue. They can bring together representatives of employers and employees, persuade local governments and grantmakers to take an interest, and underwrite pilot programs. In 1987, for example, United Way of Massachusetts Bay formed the Child Care Initiative with other foundations and corporations to capitalize a loan fund. The loan fund is intended, in the short term, to provide capital to child care providers for expansion and stabilization of their operations, to ensure investment in centers serving low-income children, and to encourage more businesslike management practices among nonprofit providers. In the longer term, the fund is expected to draw attention to the facilities and capital needs of child care providers, who are often undercapitalized.