Publications

Introduction

These and other situations are facing working parents every day. Parents want their children to be in safe, happy and caring environments where they can learn and develop. Finding such care at an affordable price can be difficult since quality child care is hard to find and is often costly.

Yet, parents can find quality child care if they know what characterizes quality care, what questions to ask potential caregivers, and what things to observe at the child care center or family child care home. After choosing a child care arrangement, parents play an important role in improving the quality of child care by monitoring their children’s care and continuing to advocate for high standards of care and fair treatment of child care providers.

This brochure will help you choose quality care. It explains why quality care is important, what it is, and what you should look for in a child care program, whether it is provided by a center, a family child care provider, or a relative.

This brochure represents only a part of AFSCME’s ongoing commitment to assist working families with their child care needs. For over a decade, AFSCME has pushed for work/family programs at the national level through lobbying for increased funding for child care and for tougher regulations to ensure safe and stimulating care. In addition, AFSCME assists local affiliates with winning family-friendly programs through contract negotiations, advocacy and public education. The union also represents child care providers and works with them to win training opportunities, higher pay and better benefits — which are all linked to high-quality care.

The importance of quality

Quality child care programs can have a profound effect on a child’s development. Recent research has shown that infants and young children who are talked to, asked questions, and responded to had greater cognitive and language development. Another study reported that "children in higher quality preschool classrooms display greater receptive language ability and pre-mathematics skills, and have more advanced social skills than those in lower quality classrooms." Unfortunately, this study concluded that, "most child care is mediocre in quality, sufficiently poor to interfere with children’s emotional and intellectual development. Child care for infants or toddlers is of particular concern." *

Quality of care is also important to employers because when children are in safe and stimulating environments, working parents feel less stress at work and are able to be more productive.

What is quality care?

Most states require that child care centers be licensed, and many require the licensing or registration of most family child care providers and homes. Licensing is the process by which a state reviews the practices of a child care program and determines if the provider meets state-defined standards of operation. Standards vary among states, with some states enacting much more rigorous standards and others providing minimal requirements. Typically, standards are set in the areas of child/staff ratios, group size, teacher training, and health and safety. Licensing alone, however, does not ensure that the program is of high quality. For example, the state of Idaho allows one provider to care for 12 6-week-old infants.

In addition to meeting state licensing requirements, providers and centers may voluntarily choose to meet higher standards by seeking accreditation. One of the better known accreditation programs for child care centers and before-and-after-school programs is operated by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs, a division of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). For family child care providers, the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) provides accreditation. (See the resource section for a list of organizations providing accreditation.)

Accreditation, however, should not be used as the only indicator of quality. A recent study of NAEYC-accredited programs found that NAEYC accreditation, when coupled with non-profit status, higher wages for teaching staff, and the retention of skilled teachers, are predictors of quality.**

While accreditation is a sign that a program seeks to offer the best quality care, there is no substitute for the role parents play in learning about the components of high-quality child care and inspecting and monitoring the program.

* University of Colorado at Denver, University of California at Los Angeles, University of North Carolina, and Yale University, Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers, 1995.

** National Center for the Early Childhood Work Force, NAEYC Accreditation As a Strategy for Improving Child Care Quality: An Assessment, Executive Summary, 1997.

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