It is an ”everyday arrangement” for most of the nation`s children that can affect significantly their social, emotional and cognitive development. But current United States commercial day-care services are inadequately staffed, inconsistent and often unaffordable and unavailable, according to a new report by the National Research Council.
According to ”Caring for America`s Children,” a report by the council`s panel on child-care policies, group size has the greatest impact on the behavior of children in child care, with interaction patterns being less positive and development less advanced as the size of the group increases.
Gov. Jim Edgar recently signed legislation that increases the number of children allowed per caregiver from 8 to 12 in family day-care homes and from 12 to 16 in group day-care homes. The new guidelines, which went into effect immediately, make Illinois one of four states with the highest limit for family day-care homes in the nation. (The other three states are Texas, Kentucky and Ohio.)
Because state regulation of several factors influencing quality of day-care centers and family day-care homes has not been coordinated across the United States, services have developed unevenly, according to the panel report.
”For some families, child-care services are simply unavailable; for others, the care is unaffordable or fails to meet basic standards of quality,” the report notes.
The panel was convened in 1987 by the National Research Council`s Committee on Child Development Research and Public Policy to review research and information about U.S. child-care services and practices and to create recommendations for improvement. The National Research Council is an independent adviser to the government on scientific and technical issues.
”The report makes a loud statement for the importance of quality,” says Barbara Bowman, a panel member and director of graduate studies at the Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child Development in Chicago.
”It`s not a question of whether or not we need quality, but how do we get it.”
Projecting that child care will be a $48 billion industry by 1995, the report recommends establishment of national standards that address factors that influence quality, including group size, child/staff ratios in day-care centers, caregiver qualifications, stability and continuity of caregivers, structure and content of daily activities and facility space design.
The panel found that only 20 states and the District of Columbia regulate group size per center for all ages of children in child-care centers. Included in a breakdown:
– 1-year-olds: The smallest group limit in day care centers is 4, set by Rhode Island. South Dakota at 20 is the highest (Illinois: 16).
– 3-year-olds: The smallest group limit is 10 in Alabama. The largest is Texas, at 35. (Illinois: 20)
– 5-year-olds: Missouri and New York are the lowest, at 16 a group; the largest limit is Texas at 35. (Illinois: 20)
While higher ratios of children to adult caregivers have been associated with more distress in infants and toddlers, state definitions of acceptable ratios for children of different ages vary significantly,, the report says:
– 3- and 5-year-olds: New York has the lowest of all states, with limits of 1 caregiver for 6 children and 1 for 8 respectively. (Illinois: 1-10, 1-20) – Infants: Kentucky is the lowest, with a 1-3 ratio, and Idaho is highest, with a 1-12 ratio. (Illinois: 1-4)
– Nearly 75 percent of states do not require any pre-service training for family day-care providers, yet research indicates that the key variable in caregivers` qualifications for preschoolers was child-related training.
Among the report`s findings:
– Family day-care: Only 14 states require pre-service training, including Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but not California, New York or Illinois.
– Day-care centers: The District of Columbia and 40 states, including Illinois, require pre-service training for center directors; New York, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Wyoming do not. Twenty-one states do not require criminal-record checks and child-abuse registry checks of employees. Illinois and California require both.
Illinois ranks ”in the middle … not the worst and certainly not the best” in terms of regulation of day-care quality nationwide, Bowman says.
Quality varies by region of the U.S., with the West and Northeast being the most progressive and the South and Midwest, with the exception of Wisconsin and Minnesota which have histories of progressive social welfare programs, lagging behind, she says.
Congressional legislation enacted last year to create a five-year, $4 billion Child Care and Development Block Grant program to improve child-care services nationwide does not address the issue of quality of care adequately, Bowman says.
”Everyone is focused on accessibility and affordability, but this approach will boomerang,” she says. ”These kids will come back to us in special ed and language development.”
Illinois will be receiving $27.8 million each year under the new federal program, according to Lee Kreader, statewide coordinator of the child-care resources and referral system for the Department of Children and Family Services.
Illinois has designated $17.7 million to help low-income families pay for child care through certificates they can use for providers of their choice, and $2.8 million to support the state`s new child-care resources and referral system in fiscal year 1992, Kreader says.
An encouraging aspect of the state`s plan, Bowman says, is the high priority given to ”wrap-around programs” that help children at risk already enrolled in half-day activities participate in additional programs.
However, Bowman says she is disappointed by the state`s new guidelines and small investment in development of quality care: $1.07 million for provider training and a total of $100,000 to study licensing of homes and centers and salaries for child caregivers, according to Kreader.
