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Facilitated Work Group: Child Care Delivery Systems

Session I
Facilitator: Nancy Guy, Section Chief, North Carolina Division of Child Development
Group Scribe: Barbara Tayman, State Technical Assistance Specialist, Region 3, National Child Care Information Center
Note Taker: Eric Karolak, Deputy Executive Director, National Child Care Information Center

Session II
Facilitator: Nancy vonBargen, Director of Child Care Services, Division of Child Care, Oklahoma
Group Scribe: Oxana Golden, State Technical Assistance Specialist, Region 8, National Child Care Information Center
Note Taker: Desireé Reddick-Head, State Technical Assistance Specialist, Region 4, National Child Care Information Center

KEY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Literacy, Continuity of Care, and the Subsidy System
Developing literacy skills in early care and education settings is aided by the stability of care arrangements. When child care staff and children move in and out of programs, the continuity and quality of care diminishes, and States, programs, and families face serious challenges to promoting literacy. Participants discussed subsidy rate levels and eligibility policies as avenues to address this dilemma.

Reimbursement Rates and Copayment Levels
Participants agreed that rates are one of the biggest issues. In many States, reimbursements paid to programs may be insufficient to attract qualified providers in an already tight labor market or to compensate staff for professional development. Anything in the subsidy program that supports recruitment, retention, and compensation, participants observed, will help literacy by assuring that children develop learning relationships with qualified caregivers. However, absent significant increases in State and Federal funding, paying higher reimbursement rates means serving fewer children—either directly through tightened eligibility or indirectly through higher parent copayments that price families out of the delivery system. One State Administrator stressed that people need to know that administrators are faced with the challenge of doing more with less.

Partnering with other agencies and funders, including private sector partners, can help stabilize this balancing act. Some participants felt that even with additional funds, progress will be limited if there is not movement to develop a conceptual framework for financing early care and education. The model must look beyond what parents can afford to pay and what the market will offer, similar to funding models for higher education, transportation, or other systems. Parents alone cannot afford what quality programs cost.

Length of Eligibility and Processes with Parents
Participants pointed to the challenge that eligibility policies raise for promoting early literacy. Eligibility is set at a point in time, based on the family's income and whether a parent works or participates in job training, but not on what cognitive, social, and emotional skills a child has or what skills the child should acquire over a period of time. As a result, children move in and out of the subsidy system as their parents meet or fail to comply with eligibility rules. "Consistency of care is key to child outcomes," a participant noted. Lengthening eligibility periods would promote child outcomes, including improved literacy skills, by reducing the number of children moving in and out of the system and increasing the consistency of care.

Several participants noted that other system issues affect continuity of care and the level of resources available to promote literacy. Recent work by the Urban Institute on how parents experience the application and redetermination processes suggests there is room for States to improve parents' experiences with application for the subsidy program and eligibility redetermination. Others noted the fragmentation of early childhood program administration (e.g., prekindergarten, subsidy, quality) and recommended that States make a greater effort to share best practices concerning rate setting, literacy and quality initiatives, and eligibility policies.

Regulation and Tiered Quality Strategies
A challenge to developing skills in child care is the unevenness of State standards. Licensing regulations impose minimal requirements concerning staff qualifications and training, which differ among programs/settings and are designed primarily to assure the health and safety of the child in care. In contrast, Head Start requirements are nationally consistent and include a requirement that programs have a curriculum in place.

The group felt strongly that States should require child care providers to meet some kind of literacy standard to participate in the subsidy program. It also recommended that Federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) regulations require that State licensing rules include literacy-specific training requirements such as a set number of hours of training on early literacy. These first steps could be strengthened by building incentives into CCDF for States to increase the literacy requirement over time. A good start would be to identify what States are doing currently to promote literacy through licensing standards. Partnering with the public education system and other State and local agencies could leverage resources.

More than half of the States have implemented some form of a tiered quality rating strategy, either through licensing or through their reimbursement program. Building literacy outcomes or literacy-specific staff qualifications into these approaches can have positive results. Participants noted that Massachusetts incorporated literacy standards in its tiered reimbursement system, including a required literacy curriculum, rate increases linked to family child care provider training on the curriculum, and Head Start partner rates. With tiered quality strategies, States face challenges in identifying resources to help programs achieve a higher level of quality. Those States that have built their tiered systems on accreditation by a national body also must consider the extent to which literacy is incorporated in the accrediting body's standards, and work with those organizations to include literacy.

Collaboration and Partnership
Building partnerships across early childhood programs can be a challenge. From the provider and community perspective, one participant explained, "it feels like things are happening to us, instead of folks working with us," noting that Head Start is a Federal program to grantees while child care is a block grant program run through the State lead agencies. The group recommended that Head Start grantees include child care providers in Head Start required training, thus leveraging the infrastructure of Head Start to support the larger early childhood community. Similar opportunities to collaborate with other programs such as 21st Century Community Learning Centers, Even Start, and State-funded prekindergarten must be explored. In addition, articulation across professional development systems, including Head Start, public schools, and higher education, needs to be improved.

CCDF Program Purposes and Priorities
The work group spoke of the need to examine the early care and education "system" and to clarify priorities in the CCDF. Staff qualifications, for example, vary whether the child is in a prekindergarten program or a child care setting. Different funding streams have produced different standards, and participants thought it would be useful to document the literacy-related differences in the current early care and education system.

Participants also noted that often CCDF quality dollars compete for subsidy dollars at the State level, with no clear definition of what encompasses "quality," and that it is challenging to take individual initiatives to scale. Accreditation systems do not have an emphasis on literacy as part of their standards, although States have often relied on the accreditation system to assure a certain level of quality. The group recommended developing child outcomes and experiences related to literacy.

In CCDF, there has been a constant tension between the program's dual purposes as an employment support for parents (the focus of the subsidy) and as a child development program (the reason for the quality set-aside). Policy-makers need to say CCDF is both about parents working and becoming self-sufficient and about children learning and developing socially and emotionally. Reauthorization presents an opportunity to make explicit the child development focus of CCDF. The group recommended that reauthorization language redefine that one of the core purposes of the block grant is to support children's early development, including literacy, as well as to support parents in the workforce.

Literacy Initiatives
The participants reported the following activities funded to promote literacy at the State level:

• In Washington State, a program called "Read and Rock" uses senior citizens as volunteers who go into child care programs to read and interact with children.
• The National Education Association (NEA) has launched a program called "Read Across America." The program encourages a day-long focus on literacy within a community. School systems are provided a tool kit to support the planning of a "Read Across America" program. The program is designed to promote parent and community involvement around literacy. NEA is considering promoting the program in early education programs.
• In northern California, a program has been launched to promote a book exchange. The program, titled "Raising a Reader," provides book bags containing an assortment of books. An exchange of book bags on a weekly basis allows children to be exposed to a variety of literature. One of the bags is called a "library book bag," and encourages children to become involved in checking books out of the library. The program includes a video for parents that explains the program and promotes literacy. The program is packaged for purchase by local school systems. In some areas, the program is linked with the local child care resource and referral (CCR&R) family child care recruitment program.
• Texas funds a literacy program with the child care resource and referral agency. A CCR&R education staff person is commissioned to provide on-site technical assistance to providers around literacy issues. Training and other supports are made available to local providers.
• The State of Massachusetts has a program that will teach teachers to incorporate literacy activities in their child care programs serving toddlers to school-age children. The trained teachers become the mentors for new teachers. The literacy program is integrated into the entire child care program.
• The Maryland for Readiness program focuses on literacy training in child care, including kindergarten and first grade. The program includes training providers in the observation and recording of children's behavior and other literacy-focused activities. The program is a collaboration between the State Department of Education and the State Child Care Administrator. In addition, Maryland has sponsored a two-day seminar on infant brain development for librarians and others in the community to learn about child development.

HIGHLIGHTS OF RECOMMENDATIONS

• Develop child outcomes (skill sets for children) related to literacy and define the types of experiences we want children to have (e.g., books in kids hands, listening to language).
• Define in CCDBG reauthorization that one of the core purposes of the Child Care and Development Fund is to support children's early development, including literacy, as well as to support parents entering the workforce and attaining economic self-sufficiency.
• Incorporate incentives in CCDF for States to raise literacy standards.
• Mandate that States require training about literacy as a condition of licensing. States could require that some number of training hours focus on literacy.
• Require providers to meet a literacy standard as a condition of receiving Federal/CCDF monies.
• Identify best practices in States regarding the promotion of literacy through licensing requirements or resources.
• Increase funding levels and pay adequate reimbursement rates, which are key to supporting the recruitment and retention of qualified caregivers.
• Lengthen eligibility periods to support consistency of care and promote improved child outcomes.
• Apply benign pressure on Head Start grantees to reach out to include child care providers in Head Start required training.
• Work with accrediting bodies to address literacy standards in accreditation.

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