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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
October 3, 1997
REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY
ON CHILD CARE
The University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
MRS. CLINTON: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank
you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Neil. Thank you, Professor
Seefeldt. Thank you, Congressman Hoyer. Thank you, President
Kirwan.
As I was sitting up here and Steny was introducing the
President's family, when he introduced his wife, President Kirwan
turned to me and said, you know, I met her in junior high school.
(Laughter.) He said, she sat behind me and she couldn't stand me.
(Laughter.) And I thought, that's exactly the kind of memories I have
from junior high school -- you know, the boy you really liked at the
end of the year was the one you couldn't stand at the beginning of
the year.
But this junior high school romance has certainly stood
the test of time. And I'm delighted to be here with your family and
with the family of this great university.
I came here today for a number of reasons. Part of it,
as the President suggested, is because I enjoyed my visit to be the
commencement speaker SO much and was very honored to receive an
honorary degree, and also because I have followed with great interest
the work that is being done at this university in many areas. But in
particular, I have been impressed by the work that has been done in
1
the area of human development, social and public policy. And we, of
course, as you know, we're blessed in the White House by having
Professor Galston with us for a number of years, so I feel a real
kinship with the work that is done here and the people who are part
of this great university community.
So when the opportunity arose for me to come and speak
with you about an upcoming White House Conference on Child Care. I
immediately seized it, because, as the Congressman said, the
President and I are hosting a White House Conference on Child Care on
October 23rd, and I wanted to come and tell you why this is an issue
that deserves White House attention, deserves the attention of our
nation, one that we hope will raise awareness of these issues around
our country.
Some of you may recall that last spring the President
and I hosted a Conference on Early Learning and Brain Research, and
we brought to the nation's attention the very exciting work that has
been done by researchers here at NIH and elsewhere across the country
that demonstrates clearly how important it is that we take the first
three years of life, because of what is happening in a child's brain.
And we wanted to get that information out because, although many
people intuitively knew that, and experts like Professor Seefeldt
taught that, there wasn't the hard data that supported that
information until recently, with the kind of work that has been going
on in brain research.
And so, for a lot of reasons, this is a time when all of
us have to focus on what we best can do in our own homes and
families, as well as in our larger society, to ensure that each child
has a chance to live up to his or her promise.
I saw that in action this morning here at the Center for
Young Children. What a wonderful facility you have here -- a child
care center that is warm and inviting, with workers that are creative
and energetic and focused, a range of books and toys and crafts
materials.
I answered question from the five-year-olds who wanted
to know, among other things, what my favorite food was, what my
favorite color was -- and then a real stumper was what my favorite
2
roller coaster was. (Laughter.) I had to confess to this little boy
that it has been so long since I've been on a roller coaster I
couldn't remember the names of any of the roller coasters I like.
But I certainly had the feeling that this is a place where children
are treasured and valued and stimulated, a place that any of us would
happily stay for juice and nap time any day.
But that center is far too rare, even though more and
more families are seeking child care. In fact, over half of the
infants under age one are in day care; 12 million children under the
age of six, and 17 million more age six through 13, have both parents
or their only parent in the work force. The plain fact is that there
is simply not enough quality care for the children who need it.
Quality child care is financially out of reach for the hard-working
American families whose children deserve the best attention they can
receive.
So today I come with a very straightforward proposition
that this situation must change for the sake of our children and our
future. And there are ways I want to suggest that each of us can
participate in this change.
Every working parent in this room and in this country
knows how urgent the matter is. Any mom or dad who has ever left a
child with a care-giver for even a minute has felt at the gut level
the importance of quality care. The stress around child care affects
families ranging from the poorest all the way to the most affluent.
It is a daily pressure for parents with preschoolers and parents with
children in school who, for whatever reason, cannot get home to
supervise a child themselves.
For more than 25 years, I have worked on issues
affecting children and families. But in the last four and a half
years I've been privileged to travel around our country on my own and
with my husband, listening and talking with parents about their
economic concerns, the issues that affect them on the streets where
they live, whether it's crime or the environment, and I've heard over
and over again how important child care is. Yet, despite its
importance in our everyday lives, it is not an issue that has been
dealt with effectively by our society.
Now, there are many reasons for this oversight, and some
of you who are students of human development and child care could
3
recite many of them, I'm sure. But I think it's fair to say that
until the demographics of our citizenry changed, until economic
forces and women's choices led SO many mothers into the work force,
this was not an issue that many people thought was serious. It was,
like many issues affecting children in the past, viewed as a soft
issue that was of disproportionate concern to women. Yet now we know
it is one of the hardest issues we face and it is an issue that has
economic and social implications that go far beyond the individual
concern that each of us brings to it.
Fortunately, times are changing -- partly because of the
work that many of you are doing, partly because more and more parents
are speaking out, partly because America's employers have come to
understand that the strength of their bottom lines depends on workers
who are not absent, who will have their mind on their work when
they're there, whose child care needs are being met; and partly
because we have people in leadership like the President of this
university, like this member of Congress before you who represents
you, and because of my husband and members of Congress and state
legislators of both parties and many governors who have made this a
priority.
All of this brings us together in the name of a shared
belief that the children of our country deserve child care as fine as
that provided right here at this university. In fact, American
children deserve the best care in the world.
Now, there are many reasons to put our children's needs
first, but let me just mention a few of them. One reason, as I've
already stated, is because we know that how we care for our children
is critical to their intellectual and emotional development. You
know, it wasn't so long ago -- and I can actually recall when I was
younger and thinking about children a lot and even pregnant with my
own -- that it used to be kind of a joke among a lot of fathers that
I knew that they would say, well, you know, let's wait until he can
throw a ball or she can talk to me and then I'll pay attention. And
it was the kind of attitude that had been prevalent for most of
history that very young children should be cared for by their
mothers, other women. that there wasn't much for fathers to do
because there wasn't much happening until a child started to in some
way assert a personality, act on his or her own. Well, now we know
4
clearly that that was mistaken. As we talked about at the White
House Conference on Early Childhood Development in April, what
happens to a child in those earliest years can make all the
difference for a lifetime.
Just 15 years ago, even scientists thought that a baby's
brain structure was virtually complete at birth. Now, neuroscience
tells us that it is a work in progress and that everything we do with
a child has some kind of potential physical influence on that rapidly
forming brain. As one participant at the White House Conference put
it, nature and nurture don't compete, they cooperate.
Children's earliest experiences -- the sights and sounds
and smells and feelings they encounter, the challenges they meet
--they determine how their brains are wired. For those of you who
know a lot more about computers than I know, we're talking about how
the brain shapes itself through repeated experiences. The more
something is repeated, the stronger the neurocircuitry becomes. And
those connections, in turn, can be permanent. In this way, even the
seemingly unimportant, totally forgettable events of our first years
are anything but trivial. It is during this time that children learn
to soothe themselves when they're upset, to empathize, to get along
with others, to become -- and we hope they will -- human beings of
the finest order.
Experiences in those first three years of life can also
determine how well a child learns. When someone speaks, reads or
plays with an infant or toddler, her or she, whether it is a parent,
a grandparent, an older sibling or a care-giver, is activating the
connections in that child's brain that will one day enable her to
think and read and speak and solve problems herself. Now, what that
means is that sub-par care, whether in the home or in a child care
setting, means that a young brain is being deprived of what it needs
to live up to its natural potential.
Now, that is a very serious conclusion for us to reach,
and now we have no more excuses. If we know that ignoring the child,
being impatient, pushing off an 8-month-old or a 16-month-old,
failing to invest the time that is necessary in that
two-and-a-half-year-old. then we have to acknowledge it's not just a
momentary
action, but it adds to the past and the present and the feelings that
that child is internalizing, and it also, literally, affects the
5
brain.
Another reason we need to act is that we now have
evidence that child care is too often inadequate. Research presents
a troubling picture. A recent national study of child care centers
found that 70 percent of children are in care that is barely
adequate; 10 percent are in care that is dangerous to their health
and safety. Infants and toddlers are at the greatest risk, with 40
percent in care that poses a threat to their health and well-being.
That means that they spend hours of their days with care-givers who
do not follow basic sanitary practices, who rarely cuddle, talk to or
play with these infants and toddlers, in rooms that lack toys and
other materials to encourage development, and in places where the
ratio of children to adults is too high for individual attention.
Only 20 percent of our children are in what we could call "high
quality care," such as what I saw this morning.
A study of child care in family-based settings found
equally disturbing patterns. Only 56 percent of these programs
provided adequate care. Thirty-five percent were deemed inadequate,
which means, as we now know, that the hours spent there could
actually undercut a child's development. And only nine percent
offered high-quality care, which was defined as enhancing the growth
and development of children. And even where quality care is
available, it is often financially out of reach for parents,
particularly low-income parents.
According to the 1995 census, families earning under
$1,200 a month pay an average of 24 to 25 percent of their income for
child care. That takes a big chunk out of a household budget. But
it was still not enough to ensure quality care. I asked about the
cost of the child care centers here on this campus, and there is a
sliding scale, which is very important, but it still costs between
$340 and $600 a month. Middle class families are hit hard as well.
Families earning up to $36,000 pay out 12 percent of their income for
child care without any guarantee that that 12 percent is buying
quality. It is difficult to think of a consumer situation in America
where SO many people are paying SO much and too often getting so
little.
Another reason we need to act is that we now know from
another study that was just completed by the National Institute for
Child Health and Development that good child care can be beneficial
6
to young children, whether it is care given at home or in a day care
center. Now, there's not doubt that the most important, lasting
influence on any child is that child's family. But we do know
that good, quality child care can improve a child's chances, if that
child is in a difficult family situation or enhance a chid's learning
and maturity if that child is in a good family situation. And for
children who come out of family situations that are not always
conducive to their well-being, bad child care can make a difficult
situation even worse.
Now, a final reason we need to act is because of the
changing nature of the work force. We know that the American work
force has changed dramatically in the past 40 years and that has
meant dramatic changes in family life. Half of all mothers with
children under the age of one are working outside the home, and not
only are more parents working, they are working longer hours. So
this issue must become a policy challenge for all of us because it
clearly affects the well-being of children, American workers, and the
dynamism of our economy itself.
I would imagine that many of you who are parents and
those of you who are students, not yet parents, can equally shut your
eyes and imagine or think back to one of those work-family conflicts
that has occurred in all of our lives. Even though my daughter is a
freshman in college, I still remember vividly the days when my child
care arrangements fell through and I was not able to do anything
about them. Now, luckily for me, those were very few because I had
the kind of job where if my daughter were sick or if she had a
special occasion that I wanted to take advantage of in her preschool
or her school years, I could arrange my schedule. That is not the
case for the vast majority of working moms and dads.
I also had the advantage, except for two years of her
life, to live in a Governor's Mansion where there were lots of people
around. That is not a common experience for most working mothers.
And so I'm very aware that my situation was unique. But even with
it, I recall vividly those few times when, despite my best efforts
and a very supportive husband and all of the balancing we all do, it
just all fell through and I had to scramble like crazy to make up for
it.
One time in particular when I couldn't cancel something
or just not go into work or go in late -- I had to be in court at
7
9:00 a.m. -- and Chelsea was up all night sick and my baby-sitter was
sick, probably with the same thing Chelsea was sick with, and my
husband was out of town and my family wasn't around, and I called one
of my best friends and she wasn't available. And it was just a real
terrible feeling that you get when you know that you want to be with
your child and because of work demands you can't. And I was lucky
enough to find a neighbor who could come in and sit with her. And I
called home every chance I had a break and rushed home when I
finished to find her very well taken care of.
But that is not what is available to most parents. And
I know it is infinitely tougher for most women who every day are
trying to do the best they can. And I honestly don't know how single
parents do it. And I think we ought to be very sympathetic and very
supportive of all parents, but particularly of single parents.
Too many children end up because of their parents'
challenges, caring for themselves or being supervised by older
siblings. And we know what happens when children are left
unsupervised. According to the FBI, it is during the late afternoon
that our youngest children, those who are in their preteens or early
teens, are most likely to experiment with drugs, to become involved
with criminal gangs, to get pregnant, to commit violence or to get in
trouble in other ways. So, when that 3:00 p.m. bell rings, kids are
relieved, but a lot of working parents panic. And we have to find a
way to help parents with school-aged children as well.
So we know we need to act, but where do we start. Well,
we can learn from models of excellent child care around our country.
They can provide the energy and expertise and inspiration for what we
need to do now. One very bright spot is the military's child care
system. Our Defense Department runs the largest child care system in
the world, taking care of the children of the parents who are in the
front lines of America. I was privileged just two days ago at
Quantico Marine Base to be able to see firsthand what is being
provided for the children of our Armed Forces and I have to say I saw
what every parent would want for her child -- a beautiful facility,
well-trained workers, high standards, unannounced inspections both in
the center and in the family day care settings, a toll-free number
for parents to call with their concerns, mandatory training for
everyone that comes into contact with and works with a child, and,
most importantly, good wages and solid benefits and respect for
staff. Now, that has resulted in lower turnover and more experienced
8
care-givers.
Now, that wasn't always the case, and I learned in a
very open discussion that the military's child care was not always
what we would hold up as an example. In fact, even the center that I
visited at Quantico is brand-new because the previous one had to be
shut down because it didn't make the grade a few years ago. But, the
leadership of our military knows that readiness depends upon mothers
and fathers being able to do their work without worrying about who's
caring for their children. So the military made a commitment to
turning its child care system around and Quantico is now a shining
example of what can be done.
I want to tell two stories that I heard. The first,
from one of the commanders there was what happens before good child
care in the military. I heard about a mother and a father who were
both called to duty on an emergency basis at the same time. I
believe they were both pilots. They had to be in the air at the same
time. When that happened, they had to bring their two infants in
bassinets to the office of their commander -- (laughter) -- leave
those bassinets in their commander's office with instructions for
care and feeding. Now, that beats any story about child care
challenges that I've ever heard.
The second story is about what happens now that there is
quality care available, no matter what the occasion. I met a staff
sergeant, a single dad raising two little girls. He said that when
he took his daughters to day care the first day they cried when he
dropped them off, but the second day they cried when he came to pick
them up. (Laughter.) I was especially impressed by this very tough
Marine who's obviously put in his time at the weight training
facility, talking with great pride about how he mastered pigtails and
ponytails for his daughters. But I think part of the reason his
confidence is so high about embarking on the rather daunting task of
being a single dad of two little girls is because he's gotten a lot
of support from the child care facility and the care-givers who have
been there, helping him along, encouraging him, giving him advice,
helping to create that village.
On a serious note also, we were privileged to have Lt.
Colonel Pote (phonetic), who I see in the audience here, speak about
the perspective of the child care system from the perspective of a
commander. He said that his soldiers are more productive when they
9
don't have to worry about their children. Now, I probably should say
his Marines are more productive when they don't have to worry about
their children. And the result of that is a much higher level of
preparedness 24 hours a day.
Now, there are certainly differences between the
military and civilian sector, but I believe that the military's
experience can serve as a beacon for the American workplace in
general. When parents don't have to come to work feeling concerned
about how their children are doing, they can make a much more
positive contribution which benefits all of us.
Just before I visited Quantico I was in Miami at Baptist
Hospital there that also has made a commitment to child care. I saw
another first-class facility. I learned about how they had adjusted
the hours because, just like the military, they have 24-hour work
days in a hospital. And I heard a lot of detail from the chief
executive officer about why it is good economic sense to provide this
service.
I met at the hospital with the Board of Directors of
something called Florida's Child Care Executive Partnership, a group
of business executives appointed by Governor Lawton Chiles to address
child care issues. In creating this partnership, Florida put aside
$2 million the first year to match dollar for dollar corporate
contributions for child care. And the board was charged with
engaging the private sector in this effort.
Once asked, the Florida business community responded
quickly and generously, and this year the legislature and the
business community are doubling their commitment so that we're taking
both public dollars and private-sector dollars and pooling them to
create more affordable quality child care. And because of this
effort, thousands of more working families in Florida now have access
to the kind of care I saw at Quantico, I saw at Baptist Hospital. and
I saw here at the university.
Because we know that providing good child care requires
community involvement. The grant money in Florida only goes to
communities where businesses have come together with child care
organizations to forge a plan of action. And when I asked these
business leaders why they thought the partnership was successful,
they didn't hesitate to answer in very businesslike terms; they said
10
it was good for the bottom line. They said they didn't have to spend
as much time recruiting new workers who left because of child care
problems, they didn't have to spend as much money recruiting new
workers who had to be trained, they didn't have to worry about
absenteeism, which had been cut dramatically. Now, that was also the
experience of many other businesses with whom I have met, and I just
find it being repeated over and over again.
So, because I find the partnership concept so
impressive, I'm very pleased to announce today that the Department of
Health and Human Services is awarding a half million dollar grant to
the Families and Work Institute, the National Governors Association,
and the Finance Project, to assist states in developing these
partnerships with the private sector.
And the President has, earlier this year, tasked the
military, the Department of Defense, to work with the private sector
to take the experience they've gained, their guidelines which have
been carefully written, and bring those to the table to discuss with
more child care centers and family day care providers what can be
done to use money like that available in Florida to make models that
can be replicated. Because all sectors of society have to be
involved -- businesses, schools, police departments, religious
organizations, libraries, citizens organizations, the federal, state
and the local governments.
We hope that the White House Conference will be a
catalyst to bringing many of these sectors together. I also hope
that at the White House Conference we will discuss ways that could
assist parents who wish to make the choice to stay at home with their
children more economically feasible, because it's not just creating
good child care centers and family day care centers outside the home;
how do we create real choices that are available to working families
so that they, in the privacy of their family, can make a decision
that it is economically feasible for one parent to be there for their
children.
It is important to remember that this conference is a
starting point. I hope that it marks the beginning of national
discussion and action. And I hope that its focus on the three key
areas will spark individual ideas around the country. Now, the three
key areas are the lack of affordable child care, quality concerns,
and the need for school-age care.
11
We have already discussed affordability, and we've made
some progress. The President took some steps to address this need.
For starters, he expanded federal funding for child care. In fact,
since 1993, child care funding has risen by approximately 68 percent,
and it now reaches more than one million children through subsidies
which is critical if they're going to have financial access to
quality care. And I'm encouraged, too, that in the last four years
more states are committing their own resources to help working people
pay for quality child care.
In the balanced budget agreement, the $500 child tax
credit will go to 27 million families with 45 million children under
the age of 17. Now, for the typical American family with two kids,
this child tax credit will mean $1,000 more in take-home pay per
year. That is especially important for low-income families who are
also going to benefit from this child tax credit. Thirteen million
children from families with incomes below $30,000 will receive the
credit. That's a lot of young teachers, police officers, farmers,
nurses, and others who will have some extra income to put into
whatever their family decides, but certainly one of the great
expenses is improving child care. Also, through the expanded Earned
Income Tax Credit, more working families have had a cut in their
taxes, which has on average meant an increase in their income of over
$1,000.
So there have been real steps forward so that there is
more child care available, it's subsidized, and there is more of an
opportunity for families with children to take advantage of these
programs.
The President has also made child care an essential
component of welfare reform. He insisted that welfare reform include
spending for child care because we're putting a lot more women,
single women with children, into the work force. So it will be
increased by nearly $4 billion over the next six years.
But that is still not enough and we have a long way to
go to explore how better to enable parents to meet their child care
costs.
Quality is the second key issue. We have to do more to
support child care providers. We have not done a good job of lifting
12
up the profession that is so important in taking care of our children
and matching that with increased income and job opportunities and
benefits.
I've been to a lot of child care centers and I've met
many, many terrific people running and working in them. But their
salaries are woefully low, and many leave the profession because it's
not one that enables them to support themselves and their own
families. I remember one provider who told me with tears in her eyes
that with the birth of her second child, she had to leave taking care
of children, which is what she loved to do more than anything, and go
to work in an office because she needed to make more income.
So we have to do all we can to encourage and support
child care workers to get training, to build their skills and
increase their knowledge, which will demand higher salaries and
benefits. We have to find the very best people to take the jobs of
caring for our children because parents should not have to worry
whether their child is safe at day care. And the vast majority of
teachers are absolutely superb in caring for their children, but
there are a few who we need to make sure do not go into the
classrooms of our day care centers.
And we also have to help parents do a better job of
searching out good child care. In survey after survey, when parents
are asked, they really don't know what they're looking for. They
don't know what kind of equipment should be there; they don't know
what kind of training they would be demanding for the child care
workers. Too often, parents are better informed about what kind of
car to buy than what kind of child care to choose. So we have to
help parents become more informed consumers to create that demand
that will absolutely say to the marketplace: we must have higher
quality for the money we're paying.
One of the interesting results of a lot of the research
that has been done recently is that good quality child care is
generally, but not always, more expensive than inadequate child care.
And in the middle, there is a lot of child care that could be vastly
improved with some good training and better guidance, that would make
a big difference for the money that is being paid.
13
Now, I hope that we will continue to focus on
safeguarding the health and safety of children in our disparate
system around the country. Certainly, the President earmarked money
going to the states for child care for quality improvements. And
this summer he proposed a new rule requiring that child care programs
that receive federal dollars make sure that all children are
immunized.
And in 1995 the administration launched the Healthy
Child Care America Campaign, which promotes partnerships between
child care centers and health agencies. That initiative, now in 46
states, teaches child care centers how to create safe healthy
environments. A lot of times when we do these surveys and we get the
results, and people go in and say, this isn't sanitary, this is not
appropriate -- the child care workers don't know that; nobody's told
them; they're not sure about what they're supposed to be doing. So
through the Healthy Child Care America Campaign, we intend to do a
better job of educating child care workers.
And, finally, school-age care, a critical issue for
millions of working American families. I have visited some excellent
school-age child care programs. The other day in Quantico, I visited
one of their schools and saw what was available for the children
there. But most children and their parents do not yet have access to
good school-age child care -- places where the children can do
homework or play sports or learn to play a musical instrument. "Home
Alone" might have been a hit movie, but it is not a good script for
real children's lives, and we need to move to make sure more children
can safely and productively spend those after-school hours in a place
like a school or a library or some other setting that is good for
them.
I'd like to close with one thought and then invite your
questions. We are privileged to live in a time of tremendous bounty
in our country. We are at peace. Our economy is booming. Social
problems that for years held us back are receding. The crime rate is
down. The teenage pregnancy rate is down. On so many fronts we're
making progress together. And a time such as this presents a special
opportunity. Free from crisis, we can do work that might not be
possible in stormier moments. So we should use this good fortune to
make a difference, to lay the groundwork so that the generations of
children to come will be able, themselves, to build a country that
has SO many opportunities and take advantage of the blessings that we
14
all have.
So turning to child care is not just something that is a
nice issue to talk about. It is, as the President calls it, the next
great frontier of public policy. To build up and strengthen our
families, to give them more support so they can do their jobs both at
home and in the workplace will help us chart that frontier not only
so that we are led to a better world for the children I saw today,
but for generations of American children to come. And I invite all
of you to be part in taking action to make sure that happens.
Than you all very much. (Applause.)
I'm glad there were babies here. That's a wonderful
reminder of why this is so important.
(Applause.)
END
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MARTHA RADDATE
414- 414-3026 3020
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
Remarks on Child Care
University of Maryland, College Park
October 3, 1997
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Thank you very much. (applause) Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you Neil, thank
you Professor Seefeldt, thank you Congressman Hoyer, thank you, President Kirwan As I was
sitting up here and Steny was introducing the President's family, when he introduced his wife,
President Kirwan turned to me and said you know, I met her in Junior High School. He said, she
sat behind me and she couldn't stand me and I thought, that's exactly the kind of memories I have
from Junior High School, you know, the boy you really liked at the end of the year was the one
you couldn't stand at the beginning of the year but this Junior High romance has certiunly stood
the test of time and I'm delighted to be here with your family and with the family of his great
University. I came here today for a number of reasons. Part of it as the President suggested, is
because I enjoyed my visit to be the Commencement Speaker so much and was very honored to
receive an Honorary Degree and also because I have followed with great interest the work that is
being done at this University in many areas but in particular, I have been impressed by the work
that has been done in the area of human development, social and public policy, and we of course,
as you know, we're blessed in the White House by having Professor Galston with us for a
number of years so I feel a real kinship with the work that is done here and the people who are
part of this great University community. So when the opportunity arose for me to come and
speak with you about an upcoming White House Conference on Child Care, I immediately seized
it. Because as the Congressman said, the President and I are hosting a White House Conference
on Child Care on October 23rd and I wanted to come and tell you why this is an issue that
deserves White House attention, deserves the attention of our Nation, one that we hope will raise
awareness of these issues around our country. Some of you may recall that last spring the
President and I hosted a Conference on Early Learning and Brain Research and we brought to the
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Nation's attention the very exciting work that has been done by researchers here at NH and
elsewhere across the country that demonstrates clearly how important it is that we tale the first
three years of life because of what is happening in 8 child's brain and we wanted to get that
information out because although many people intuitively knew that and experts like Professor
Seefeldt taught that, there wasn't the hard data that supported that information until recently with
the kind of work that has been going on in brain research and so for a lot of reasons, this is a time
when all of us have to focus on what we best can do in our own homes and families is well as in
our larger society to insure that each child has a chance to live up to his or her promise. I saw
that in action this morning here at the Center for Young Children, what a wonderful facility you
have here, a Child Care Center that is warm and inviting with workers that are creative and
energetic and focus, a range of books and toys and crafts materials. I answered questions from
the five year olds who wanted to know, among other things, what my favorite food was, what my
favorite color was, and then a real stumper, what my favorite roller coaster was. I had to confess
to this little boy that it has been so long since I've been on a roller coaster, I couldn't remember
the names of any of the roller coasters I like but I certainly had the feeling that this is a place
where children are treasured and valued and stimulated, a place that any of us would happily stay
for juice and nap time any day. But, that Center is far too rare. Even though more and more
families are seeking child care, in fact, over half of the infants under age one are in day care,
twelve million children under the age of six, and seventeen million more, age six through
thirteen, have both parents or their only parent in the work force. The plain fact is that there is
simply not enough quality care for the children who need it. Quality child care is financially out
of reach for the hard working American families whose children deserve the best attention they
can receive. So today I come with a very straightforward proposition that this situation must
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change for the sake of our children and our future. And there are ways I want to suggest that
each of us can participate in this change. Every working parent in this room and in this country
knows how urgent the matter is, any Mom or Dad who has ever left a child with a care giver for
even a minute has felt at the gut level the importance of quality care. The stress around child
care affects families ranging from the poorest all the way to the most affluent. It is a daily
pressure for parents with preschoolers and parents with children in school who for whatever
reason cannot get home to supervise a child themselves. For more than twenty five ears, I have
worked on issues affecting children and families, but in the last four and a half years I've been
privileged to travel around our country on my own and with my husband, listening and talking
with parents about their economic concerns, the issues that affect them on the streets where they
live, whether its crime or the environment, and I've heard over and over again how important
child care is. Yet, despite its importance in our everyday lives, it is not an issue that has been
dealt with effectively by our society. Now, there are many reasons for this oversight and some of
you who are students of human development and child care could recite many of thera, I'm sure.
But, I think its fair to say that until the demographics of our citizenry changed until economic
forces and women's choices led so many mothers into the work force, this was not an issue that
many people thought was serious. It was, like many issues, affecting children in the bast, viewed
as a soft issue that was a disproportionate concern to women. Yet now we know it is one of the
hardest issues we face and it is an issue that had economic and social implications that go far
beyond the individual concern that each of us brings to it. Fortunately, times are changing.
Partly because of the work that many of you are doing, partly because more and more parents are
speaking out, partly because America's employers have come to understand that the rength of
their bottom lines depends on workers who are not absent, who will have their mind (in their
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work when they're there, whose child care needs are being met and partly because We have
people in leadership like the President of this University, like this member of Congress before
you who represents you, and because of my husband and members of Congress and State
Legislators of both parties and many Governors who have made this a priority. All of this brings
us together in the name of a shared belief, that the children of our country deserve child care as
fine as that provided right here at this University. In fact, American children deserve the best
care in the world. Now, there are many reasons to put our childrens needs first but let me just
mention a few of them. One reason, as I've already stated is because we know that how we care
for our children is critical to their intellectual and emotional development. You know, it wasn't
so long ago and I can actually recall when I was younger and thinking about children a lot and
even pregnant with my own, that it used to be kind of a joke among a lot of fathers I knew that
they would say, well, you know let's wait until he can throw a ball or she can talk to me and then
I'll pay attention and, you know, it was the kind of attitude that had been prevalent for most of
history that you know, very young children should be cared for by their mothers, other women,
that there wasn't much for fathers to do because there wasn't much happening until a child started
to in some way assert a personality, act on his or own. Well, now we know clearly that that was
mistaken. As we talked about at the White House Conference on Early Childhood Development
in April, what happens to a child in those earliest years can make all the difference fer a lifetime.
Just 15 years ago, even scientists thought that baby's brain structure was virtually complete at
birth. Now, neuroscience tells us that it is a work in progress and that everything we do with a
child has some kind of potential, physical influence on that rapidly forming brain. A one
participant at the White House Conference put it, "nature and nurture don't compete, they
cooperate."
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Children's earliest experiences, the sights and sounds and smells and feelings they encounter, the
challenges they meet, they determine how their brains are wired. For those of you who know a
lot more about computers than I know, we're talking about how the brain shapes itself through
repeated experiences. The more something is repeated, the stronger the neurocircuitry becomes.
And those connections in turn can be permanent. In this way, even the seemingly unimportant,
totally forgettable events of our first years are anything but trivial. It is during this time that
children learn to soothe themselves when they're upset, to empathize, to get along with others, to
become and we hope they will, human beings of the finest order.
Experiences in those first three years of life can also determine how well a child learns. When
someone speaks, reads or plays with an infant or toddler, he or she, whether it is a parent, a
grandparent, an older sibling or a care giver, is activating the connections in that child's brain that
will one day enable her to think and read and speak and solve problems herself. Now what that
means is that subpar care, whether in the home or in a child care setting, means that a young
brain is being deprived of what it needs to live up to its natural potential. Now that is a very
serious conclusion for us to reach and now we have no more excuses. If we know that ignoring a
child, being impatient, pushing off a 8 month old, or a 16 month old, failing to invest the time
that is necessary in that two and a half year old, then we have to acknowledge, its not just a
momentary action, but it adds to the past and the present and the feelings that that child is
internalizing and it also literally affects the brain. Another reason we need to act is that we now
have evidence that child care is too often inadequate, research presents a troubling picture. A
recent national study of child care centers found that 70 percent of children are in care that is
barely adequate. Ten percent are in care that is dangerous to their health and safety. Infants and
toddlers are at the greatest risk with 40 percent in care that poses a threat to their health and well-
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being. That means that they spend hours of their days with care givers who do not follow basic
sanitary practices, who rarely cuddle, talk to or play with these infants and toddlers, n rooms that
lack toys and other materials to encourage development and in places where the ratio of children
to adults is too high for individual attention. Only twenty percent of our children are in what we
could call "high quality care," such as what I saw this morning.
A study of child care in family-based settings found equally disturbing patterns. Only 56 percent
of these programs provided adequate care, 35 percent were deemed inadequate, which means as
we now know, that the hours spent there could actually undercut a child's development and only
9 percent offered high-quality care which was defined as enhancing the growth and development
of children and even where quality care is available, it is often financially out of reach for
parents, particularly low income parents. According to the 1995 census, families earning under
$1200.00 a month pay an average of 24 to 25 percent of their income for child care. That takes a
big chunk out of a household budget but it was still not enough to ensure quality care. I asked
about the cost of the child care centers here on this Campus and there is a sliding scale which is
very important, but it still costs between $340.00 and $600.00 a month. Middle class families
are hit hard as well. Families earning up to $36,000. pay out 12 percent of their income for child
care without any guarantee that that twelve percent is buying quality. It is difficult to think of a
consumer situation in America where so many people are paying so much and too often getting
so little.
Another reason we need to act is that we now know from another study that was just completed
by the National Institute for Child Health and Development that good child care can be beneficial
to young children. Whether it is care given at home or in a day care center. Now, there's no
doubt that the most important lasting influence on any child is that child's family. But we do
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know that good, quality child care can improve a child's chances, if that child is in a difficult
family situation or enhance a child's learning and maturity if that child is in a good family
situation. And for children who come out of family situations that are not always conducive to
their well-being, bad child care can make a difficult situation even worse. Now a final reason we
need to act is because of the changing nature of the work force. We know that the Ainerican
work force has changed dramatically in the past forty years and that has meant dramatic changes
in family life. Half of all mothers with children under the age of one are working outside the
home and not only are more parents working, they are working longer hours. So this issue must
become a policy challenge for all of us because it clearly affects the well-being of children,
American workers, and the dynamism of our economy itself. I would imagine that many of you
who are parents and those of you who are students, not yet parents, can equally shut your eyes
and imagine or think back to one of those work family conflicts that has occurred in all of our
lives. Even though my daughter is a Freshman in College, I still remember vividly the days
when my child care arrangements fell through and I was not able to do anything about them.
Now, luckily for me those were very few because I have the kind of job where if my Haughter
were sick or if she had a special occasion that I wanted to take advantage of in her preschool or
her school years, I could arrange my schedule. That is not the case for the vast majority of
working Moms and Dads. I also have the advantage, except for two years of her life, to live in a
Governor's Mansion where there were lots of people around, that is not a common experience for
most working mothers. And $0 I'm very aware that my situation was unique but even with it, I
recall vividly those few times when despite my best efforts and a very supportive husband, and
all of the balancing we all do, it just all fell through and I had to scramble like crazy tb make up
for it. One time in particular when I couldn't cancel something or just not go into work or go in
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late, I had to be in court at nine o'clock and Chelsea was up all night sick and my babysitter was
sick, probably with the same thing Chelsea was sick with and my husband was out of town and
my family wasn't around and I called one of my best friends and she wasn't available, and it was
just a real terrible feeling that you get when you know that you want to be with your child and
because if work demands you can't and I was lucky enough to find a neighbor who could come in
an sit with her and I called home every chance I had a break and rushed home when ] finished to
find her you know, very well taken care of. But, that is not what is available to most parents and
I know it is infinitely tougher for most women who everyday are trying to do the bes' they can.
And I honestly don't know how single parents do it. And I think we ought to be very
sympathetic and very supportive of all parents but particularly of single parents. Too many
children end up because of their parents challenges, caring for themselves or being supervised by
older siblings. And we know what happens when children are left unsupervised. According to
the FBI, it is during the late afternoon that our youngest children, those who are in their pre-teens
or early teens, are most likely to experiment with drugs, to become involved with criminal gangs,
to get pregnant, to commit violence or to get into trouble in other ways.
So, when that 3 o'clock bell rings, kids are relieved but a lot of working parents panic and we
have to find a way to help parents with school age children as well. So, we know we need to act
but where do we start. Well, we can learn from models of excellent child care around our
country. They can provide the energy and expertise and inspiration for what we need to do now.
One very bright spot is the military's child care system. Our Defense Department runs the largest
child care system in the world. Taking care of the children of the parents who are in the front
lines of America. I was privileged just two days at Quantico Marine Base to be able to see first
hand what is being provided for the children of our Armed Forces and I have to say I saw what
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every parent would want for her child. A beautiful facility, well-trained workers, high standards,
unannounced inspections both in the Center and in the family day care settings, a tol free
number for parents to call with their concerns, mandatory training for everyone that comes into
contact with and works with a child. And, most importantly, good wages and solid benefits and
respect for staff. Now, that has resulted in lower turnover and more experienced care givers.
Now, that wasn't always the case and I learned in a very open discussion that the military's child
care was not always what we would hold up as an example. In fact, even the Center that I visited
Quantico is brand new because the previous one had to be shut down because it didn't make the
grade a few years ago. But, the leadership of our military knows that readiness depends upon
mothers and fathers being able to do their work without worrying about whose carings for their
children. So the military made a commitment to turning its child care system around and
Quantico is now a shining example of what can be done. I want to tell two stories that I heard.
The first, from one of the Commanders there was what happens before good child care in the
military. I heard about a mother and a father who were both called to duty on an emergency
basis at the same time. I believe they were both pilots. They had to be in the au at the same
time. When that happened, they had to bring their two infants in basinettes' to the office of their
Commander, leave those basinettes' in their Commander's office with instructions for care and
feeding. Now, that beats any story about child care challenges that I've ever heard. The second
story is about, "what happens now?" That there is quality care available no matter what the
occasion. I met a Staff Sergeant, a single Dad, raising two little girls. He said that when he took
his daughters to day care the first day they cried when he dropped them off, but the second day
they cried when he came to pick them up. I was especially impressed by this very tough Marine
whose obviously put in his time at the weight training facility, talking with great pride about how
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he mastered pigtails and ponytails for his daughters but I think part of the reason his confidence
is so high about embarking on the rather daunting task of being a single Dad of two little girls is
because he's gotten a lot of support from the child care facility and the care giver's wao have
been there, helping him along, encouraging him, giving them advice, helping to create that
village. On a serious note also, we were privileged to have Lt. Colonel who I see n the
audience here speak about the perspective of the child care system from the perspective of a
commander. He said that his soldiers are more productive when they don't have to worry about
their children.
Now, I probably should say his Marines are more productive when they don't have to worry
about their children and the result of that is a much higher level of preparedness 24 hours a day.
Now, there are certainly differences between the military and civilian sector, but I believe that
the military's experience can serve as a for the American work place in general. When parents
don't have to come to work feeling concerned about how their children are doing, they can make
a much more positive contribution which benefits all of us. Just before I visited Quantico I was
in Miami at Baptist Hospital there that also has made a commitment to child care. I saw another
first class facility, I learned about how they have adjusted the hours because just like the military
they have 24 hour work days in a hospital and I heard a lot of detail from the Chief Executive
Officer about why it is good economic sense to provide this service. I met at the hospital with
the Board of Directors of something called, Florida's Child Care Executive Partnership, a group
of business executives appointed by Governor Lawton Chiles to address child care issues. In
creating this partnership, Florida put aside two million dollars the first year to match Hollar for
dollar Corporate contributions for child care. And the Board was charged with engaging the
private sector in this effort.
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Once asked, the Florida business community responded quickly and generously and his year the
legislature and the business community are doubling their commitment so that we're taking both
public dollars and pulling them to create more affordable quality child care and because of this
effort, thousands of more working families in Florida now have access to the kind of care I saw
at Quantico, I saw at Baptist Hospital, and I saw here at the University.
Because we know that providing good child care requires community involvement. The grant
money in Florida only goes to communities where businesses have come together with child care
organizations to forge a plan of action.
And, when I ask these business leaders why they thought the partnership was successful, they
didn't hesitate to answer in very business like terms. They said it was good for the bottom line.
They said they didn't have to spend as much time recruiting new workers who left because of
child care problems. They didn't have to spend as much money recruiting new workers who had
to be trained. They didn't have to worry about absenteeism which had been dramatically. Now,
that was also the experience of many other businesses with whom I have met and I just find it
being repeated over and over again.
So, because I find the partnership concept so impressive, I'm very pleased to announce today that
the Department of Health and Human Services is awarding a half million dollar grant to the
families and work institute, the National Governors' Association, and the Finance Project, to
assist states in developing these partnerships with the private sector. And, the Present has earlier
this year, the military, the Department of Defense, to work with the private sector, to take the
experience they've gained, their guidelines which have been carefully written and bring those to
the table to discuss with more child care centers and family day care providers what can be done
to use money like that available in Florida to make models that can be replicated. Because all
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sectors of society have to be involved, businesses, schools, police departments, religious
organizations, libraries, citizens' associations, the Federal, the State, and the local vernments.
We hope that the White House Conference will be a catalyst to bringing many of these sectors
together. I also hope that at the White House Conference we will discuss ways that (ould assist
parents who wish to make the choice to stay at home with their children more econoinically
feasible because its not just creating good child care centers and family day care centers outside
the home, how do we create real choices that are available to working families so that they in the
privacy of their family can make a decision that it is economically feasible for one parent to be
there for their children.
It is important to remember that this Conference is a starting point. I hope that it marks the
beginning of National discussion and action. And I hope that its focus on the three keys areas
will spark individual ideas around the country. Now, the three key areas are the lack of
affordable child care, quality concerns, and the need for school age care. We have already
discussed affordability and we've made some progress. The President took some steps to address
this need. For starters, the expanded Federal funding for child care. In fact, since 1993, child
care funding has risen by approximately 68 percent and it now reaches more than one million
children through subsidies which is critical if they're going to have financial access to quality
care. And I'm encouraged too that in the last four years more states are committing their own
resources to help working people pay for quality child care.
In the balanced budget agreement, the $500 child tax credit
will go to 27 million families with 45 million children under the age of 17. Now foi the typical
American family with 2 kids, this child tax credit will mean 1,000 more dollars in take home pay
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per year. That is especially important for low-income families who are also going to:benefit from
this child tax credit. Thirteen million children from families with incomes below $30,000 will
receive the credit. That's a lot of young teachers, police officers, farmers, nurses and others who will
have some extra income to put into whatever their family decides, but certainly one of the great
expenses is improving child care. Also through the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, more
working families have had a cut in their taxes which has on average meant an increase in their
income of over 8 thousand dollars. So, there have been real steps forward so that there's more child
care available, it's subsidized, and there's more of an opportunity for families with children to take
advantage of these programs. The President has also made child care an essential component of
welfare reform. He insisted that welfare reform include spending for child care because we're
putting a lot more women, single women with children, into the work force. So it will be increased
by nearly $4 billion over the next 6 years. But that is still not enough and we have a long way to go
to explore how better to enable parents to meet their child care costs. Quality is the second key
issue. We have to do more to support child care providers. We have not done a good job of lifting
up the profession that is so important in taking care of our children and matching that with increased
income and job opportunities and benefits. I've been to a lot of child care centers and I've met many,
many terrific people running and working in them but their salaries are woefully low and many leave
the profession because it's not one that enables them to support themselves and their own families.
I remember one provider who told me with tears in her eyes that with the birth of her second child,
she had to leave taking care of children which is what she loved to do more than anything and go to
work in an office because she needed to make more income. So we have to do all we can to
encourage and support child care workers to get training, to build their skills and increase their
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knowledge which will demand higher salaries and benefits. We have to find the ver best people
to take the jobs of caring for our children because parents should not have to worry whether their
child is safe at day care and the vase majority of teachers are absolutely superb in caring for their
children, but there a few who we need to make sure do not go into the classrooms of our day care
centers. And we also have to help parents do a better job of searching out good child care. In survey
after survey when parents are asked, they really don't know what they're looking for They don't
know what kind of equipment should be there; they don't know what kind of training they would be
demanding for the child care workers. Too often parents are better informed about what kind of car
to buy than what kind of child care to choose. So we have to help parents become more informed
consumers to create that demand that will absolutely say to the market place, we must have higher
quality for the money we're paying One of the interesting results of a lot of the research that has
been done recently is that good quality child care is generally but now always more expensive than
inadequate child care. And in the middle, there's a lot of child care that could be vastly improved
with some good training and better guidance there would make a big difference for the money that
is being paid. Now I hope that we will continue to focus on safeguarding the health and safety of
children in our system around the country. Certainly the President earmarked money going to the
states for child care for quality improvements. And this summer he proposed a new rule requiring
that child care programs that receive Federal dollars make sure that all children are immunized. And
in 1995 the administration launched the Healthy Child Care America Campaign which promotes
partnerships between child care centers and health agencies. That initiative now in 46 states teaches
child care centers how to create safe healthy environments. A lot of times when we do ese surveys
and we get the results and people go in and say, this isn't sanitary; this is not appropriate, the child
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care workers don't know that. Nobody's told them. They're not sure about what thev're supposed
to be doing. So through the Healthy Child Care America Campaign, we intend to do a better job of
educating child care workers.
And, finally, school age care. A critical issue for millions of working American families.
I have visited some excellent school age child care programs. The other day in Quantico, I visited
one of their schools and saw what was available for the children there, but most children and their
parents do not yet have access to good school age child care. Places where the children can do
homework or play sports or learn to play a musical instrument Home Alone might have been a
hit movie but it is not a good script for real childrens' lives and we need to move to make sure more
children can safely and productively spend those after school hours in a place like i school or a
library or some other setting that is good for them.
I'd like to close with one thought and then invite your questions. We are privileged to live
in a time of tremendous bounty in our country. We are at peace. Our economy is booming. Social
problems that for years held us back are receding. The crime rate is down, the teenage pregnancy
rate is down. On so many fronts we're making progress together. At a time such as this presents
a special opportunity free from crisis we can do work that might not be possible in stormier
moments. So we should use this good fortune to make a difference, to lay the ground work so that
the generations of children to come will be able themselves to build a country that has so many
opportunities and take advantage of the blessings that we all have. So turning to child care is not
just something that is a nice issue to talk about. It is as the President calls it, the next Great Frontier
of Public Policy, to build up and strengthen our families, to give them more support so they can do
their jobs both at home and in the work place will help up chart that Frontier not only so that we are
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led to a better world for the children I saw today, but for generations of American children to come.
And I invite all of you to be part in taking action to make sure that happens.
Thank you all very much. (applause) I'm glad there were babies here. That's a wonderful
reminder of why this is so important. Well, as I understand what we're going to do now. We have
two people with microphones in the isles. If anybody has any questions, they should line up behind
the gentleman here and the young woman there and take a turn, but if not, that's all right, too. I don't
mind at all.
Hi.
Hi. (Mrs. Clinton)
I have a question. I'm am employee on campus. I've been a secretary here for fifteen years.
I have a four year-old son. I'm a single mother. I wanted to get my son to go to school here at the
nice center. It would cost me over $500 a month and my salary is $25,000 a year. So how can that
help employees here on campus? And I'm not the only single mother that has had a problem with
this.
Mrs. Clinton - And that is one of the reasons why I mentioned that we have to do more to
provide more slots in child care for working parents like yourself and we have to help subsidize
quality child care because you are a perfect example of the problem that I'm trying to illustrate. You
make $25,000 a year
With no child support.
Mrs. Clinton - with no child support. So that's your total income.
Correct!
Mrs. Clinton - And that's before taxes
...
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Correct! And I live at home with my parents.
Mrs. Clinton - And you're doing all you can to keep expenses down living at home and good
quality child care such as we see here at the university would cost $500 a month, which is $6,000
a year, which is a 25 percent of your before tax income. I mean that is exactly the problem that I'm
talking about. So what have you done for child care?
Well, I went to a Catholic school in the area and they gave me a scholarship for ust this year.
So I pay $200 a month to have him in full-time pre-K. But if I did not have that and ( didn't have
my parents, I would probably have to quit my job and go on welfare because who would watch my
child during the day and how could I afford that and live in an apartment.
Mrs. Clinton - Well, that is the problem. I could not more vividly describe ii. And, so, I
hope that some the proposals that will be discussed at the White House Conference, yo If child will
be in school before we probably get much of the changes that I would like to see happen, but then
you'll need, you know, after school care which is another part of this debate. But I hope that some
of these proposals will focus exactly on what you're talking about. We need more subsidies for
working families, particularly single parents. If we are going to have a policy in our country of
ending welfare and expecting everyone to work, we have to do more to support those parents with
children who are trying to do the best they can by working. And I want to thank you for what you're
doing. (applause)
Hi, I'm the Director at Galludette University Child Development Center and have worked
with children with disabilities for the last 20 some years in child care and I'm curious what you all
are suggesting the focus and direction more and more children with special needs are now in child
care centers because of Special Ed laws and I'm curious where you all stand on that.
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Mrs. Clinton - Well, we stand with you as an educator of children with specials needs and
with parents of children with special needs because it is more expensive to care for a child with
special needs. And, again, parents face the same difficulties, only more so because of the additional
costs. And it's not just financial costs. It's also emotional and psychological costs that is much
higher when you have a child, whether it's your only child, or one of a number of your children with
special needs that you need help caring for and also for many children, you want to integrate them
as early as possible into as typical a life as you can possibly arrange for them and that requires, often
times, you know special transportation, special equipment, whether it's wheel chairs 01 other kinds
of medical equipment, it often requires, in your case, with deaf children, specially trained caregivers.
So this is an issue that is a part of our overall issue of quality and affordability. I am old enough to --
I keep saying that I think that's because I'm going to turn fifty this month. I'm old enough, I'm
nearly a half century old. Think about it for all you young people. It's hard to believe it happens.
(laughter) So I can remember (applause) many, many years ago when I worked for the Childrens
Defense Fund and when I was involved in other activities concerning children, going into places
where children with disabilities were literally just left on the floor all day. I cannot tell you some
of the places I have seen. Now that was twenty-five years ago. I haven't seen places like that
recently, but I'm not invited to those places in my current position and I know that there are lots of
excellent facilities for special needs children and I know that there are some that are really very
inadequate. So this is a big part of what we're going to be talking about. Yes.
Thanks for coming. I'm a student here and I would like to know how does the European
child care or World child care compare to the United States and are you planning to have any World
input on planning for American child care.
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Mrs. Clinton - That's an excellent question. I want to thank you for asking that ecause often
times we don't learn about what works in other places and there are some very good models in
Europe of National Commitment to Child Care. In fact when I was at the child care center here at
the university, I learned this morning that the facility is modelled on facilities in northein Italy. The
university architects went and visited because of the great room with the classrooms off the side and
it's really something beautiful to behold. But there are some very good programs in a number of
European countries that I think bear some attention. I have personally visited child care centers in
France and in a few other countries, particularly in France and Denmark which were very impressive
to me because there was a national commitment to the provision of quality affordable child care that
went beyond political ideology. I remember when I visited France, I went to various cities and
looked at their child care facilities and whether I was in a city that was run by a very conservative
mayor and city council or one run by the socialists party, I didn't see any difference. And I asked
a very conservative mayor in a French city how he could explain this national consensus about
spending both national and local dollars to build excellent facilities, make them affordable, and he
said but they're all our children. You know we are creating future French citizens and he said it as
only a Frenchman could say it with a lot of flourish. It was like I asking such a ridiculo is question.
How could politics have anything to do with taking care of one's children. They fight about other
things and even in the recent efforts to reign in the budgets in a lot of the European countries to make
them more economically competitive, their caring for children has not been an issue of debate
between the political factions in the countries that I'm aware of. They are going to remair committed
to universal health care for all of their people and for adequate education and child care for preschool
and I think it's a very important National commitment and I think we should look to she if we can
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learn anything from that. I write a little bit about the French system in my book because I was
impressed by it. Yes.
Being college students, most of us don't recognize there's a problem in child care but also
being very involved in community service, what can we do as college students?
Mrs. Clinton - That's also a very good question and I think community service is a critical
key to being able to provide enough voluntary manpower to help out in a lot of the centers that are
particularly serving lower income families. And I know that a number of young people both through
university community services and through Americore have signed up to work on things like
America Reads and mentoring and tutoring children and I think looking for opportunities to work
with even younger children to give them the attention that they need would be a very good way of
working with at least one family, one child. Maybe showing a mom or a dad how to read to a child
with just by you doing it, modelling it for them, playing, teaching some of those silly games and
songs that you were taught--- all of which help build the brain. I mean all those little things that we
used to do all make a difference. And you know there's a lot of evidence now that you know young
women, young mothers when they speak to children in those little high voices we all adopt when we
see little kids. Like oh, oh Michael, you're so cute. You know our voices just go up like, you know,
full register. That has an impact. The child really can hear it. And young men and fathers who are
more physical with babies and, you know, play games with them, that also stimulates the brain
development. So there's a lot that both young men and women could do in giving of their time to
work with some of these kids, especially as I say in lower income family areas where there may be
too many adults taking care, too few adults taking care of too many children.
Good afternoon. My name is Cecilia Johnson and I'm a family child care provider and I have
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been for twenty years. My question is of the eight parents that I have who are single mothers, one
who just recently came off of welfare, the biggest problem that they undertake is getting benefits
from the jobs in which they work to help take care of their children, especially medical benefits.
And with the rising costs of child care and the costs of taking care of your child, I would like to
know how do we plan to help our single mothers who can't get benefits from their jobs to help take
care of their children.
Mrs. Clinton - Thank you for asking that and thank you for being a family day hare provider.
Until we have some program that takes care of all of our childrens' health care needs, we will not
solve this problem completely, but in the Balanced Budget Agreement, we made a big step forward
as a Nation. Because through the commitment of $24 billion that was raised by raising the tax on
tobacco, we will be able to provide health care for half the children who are currently uninsured,
many of whom fall into the category you're talking about. Now a lot of mothers getting off of
welfare should be very sure they're not still eligible for Medicaid because they often are. We have
3 million children in America who are eligible for Medicaid but their mothers and fathers don't know
they are so they are left to the whims of the emergency room or not being taking care of. So making
sure your eight moms check to see whether they're available and eligible is the first thing Secondly,
this new money - this $24 billion will expand coverage in every state. So making sure they know
where to go to find out how to sign up their child for health care I think is the best advice you could
give them and to help them, you know, know where to contact somebody and to try to find out. But
we still have too many Americans who do not get health insurance through their work, are not
eligible for any kind of government assistance, and they just fall into this large pool of 40 million
uninsured Americans, about 11 million of whom are children. And so we just have to keep making
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sure everybody who's covered with Medicaid and the new Child Health Program are covered, then
we need to see what else we're going to do to cover the remaining children and adults. So please
give them that information.
Mrs. Clinton, I hate to do this but your staff has suggested that you maybe should take only
one more question.
Mrs. Clinton - All right.
Well, actually instead of a question I wanted to issue an invitation to you to tome visit me
at the Childrens Developmental Clinic on this campus. Come back one more time this Saturday and
see a new program or different program from what we've been talking about today, which is
undergraduate and faculty members volunteering their time on Saturdays to play with the children,
provide role models for the children, and to deal with those hours of concern that you mention for
late afternoon hours, excuse me, the week days when they are unsupervised. And the special thing
about our program is that it's for children with physical disabilities, who have self-esteem issues and
who get isolated at schools and also children from disadvantaged neighboihoods, from
disadvantaged backgrounds. I work with children from the Cools Spring Elementar, School who
are Hispanic mostly and who have parents who are very disengaged from education and if you ever
have the time to come visit us on Saturday, I'd love to show you what can happen when people
volunteer for free.
expenses
Mrs. Clinton - Well, the young man who asked the question what he might do, you need to
sign him up. (laughter & applause) Well, unfortunately I can't be there this Saturday laughter) but
I'm very glad you stood up to invite me and did such a good job describing what you do because I
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PAGE 25
think that's the kind of a model that more people need to hear about That there is some hing literally
for everybody to do. Whether it's in our own homes spending more time with our own children,
maybe the children next door or down the block or if somebody else in your family who doesn't have
the time and is working too hard and needs a helping hand, or whether it's being involved
professionally as so many of you are as child care providers at a center or in a home: We all have
something we can do and volunteering to help support parents and child care providers is a very
important way of not only providing a service but for each of us to know firsthand what you know
about what a difference it can make in a child's life. And so I hope that you'll be engaged in this
issue and thinking about it and sharing ideas and here on this campus try to reach out D everybody,
you know, whether it's the young people who are at this center or the young women who stood up
who is working here as a secretary already who needs some support, needs a helping hand. I bet if
everybody on this campus just looked around at the people you already know, you'd find that there's
something you can do to help relieve some of the burdens of taking care of children, especially for
single parents. I really want to stress that. It is so important that we support them and give them the
kind of attention and volunteer activities that will enable them to know they're being good moms and
dads because that's what everybody wants to feel. And if we could get that idea across, I think a lot
of our other problems in this country would take care of themselves.
Thank you very much. (applause)
President Kirwan --Mrs. Clinton I hope that you can sense the very strong and special feelings of
support there are on this campus for you and the work that you're doing and also sense how honored
we are to have you at College Park. We know that during school breaks, there will kely be some
colors of another school prominent in the White House (laughter) and we think you need to be able
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to retaliate with the colors of one of your schools. So we have a little gift we want to give to your
that we hope you'll wear when Chelsea is home.
Mrs. Clinton - Absolutely! (applause)
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PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
REMARKS FOR CHILD CARE EVENT
METROPOLITAN BAPTIST CHURCH
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
October 8, 1997
Acknowledgments: Sen. Jim McGreevy, for his commitment to New Jersey's families,
and for his ability to lead New Jersey into the 21st Century: Rep Payne; Rev. David
Jefferson. Pastor. Metropolitan Baptist Church: Audrey West, Exec. Dir., Newark Pre-School
Council Head Start Program, largest head Start Program in NJ: Mayor Sharp James: Rosa
Reyes [ray-ez], Newark Preschool Program Parent
It is wonderful to be back in Newark. a city that is earning its reputation as a
"Renaissance City" every day. You have a new performing arts center. a new sports center
soon to be in the historic Ironbound district, and most important of all. a new spirit that has
revitalized this city and lirerally brought it back from the ashes of 30 years age.
Six years ago last week I announced my intention to run for President 1 wanted to keep
the American dream alive for everyone willing to work for it, to keep America the world's
strongest force for peace, freedom, and prosperity, and to bring our people together across all
the lines that divide us, as one America.
Working together. I think we have come a long way to realizing that vision. But we
must do more to make sure that America goes strong into the 21st Century. I want to talk to
you this morning about one of the most important challenges we face: helping our people
succeed at home and at work, so we can pass on our values to our children. And I especially
want to talk about child care.
You know and I know that in today's world with both parents working, with single
parents trying to raise children under difficult circumstances -- it IS harder than ever to find
time with our children. You know and I know that nothing presses more neavily on working
parents than worrying about where your children are while you are at work. And whether
your children are in child care. with a baby sitter. or at home, you shouldn't have to choose
between working hard and being a good parent.
Hillary und
have said many times that government doesn't raise children; parents do But as Hillary
has said, every one of us has a special responsibility to help parents meet that most important of
challenges, because it really does take a village.
That is why for nearly five years, we have worked to give parents the tools they need to
raise strong families. We fought for and won the V-Chip and a ratings system for TV, we took
action to put tobacco out of our children's reach; and we are fighting every day to make our
streets safer and to reduce juvenile crime. From making it easier for parents to take time off from
OCT-07 97 22:04 FROM:
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work to care for a sick family member, to ensuring that more parents can keep their families'
health insurance when they change jobs; to raising the minimum wage strengthening families
has been our administration's top priority.
This summer, we built on that progress when I signed into law historic legislation that
balances the budget and invests in all of our children's future It will extend health care coverage
to up to 5 million uninsured children -- the largest investment in children's health since the
creation of Medicaid in 1965 It includes a new $500 per-child tax credit for working families
And it makes the single largest investment in education from the earliest years, to college, 10 a
lifetime of learning -- in a generation.
But we must do more to help families succeed and to give our children the tools they
need to make the most of their God-given potential. Making sure that working parents have
access to quality, affordable child care is one of the most important things we can do to meet
that challenge.
As Head Start parents and personnel. you know better than anyone how important it is
for our young children to be able to learn and grow in a safe, stimulating environment. The
Head Start program is a model of excellence for early learning. That is why 1 worked to create
"Early Head Start," to help more of our youngest children come to school ready to learn.
And that is why I fought to make sure the balanced budget expanded Head Start to reach one
million children every year by 2002.
As hard as we are working to make Head Start available to every child that needs it, we
must work just as hard to make sure that every working parent who needs it has access to
quality, affordable child care.
We know how important good child care is for our children. Good child care broadens
our children's earliest experience of the world and helps them to thrive. As we learned at the
White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning -- and as Jim
McGreevy just talked about -- what happens to a child in the earliest years can make all the
difference for a lifetime. And children of all ages need safe, nurturing places to be when their
parents are still at work.
We know how important good child care is for parents. One of the first questions any
parent asks when changing jobs. increasing work responsibilities. or getting a first job is "How
can I arrange child care?" And certainly the difficulty of finding quality. affordable child care
is one of the major obstacles people face when they are trying to move from welfare to work.
That is why I insisted that the welfare reform law I signed last year included $4 billion for
child care.
This morning. we learned that our nation's welfare rolls have declined by 250,000
people in the last month alone and we are closer than ever 10 meeting our goal of moving one
million more people from welfare to work by the year 2000. Altogether, the rolls dropped by
more than 1.7 million people since I signed the welfare law, and by more than 3.6 million since I
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became President We cannot allow our progress to be undermined by inadequate child care.
And we must never ask the people we now require to work to choose between working and
securing the health and safety of their children.
We know how important good child care is -- but we also know that not enough of our
children who need it are getting it. And the need is great. Over half of our infants under the
age of one are already in day care. Twelve million children under the age of 6, and 17 million
children aged 6 through 13. have one or both parents in the workforce.
There are too few child care facilities to meet our growing demands, too many of the
facilities in operation are inadequate, and too few of our families can afford child care of any
quality. Parents and experts report that child care is in short supply, especially in our hardest
pressed communities. It is nearly impossible to believe, but studies tell us that more than half
of the child care centers in this country provide poor to mediocre care. An alarming one out of
three children in home based child care get care that may actually set them back. And child
care can be so expensive formany that It can consume as much as 25% of a low-incorne parent's
paycheck.
run homes
This is a challenge for every American, no matter how much money we make, no
matter what our background. I believe that the issue of child care is the next frontier for
America -- and improving it may be the next. most important thing we can do to prepare
ourselves for the new century. I am glad that Members of Congress, Governors, and state
legislatures are beginning to give child care it the attention it deserves. And we should all be
encouraged by the providers around the country who are proving that every community can
provide its children with affordable, quality child care.
We all have a common interest in our children's future -- now we must work together
to find common ground on the issue of child care. This October 23rd, the First Lady and 1
will bring together parents. child care providers. experts, economists and business leaders (1)
talk about how we can learn from these promising efforts and replicate them around the
country. Together, we can strengthen our child care system and support the hard working
American families who rely on it.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
MEMORANDUM
OF CALL
Previous editions usable
le
TO
YOU WERE CALLED BY
YOU WERE VISITED BY
OF (Organization)
PLEASE PHONE
FTS
AUTOVON
JRC
WILL CALL AGAIN
IS WAITING TO SEE YOU
RETURNED YOUR CALL
WISHES AN APPOINTMENT
MESSAGE
Jenm
RECEIVED BY.
DATE
TIME
63-110 NSN 7540-00-634-4018
STANDARD FORM 63 (Rev. 8-81)
Prescribed by GSA
* U.S.G.P.O. 1992 312-070-40024
FPMR (41 CFR) 101-11.6
David, I Think This
looks Sreat.
DAVID SHIPLEY
09/25/97 05:03:10 PM
Record Type:
Record
To:
Nicole R. Rabner/WHO/EOP, Jennifer L. Klein/OPD/EOP
CC:
Subject:
Okay, how's this for a rough outline?
I. I'm here to talk about something that hasn't been talked about much: Child-care. [Will tailor this
to audience -- here to talk about something we all believe in and know we must do something
about )
II. Why?
Investing
a) New science on the brain tells us that the early years are critical to a child's
mkidipay,
development. If a child gets off to a good start, it can mean the difference between a life of hope
interness
.b,
and one of hopelessness.
b) Our world is moving faster and faster. The workplace is changing. In more and more
lecs
families, both parents are working. To be productive, parents need to go to work confident that
their children are being cared for. For this new economy to function and for America to prosper, it
if crime inung we se
is essential that there be quality child-care.
III. And yet American child-care is far short of what it must be.
see attached need through K.
expect
less likely
a) Lots of statistics making the case that it's not good enough. Are we going to talk about
more
standards? What else? Need from you guys the whole case that shows the weaknesses in the
&
N &
he
quality
ve:
system.
safety.
IV. Fortunately, we know we can do better. We have models. Saw two of them this week:
the Reep
a) Florida. (Emphasize, too, that it's public-private partnership with all sectors of society
new safe
pitching in.
b) Quantico. Talk about military's success. -Ace briefing book TAB Mike 5 is has most imp - & is
3-6
V.
What are we going to do.
attached.
leg inguercy else?]
a) Build on our record. [what have we done for child-care? money in welfare reform, what
& leis
Oct 23 (gulp!) L to come
b) Hold child care conference on XX.
crime
communities
c) What can we say about the President's
announcement? That wehope conf is (anneh of
are stronger.
d) What else?
national dial asned results
L
in debate el reform -
We'll get you the Auts.
as specifice.
VI.
Conclusion.
MEMO
To:
David Hamburg
From:
Deborah Phillips
Subject:
White House Child Care Conference
Date:
June 9, 1997
Given the First Lady's long history of highly regarded work on children, her capacity to
re-invigorate and legitimize child care as an issue of widespread national significance is
extraordinary. As a nation, we are finally coming to a social consensus that children must
receive dependable, quality health care -- as a right and a social necessity. I hope we can begin
to move in the same direction for child care. This conference affords the opportunity to educate
the nation and to move the nation philosophically and strategically towards a greater
commitment to providing children with supportive child care, regardless of their parents'
economic and employment status.
To set the stage, I believe there are a few guiding themes worth mentioning:
1. It is critical to get beyond discussions of child care as a categorical service stream and
to reframe the issue as one of protecting the health, safety and development of children.
Child care, like the home, is a setting in which children grow and develop. It is not just
"one thing", but takes many different forms. It is time that we begin to talk about child
care just as we have always talked about mother care -- in terms of the essential
ingredients for child development. Keep children at the center of discussion (not child
care per se).
2. Families from all walks of life rely on child care. This is not just a poverty issue, even
though today's debate about child care has focused on its link to welfare reform. As with
health care, I believe it is essential that we disentangle child care policy from poverty
policy. We now have a two-tiered child care system, with one set of options and
subsidies (tax) for the non-poor and another set of options and subsidies for the poor,
which leaves many working, low-income families in the breach. Can we begin to
consider a more comprehensive approach to addressing the child care needs of our
nation's families, recognizing that some families will need more assistance that others to
obtain the child care that we believe all children need and deserve.
3. I always assume that parents want to do well by their children. We know that parents
seek safe and trustworthy care for their children -- they value quality and stability. What
stands between their aspirations for child care and their ability to avail themselves of
quality care are: (1) costs and (2) work schedules that militate against access to quality
programs. Thus, the challenge for child care policy is one of removing the barriers that
now prevent parents from exercising their responsibilities (and preferences) as parents.
David Hamburg
Page 2
June 9, 1997
This cannot be done without considering the nature of the jobs that are available to young
parents (hours, benefits, etc.). This latter issue is probably beyond the scope of a one-day
meeting, but I hope the employer sector is represented.
4. As my remarks in April indicated (and as we did in Starting Points), I view the family
leave discussion and the child care discussion as closely linked. The choice of when to
start using child care is all too seldom a real choice, and the initiation of child care is
agonizing for parents. I hope this can be woven into the conference.
Structure of the conference
The structure of the April conference was so successful. Why not replicate it? Taking
research as the point of departure lent the meeting a tone of seriousness, of excitement about new
scientific discoveries, and of legitimacy. To follow the research panel with a panel of
policymakers and practitioners who illustrated that "we know what to do and we can do it" was
masterful. The only consideration maybe one for allowing more discussion with the audience.
What does the nation need to understand about child care (from research)? Here are
some ideas:
1. High exposure: child care starts early and is extensive.
2. Home/parents remain by far the strongest influence on child development
(reassuring).
3. Quality matters (= caregiver-child interactions) and link back to brain development --
what is at stake developmentally? Bad quality that we see is wasteful, not neglectful or
abusive.
4. Family leave is not breaking the back of business (see report of the Commission on
Leave), and it makes a difference to families.
5. Maybe something about "who" provides child care (they are far more educated than
many believe), their compensation, and the significance of their work.
6. Maybe something about the disproportionate financial burden of child care for
families in different income brackets.
What does the nation need to learn from experience?
1. The military experience (will get at salary/turnover link).
2. Accreditation (NAEYC).
3. Some effort focused on informal child care (linking and training home-based
providers).
4. State experience (maybe Florida, North Carolina, or Ohio). Very important to link to
Governor's efforts/initiatives -- maybe Governor Miller could "keynote".
5. Employer effort (ideally employer of low-wage workers).
David Hamburg
Page 3
June 9, 1997
My remaining question is how to lend some longevity to this conference. What could the
First Lady announce? A Commission on Child Care Financing and Quality? An annual
conference on child development? Maybe an executive order to develop a set of model federal
\
child care standards with financial incentives to states to approach/adopt as called for in Starting
Points?
WHITE HOUSE CHILD CARE GROUP
On
QUALITY ISSUES
Health and Safety Standards/ Health Promotion and Child Development Issues.
Background
Studies indicate that there are serious problems with the quality of child care. A study of child
care centers found that 10% of children are in care that is dangerous to their health and safety,
70% are in care that is barely adequate, and only 20% are in high quality care. Infants are at
greatest risk, with 40% in care that is a danger to their healthy and safety (Heilburn,e al., 1995).
A study of family child care found that 35% of children were in poor quality care, 56% adequate
care, and only 9% in high quality care; and children from low income families were in
substantially lower quality care Galinsky, et al., 1994).
Such studies present compelling evidence to address quality in child care in the context of
"freedom from harm, specifically, physical and developmental harm" through a spectrum of
possible examples, as follows:
OPTIONS TO PROMOTE HEALTH AND SAFETY IN CHILD CARE SETTINGS
1. Create a set of standards on child health and safety, health promotion and child development to
be promulgated by Federal regulation
Advantages
A set of standards, developed by the experts in this field, already exists in the form of Caring
for Our Children. The standards are a tangible step to improve child care that would be
directly attributed to the Administration. Responds to the media criticism of the weakness of
State regulations. Standards represent direct evidence of the Administration's commitment
to children and families.
Disadvantages
There is no certain mechanism to promulgate such standards. According to Office of General
Counsel, Title V (MCH) has no such authority. The Child Care Bureau's legislation
apparently has some authority but initial efforts to include health and safety issues were only
minimally successful. Head Start has health and safety performance standards but addresses
a restricted population as does the Department of Defense. This option appears contrary to
the Administration's federalism approach. Presently, most States have a problem with
monitoring resources and would have difficulty, without additional resources, to carry out
this task.
1A. Focus the promulgated standards on freedom from harm (the Stepping Stones document)
child care and
early education
GOOD QUALITY CHILD CARE AND EARLY EDUCATION: A DRAMATIC
OPPORTUNITY TO PROMOTE LEARNING AND PREVENT DAMAGE IN OUR
YOUNGEST CHILDREN
The social, emotional, and cognitive development of as many as 12 million children
under the age of six is dependent on their access to safe, reliable child care and early
education that provides them with the opportunity to form stable relationships with
caring adults and other children and to engage in interesting and stimulating activities.
Such good quality child care and early education is strongly linked to school
achievement and the development of social skills that enable a child to grow into a
happy, productive adult. Such child care has been used successfully to prepare at-risk
children for school. It also improves educational and social development for children
from middle- and low-income families (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, Barnett, Epstein, &
Weikart, 1984; Burchinal, Lee, & Ramey, 1989; Campbell & Ramey, 1994; Carnegie
Corporation of New York, 1994; Doherty, 1991; Hayes, Palmer, & Weikart, 1980; Lazar,
Darlington, Murray, Royce, & Snipper, 1982; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1980).
Poor quality child care and early education can harm children. Their intellectual and
social development can be stunted. In extreme cases, children have been harmed
physically. The Carnegie Corporation's Starting Points Task Force, citing new scientific
research on brain development in the first three years of life, found that "an adverse
environment can compromise a young child's brain function and overall development,
placing him or her at greater risk of developing a variety of cognitive, behavioral, and
physical difficulties. In some cases these effects may be irreversible. But the
opportunities are equally dramatic: a good start in life can do more to promote learning
and prevent damage than we ever imagined" (Carnegie Corporation, Starting Points,
abridged, p.4, 1994).
Most child care and early education is not of good quality
Tragically, several recent studies have documented that the quality of most child care
and early education available to working families in the United States is mediocre to
poor. Independent observers for The Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes Study in Child
Care Centers (Helburn, Culkin, Howes, Clifford, Cryer, Kagan et al., 1995) found that in
40 percent of the infant and toddler rooms, caregivers did not follow basic sanitary
practices. In these poor quality settings, children were rarely held, cuddled, or talked to
by their providers. The rooms lacked toys and other materials that encourage
development. The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care by the
Families & Work Institute in 1994 found that "only nine percent of the [family child care]
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et al., National Child Care Staffing Study Revisited: Four Years in the Life of Center Based Child Care,
Oakland, CA: Child Care Employee Project, 1993).
Cost of good quality child care and early education is out of reach for most
Most working families cannot afford to pay what it costs to produce good quality child care and early
education. This is true despite the fact that the wages of child care providers, which account for 60
to 70 percent of the cost of producing child care, are below what individuals with similar education
and experience earn in other settings (Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes). Families who pay for
child care spend, on average, about $3,700 per year for one or more preschool children (U.S.
Census Bureau, "What Does it Cost to Mind Our Preschoolers?," in Current Population Reports,
September 1995). By contrast, national experts peg the cost of providing good quality care at
$6,300 to $8,500 per child per year (National Association for the Education of Young Children,
"Estimating the full cost of quality," in Reaching the full cost of quality in early childhood programs,
1990). The latter figures represent 26 to 44 percent of the gross income for a family of four earning
the median income and paying for child care for two children.
Providers struggle, too often unsuccessfully, to get by on fees that parents can afford. Whether in a
center or family child care home, revenue from parent fees alone do not allow the typical child care
provider to offer children the trained staff, small group sizes, and low child-to-adult ratios that
encourage frequent, responsive adult interactions with each child that are at the heart of good quality
child care and early education.
Parents need help paying for good quality child care and early education
Parents need help bridging the gap between what they can afford and what good quality child care
and early education cost. There are a number of ways that federal, state, and local governments can
help more parents pay for good quality child care: by expanding the Dependent Care Tax Credit,
and making it refundable; by extending child care subsidies to a broader range of working families;
by extending tax incentives to employers who provide child care subsidies or on-site child care; and
by linking child care with public school systems to improve the quality of the child care and early
education our youngest children receive.
Businesses benefit when they play a role in helping parents find and pay for good quality child care
and early education. The most important role for business is as a partner of local or state public
agencies for investment in child care and early education resources, so that all families have good
quality child care choices they can afford in their communities. Public-private partnerships of this
nature sustain child care and early education growth and improvement in communities. Businesses
also can provide employees with the Dependent Care Assistance Plan pre-tax payroll deduction, link
parents with child care resource and referral agencies in their communities, or invest directly in child
care and early education resources in or near the work site for their employees.
Choices for children and parents
More and more emphasis has been placed on consumer education: arming parents with the
knowledge that they need to make informed decisions regarding child care and early education. But,
parents often feel that they do not have a choice about the care they use. Sixty-two percent of
parents using family child care and relative care said that they had looked for alternatives to the child
care they presently use. Sixty-five percent of these same parents said they found no other
acceptable options (Galinsky et al., The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care, 1994).
3
child care and
early education
THE STATE OF THE STATES: A PATCHWORK OF COMMITMENTS
AND APPROACHES TO CHILD CARE AND EARLY EDUCATION
States set standards for child care and early education
Decision-making about child care and early education policies has long been under the
jurisdiction of states and localities. Each state sets its own standards for child care,
including which child care settings will be subject to licensing and regulation. States
determine what the ratio of child care staff to children should be, and set the minimum
health and safety standards for regulated child care settings. Regulations vary widely;
in Maryland, for example, there must be one child care provider for every three babies,
while Idaho and several other states permit one child care teacher to care for six
babies. Nearly all states set staff:child ratios for child care centers, but fewer than half
of all states regulate group size. A study by Children's Defense Fund found that 43
percent of all children in out-of-home care are in care settings that are exempt from
state regulations (Children's Defense Fund, Who Knows How Safe? 1990).
Parent fees cover 70 to 75 percent of the cost of child care and early education, with
public subsidies making up most of the balance. States and the federal government
invest in the provision of child care and early education because they recognize the
public benefits of good quality child care. Government support for child care and early
education takes the form of both expenditure-based subsidies, mostly targeted to low-
and moderate-income families, and tax-based subsidies. Expenditure-based subsidies
generally are designed to help people enter the labor force or to keep them in the labor
force and off welfare, in recognition of the fact that low-income working parents need
help paying for child care. Many states provide tax-based subsidies, including
dependent care tax credits, which benefit parents, and employer tax credits, which
allow employers to claim up to 50 percent of the cost of an employee child care benefit.
States also put up matching funds to draw down federal funds designated for child care
and early education initiatives. They invest in public pre-school programs for four-year-
olds, and some states have subsidized special programs such as child care for teen
parents and for school-age child care. States also support programs to increase the
quality and expand the supply of child care and early education, including training,
licensing, and monitoring efforts (Stoney and Greenberg, "The Financing of Child Care:
Current and Emerging Trends," The Future of Children, Summer/Fall 1996).
Study finds state commitments inadequate
While numerous studies have demonstrated that children need good quality child care
and early education to grow, thrive, and enter school ready to learn, and that parents
need accessible, affordable good quality child care programs to get and keep jobs, not
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children's earliest years shows that the need for good quality care and early education starts
immediately; yet recent studies have found most infant care to be dangerously poor (Helburn, S. et
al., Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes, University of Colorado at Denver, 1995: Families & Work
Institute, Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care, 1994). This lack of attention to
our children's earliest years is a high stakes gamble; studies show that every $1 spent on early
education saves $7 in remediation, incarceration, and special education (Barnett, W.S., "Benefit-cost
Analysis of Preschool Education: Findings from a 25-year Follow-Up," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry,
1993).
Examples of state initiatives
A number of states are choosing to make the well being of children their priority, and are often
undertaking bold initiatives to support child care and and early education. Some of the most
exciting and innovative state programs are going beyond the distinction between child care and
and early education, offering coordinated curricula and joint training of teachers. Below are some
of the noteworthy state efforts in child care and early education. (A state may appear more than
once if its programs fall into more than one category.)
PROGRAMS RESPONDING TO LOCAL NEEDS
North Carolina's Smart Start is designed to provide every child in North Carolina who needs it
access to affordable early childhood education and other crucial services. Smart Start is built on
the concept of empowering and supporting local communities to develop, implement, and fund a
plan for children and families. The state spends almost $57 million annually to support and
implement the work of the 42 counties that have brought together planning groups to participate in
Smart Start. When Smart Start was passed by the North Carolina legislature in 1993, it was
accompanied by other efforts to improve quality and affordability of child care and early education.
Licensing changes improved staff:child ratios for young children, and additional staff was hired to
monitor and assist the child care program. A special program, TEACH, was funded to help child
care workers obtain training at community colleges and is linked to increases in salaries and
compensation. Affordability was addressed by increasing, on a sliding scale, the amount of the
state's child care tax credit for families earning less than $40,000.
New Jersey's Governor Whitman's Bright Beginnings is an $8.5 million initiative that will create
8,600 additional child care slots in the state, which has a waiting list for subsidized care of 24,000.
The initiative will expand the capacity of Head Start and licensed child care centers by 1,650 slots,
will register an additional 1,600 family child care providers (creating openings for an additional
6,000 children), will issue planning grants to promote "full coordination and partnership" for pre-K
programs among schools, Head Start and non-profit child care providers, will fund parenting
education, and will expand training, development and accreditation for child care providers to
boost quality. Grants and loans will create 950 additional slots at licensed centers for children
from low- and middle-income families. The initiative will be funded with federal money and
"savings from administrative efficiencies."
SCHOOL-AGE CHILD CARE:
Hawaii's After-School Plus, or A+, program is the nation's first statewide, after-school child care
program. It provides low-cost, after-school care to children in every elementary school district in
the state. It is accessible to all families: low-income families are served free; all others pay a flat
fee.
3
TAX BREAKS/CREDITS:
Arkansas doubles the state dependent care tax credit (a supplement to the existing tax credit)
from 10 to 20 percent if parents enroll their children in a child care program that has received a
good quality rating or is accredited.
Colorado parents will once again be able to claim a child care tax credit on their state income tax
return, thanks to a bill passed by the state legislature in 1996, and Colorado citizens will have the
opportunity to use a new voluntary income tax check-off that will help fund quality enhancement in
licensed child care facilities, particularly for staff training and development and accreditation. Both
the tax credit and check-off were among the recommendations of the 25-member Business
Commission on Child Care Financing, created by Governor Romer in 1995 to examine financing
structures for early care and education from a business perspective. A related bill that would have
made the tax credit refundable was defeated.
Minnesota anticipates that the demand for child care and early education will continue to be
greater than the funds available in welfare reform. The state is considering eliminating the
dependent care deduction in favor of tax credits, consolidating all funding sources, and making
child care funds equally available to all families at particular income levels. Minnesota proposes to
maximize the funds available through parent co-payments, tax credits, and child support
enforcement. State child care and earned income tax credits, combined with federal tax credits,
would create the potential for "substantial financial assistance" to many families. Minnesota also is
exploring "tax credit express," which would make funds available on a monthly basis to help
minimize the impact of higher co-payments (Child Care Action Campaign, Wisconsin and Minnesota:
Approaches to Welfare Reform and Child Care, 1996).
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR CHILD CARE FINANCING:
Florida's legislature passed the Child Care Partnership Act in 1996 that created a state fund of
child care subsidy dollars for working families. Private employers, whose employees directly
benefit from child care subsidies, can draw on these dollars by matching them one to one. The
Act allocates $2 million for a child care purchasing pool in 10 counties, and will be administered by
child care resource and referral agencies. The act will allow an additional 1,500 children or low-
income working families now on the waiting list to receive child care, with the price of care to be
shared by the state, employers, and families. A precedent is being established for employers to
provide at least some child care subsidy support. The CEO who chairs the governor's board for
the Partnership Act has become so concerned about Florida's looming child care crisis that he
recently appeared at a press conference with Governor Chiles to call for an increase in state child
care subsidy funding. The idea for this budget increase had emerged earlier, during a series of
state and local meetings for business leaders that Child Care Action Campaign helped to plan and
carry out in partnership with the Florida Children's Forum.
Indiana has hosted two Child Care Financing Symposiums, the cornerstones in a multi-year effort
to bring together county-based teams comprised of business, early childhood professionals,
educators, and community organizations to create ways to improve the quality and expand the
supply of child care in Indiana. This collaborative effort between the Child Care Action Campaign
(CCAC) and the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), launched the Indiana
Child Care Fund to raise and channel private funding for investments in child care provider training
and other improvements in child care quality. The fund operates under the aegis of the Indiana
Donors Alliance, representing 70 community foundations, which has agreed to become the home
of the Indiana Child Care Fund.
5
child care and
early education
CORPORATE PRODUCTIVITY, CHILD CARE, AND WORK-FAMILY
POLICIES
The changing workforce
In the past forty years, the nature of the American work force has changed dramatically,
bringing with it equally dramatic changes in family life:
Fewer than 10 percent of all households are headed by a male breadwinner
with a wife at home.
Half of all mothers with children under one year of age are working outside
their homes.
Eighty-seven percent of American workers--men and women--have some
day-to-day responsibility for family members and 47 percent have dependent
(child or elder) care responsibilities (Galinsky et al., The Changing Workforce,
1993, Families & Work Institute).
By the year 2005, more than 70 percent of women in the work force will have
children in need of child care or after-school care, based on current
population projections.
(Source: Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, unpublished data, 1993, 1995: Fullerton.
Howard J, "The 2005 Labor Force: Growing, but Slowly," Monthly Labor Review, p.30, Table 1.
November 1995.)
A survey of 5,000 employees at five major U.S. corporations found that 82 percent of
working parents missed days at work, were tardy, had left work early, or had used work
time to deal with various child care problems. A number of national surveys have
estimated such lost work time to be between six and eight days per parent annually
(Fernandez, Child Care and Corporate Productivity, 1986). This translates into a $3
billion loss annually for American businesses, according to the Child Care Action
Campaign.
The changing workplace
The workplace, too, is changing dramatically. In the past decade, many companies
have restructured, drastically scaling back on their workforces to increase profitability
and competitiveness. Companies continue to search for ways to cut costs, improve
quality, and maintain flexibility.
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creation of dependent care programs that may involve a consortium of corporations and, in some
cases, unions.
The largest of these investors in community resources is the American Business Collaboration for
Quality Dependent Care (ABC), a coalition of 156 major U.S. corporations, government entities, and
non-profit organizations established in 1992. During the first phase of the ABC's initiative, in 1992,
members of the group invested more than $27 million in 45 communities in 25 states and the District
of Columbia. In September 1995, 21 "champion" corporations of the original group pledged to invest
a total of $100 million over the next 10 years to develop and strengthen school-age child care and
child care projects in communities across the country. This is believed to represent the largest single
investment in dependent care ever by the private sector.
Examples of corporate dependent care programs
Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, NationsBank offers resource and referral services, numerous
dependent care assistance policies, and a near-site child care facility for its headquarters, and has
provided more than $900,000 in seed money for a center for its employees in Atlanta. In addition,
Nations Bank has invested $25 million to provide child care benefits, such as income-based
subsidies.
Other corporations are addressing the child care needs of lower income workers. A division of
CONAGRA Refrigerated Foods Company, Butterball Turkey, has invested corporate funds into on-
site and near-site child care centers for low-income employees at its Arkansas and Missouri plants.
Prompted by concerns about worker loyalty and productivity and by employee surveys that found that
child care was a workers' second greatest expense, CONAGRA now provides care for all shifts (6:00
a.m. - midnight), operates after-school and summer school programs for children and infants, and
subsidizes employee expenses through pre-tax payroll deductions.
Fel-Pro Incorporated, a Skokie, Illinois-based manufacturer of automobile sealing products, employs
approximately 2,000 people in three states and overseas, and expresses its commitment to them
through the benefits it offers. Its work and family benefits package -- costing about $700 per
employee -- includes: on-site child care, an elder care resource and referral service, a sick child care
and adult emergency care service, and subsidized tutoring and college scholarships for employees'
children. A University of Chicago study of 882 Fel-Pro employees found that 92 percent of the
respondents indicated that the company's benefits make it easier to balance their work and their
personal lives. Of those with children, 72 percent agreed that Fel-Pro's benefits have helped their
children do things they would not otherwise have been able to do (Added Benefits: The Link Between
Family Responsive Policies and Job Performance, University of Chicago, 1993).
Small businesses respond too
Almost 37 million Americans work for companies with fewer than 100 employees, according to the
U.S. Small Business Bureau. However, a company's small size does not have to limit its ability to
provide child care benefits to its employees. With proper planning and strong commitment on the
part of the employer, the goal of meeting employees' child care needs can be achieved. Moreover,
the benefits to small employers are much the same as those commonly reported by large
corporations: improved employee productivity and morale, an increased ability to attract and retain
skilled workers, and a better image in the community. Child care options that work especially well for
many small businesses include:
Child care subsidies.
3
child care and
early education
KEY FACTS ON CHILD CARE AND EARLY EDUCATION
How many children need child care in the U.S.?
12 million children under age 6 and 17 million children between the ages of 6
and 13 have both parents or their only parent in the work force.
(Source: composite figure of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, National Child Care Survey, 1990,
Hofferth, et al. Urban Institute Press, Washington, DC, 1990, and Child Care Action Campaign
calculations)
How many children have received child care and early education before they
enter kindergarten?
By the age of six, 84% of children have received supplemental care and
education.
(Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National
Household Education Survey, 1995)
What kind of child care do families use?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of the 9.937 million preschoolers (under
age 5) with employed mothers in 1993:
29.9%, or 2,972,000, were cared for in child care facilities (i.e., child care
centers, nursery schools, preschools).
25.3%, or 2,516,000, were cared for by relatives either in the child's home or
in the relative's home.
22.2%, or 2,201,000, were cared for by their own parents (mothers while
working at home or away from home: 6.2% or 616,000; fathers caring for
children at home: 16% or 1,585,000).
16.6%, or 1,645,000, were cared for in the home of a non-relative provider.
5.0%, or 492,000, were cared for in their own homes by non-relatives.
1.0%, or 111,000, were cared for in other arrangements.
(Source: Casper, Lynn M., Current Population Reports: Who's Minding Our Preschoolers?, U.S.
Census Bureau, March 1996)
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What is the average salary for child care providers?
Teachers, Assistant Teachers, and Teacher-Directors working in child care
centers earn an average of $6.89 per hour, $12,057.50 for 35 hours/week, 50
weeks/year.
(Source: Cost, Quality & Child Outcomes, University of Colorado at Denver, 1995)
What is the average turnover rate for child care providers?
The turnover rate for all providers in child care centers is 36% per year.
(Source: Cost, Quality & Child Outcomes, University of Colorado at Denver, 1995)
In contrast, average turnover in other professions is much lower. The turnover
rate for public school teachers is 5.6% per year.
(Source: National Child Care Staffing Study Revisited: Four Years in the Life of Center-Based
Child Care, 1993)
How much does American business lose each year due to child care problems?
U.S. employers lose $3 billion annually due to child care-related absences.
(Source: Reisman, Barbara, Child Care: The Bottom Line, p. 66, Child Care Action Campaign,
1988, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 1988)
How many U.S. businesses offer work-family benefits to their employees?
Approximately 6,000 employers nationwide offer work-family benefits to their
employees. Four percent of all employees are eligible for employer-assisted
child care benefits in the U.S.
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Benefits in the United States 1993-94, March 1995)
How many U.S. businesses provide on-site or near-site child care for employees
who pay for it?
Approximately 2,200 employers sponsor child care centers.
(Galinsky, E., The Changing Workforce, Families & Work Institute, 1993)
Public sector: The U.S. Government operates over 800 on- or near-site
centers in the U.S. and abroad. Six hundred forty-four of these are sponsored
by the U.S. Armed Forces.
(Source: Wohl, Faith, interview in "Uncle Sam Leads the Way on Worksite Child Care," Child
Care ActioNews, January-February 1996)
3
Rethinking the Brain
New Insights into Early Development
Families and Work Institute
New insights into brain development suggest that as we care for our youngest children, as
we institute policies or practices that affect their day-to-day experience, the stakes are very
high. But we can take comfort in the knowledge that there are many ways that we as
parents, as caregivers, as citizens, and as policy makers can raise healthy, happy smart
children. We can take heart in the knowledge that there are many things that we as a
nation can do, starting now, to brighten young children's future and ours.
Research shows that:
1
Human development hinges on the interplay between nature and nurture.
How humans develop and learn depends critically and continually on the interplay between nature
(an individual's genetic endowment) and nurture ( the nutrition, surroundings, care. stimulation,
and teaching that are provided or withheld).
The impact of environmental factors on the young child's brain development is dramatic and
specific, not merely influencing the general direction of development, but actually affecting how the
intricate circuitry of the human brain is "wired".
2
Early care has decisive and long-lasting effects on how people develop and learn, how
they cope with stress, and how they regulate their own emotions.
Babies thrive when they receive warm, responsive early care.
Warm and responsive care plays a vital role in healthy development.
Individuals' capacities to control their own emotional states appear to hinge on biological systems
shaped by their early experiences and attachments
A strong, secure attachment to a nurturing adult can have a protective biological function, helping a
growing child withstand the ordinary stresses of daily lives.
3
The human brain has a remarkable capacity to change, but timing is crucial.
The brain itself can be altered - or helped to compensate for problems - with appropriately timed,
intensive intervention. In the first decade of life, the brain's ability to change and compensate is
especially remarkable.
There are optimal periods of opportunity - "prime times" during which the brain is particularly
efficient at specific types of learning.
4
The brain's plasticity also means that there are times when negative experiences or the
absence of appropriate stimulation are more likely to have serious and sustained effects.
Early exposure to nicotine, alcohol, and drugs may have even more harmful and long lasting effects
on young children than was previously suspected.
Many of these risk factors are associated with or exacerbated by poverty. For children growing up
in poverty, economic deprivation affects their nutrition, access to medical care, and safety and
predictability of their physical environment, the level of family stress, and the quality and continuity
of their day-to-day care.
5
Evidence amassed by neuroscientists and child development experts over the last
decade point to the wisdom and efficacy of prevention and early intervention.
Well designed programs created to promote healthy cognitive, emotional, and social development
can improve the prospects - and the quality of life - of many children.
The efficacy of early intervention has been demonstrated and replicated in diverse communities
across the nation.
child care and
early education
NATIONAL OPINION POLL DATA ON CHILD CARE
The ability to find and afford good quality child care have been major concerns of American
families ever since mothers began to enter the permanent workforce in large numbers.
With the passage of welfare reform in 1996, the importance of child care in the public
dialogue has grown further still. Various national polls show that Americans continue to
care deeply about child care and they support child care assistance to working families and
families making the transition to work.
FINDING GOOD CARE IS CAUSE FOR CONCERN
Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statements:
It is very difficult for parents to find child care that is both affordable and of good quality.
(Push) And would that be strongly (agree/disagree) or just somewhat (agree/disagree)?
Strongly agree
Somewhat agree
Somewhat disagree
Strongly disagree
DK
56%
23%
9%
5%
7%
(R/S/M, Inc., conducted for the Child Care Action Campaign, 3/95)
How concerned are you, if at all, about not having adequate child care when you go to
work?
Very concerned
Somewhat
Not too
Not at all concernedD/A
30%
15%
11%
15%
29%
(Princeton Survey Research Associates, conducted for the Times Mirror, 10/25-30/95)
GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS HAVE A ROLE
How do you feel about the following statement: the government has a responsibility to help
improve the quality of family life by providing tax incentives to corporations to encourage
them to provide parental leave and day care centers to their employees?
Strongly agree
Somewhat agree
Somewhat disagree
Strongly disagree DK
41%
25%
12%
17%
5%
(Michaels Opinion Research, conducted for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. 8/9-26/95)
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child care and
early education
WELFARE REFORM: SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITY TO THE STATES
A huge gamble
On August 22, 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act into law. This new law not only ends the 60-year old guarantee of subsistence
income for poor families and their children, it also eliminates the child care assistance that had
been guaranteed to families who were moving from welfare into the work force, education, or
training. The federal government will now provide capped block grants¹ to the states, which have
a great deal of discretion as to how the funds are spent. Within six years, half the parents on
welfare in every state will have to be working in private sector jobs or in some type of "workfare"
program. This will create a huge need for child care, since two-thirds of all welfare recipients are
children under 13, many of them very young. Their parents cannot get or keep a job unless they
have reliable child care.
Painful choices: Which working families deserve child care help?
Each state can now determine how it will meet the child care and early education needs of
families making the transition from welfare to work. These decisions will shape the entire system
of subsidies for all low-income working families, including the millions of low-income working
families who are not on welfare but who need help bridging the gap between what they can
afford and what safe, reliable child care costs. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia
already have waiting lists thousands of names long of working families who are eligible for help
paying for child care, but for whom there isn't enough money (Children's Defense Fund, Child
care and welfare reform: More painful choices, 1995). In fact, waiting lists understate the need
for care; they include only the parents who know about the programs and have sought places for
their children in them. Some states simply close their waiting lists to new applicants when they
get too long.
States have an opportunity in next two years
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that child care funding in the Act is $1.4 billion short
of what will be necessary for states to maintain their current efforts and meet the needs of all the
families who must move from welfare to work. But the big crunch will not come until the third
year; during the first two years, many states will have more child care money than they had
before. The states thus have a window of opportunity they can use to put systems into place and
help all low-income working families pay for child care; to invest money to expand the supply and
1
A state's block grant allocation will be based on its FY 1994 or FY 1995 expenditures, whichever is higher, or the
average of its spending for the three years from FY 1992 to FY 1994.
Child Care Action Campaign
Communications Consortium Media Center
330 Seventh Avenue
7th Floor
1200 New York Avenue NW
Suite 300
New York. NY 10001-5010
Washington. DC. 20005-1754
(212) 239-0138 Fax (212) 268-6515
(202) 326-8700 Fax (202) 682-2154
According to The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care, care that is regulated
is usually higher quality care, and care that is provided by people who want to work with children
is more reliable and of higher quality. Parents need to have child care and early education
options so that informal care is not their only choice; that's why states must use their window of
opportunity to expand the quality and supply of child care and early education resources for all
working families.
States will have to decide whether to establish a minimum requirement for informal providers who
receive federal and state funds. Basic health and safety requirements would include having a
telephone, passing a criminal background check, having smoke detectors, and passing a health
screening. Child care resource and referral agencies are finding innovative ways to help parents
assess such care and can make information resources available to the friends, relatives, and
neighbors providing the informal care.
Welfare recipients as child care providers: A risky experiment
Many states have already tried to turn welfare recipients into child care providers. It has worked
in some places but not all, and takes a lot of time and investment in order to succeed. While
moving these parents into the work force as informal child care providers, working in their own
homes, would seem to take care of both a state's work participation requirement and the
increased demand for child care, a number of obstacles exist.
Recent reports like the Family Child Care Training Study (Families & Work Institute, 1995) have
demonstrated the critical relationship between provider training and the quality of care, and some
states and municipalities are encouraging former welfare recipients to become providers with no
training. Care by unregulated providers is usually less reliable, causing working parents to miss
work more frequently. Even child care providers who love their work still leave the field for lack of
decent wages and health benefits. In addition, states are considering cutting the reimbursement
rates for these providers, lessening their chances even more of earning a living wage as a child
care provider.
Welfare recipients who become child care providers need ongoing support in order to succeed,
as do other parents making the transition from welfare to work. Outreach, orientation, training,
and continued investment and support are the foundations of success in this risky undertaking.
Child care for infants
The new law does permit states to exempt welfare recipients with children under six from the
work requirements if they can't find affordable, available, and appropriate child care. Mothers of
infants under one year of age also may be exempted. However, the five-year lifetime limit on
welfare benefits will still apply to the mothers who are exempt. Even though they are not
required to work, the "exempt" period of months or years that parents spend taking care of their
children at home counts towards the five-year time limit.
Some states such as Michigan are requiring mothers with children as young as 12 weeks old to
go to work. Child care for infants is scarce and very often of very poor quality; 40 percent of
current infant care is of such low quality that it endangers the babies in care (Cost, Quality and
Child Outcomes, 1995). But insufficient child care and early education funding means little hope
exists for improving the quality and supply of available care.
3
NR
1
this visionary may he too ¡idealist,
but might interest
we of
The Future of Child Care
Deborah A. Phillips
Board on Children and Families
National Research Council/Institute of Medicine
Presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association,
Washington, D.C. August 21, 1995
2
When Sara invited me to be part of this panel, she asked me to describe my version
of the ideal child care system. She was offering me something that is notably rare in my life
these days--permission to ignore issues of economic and political feasibility. In reality, our
child care system is the product of highly politicized debates that occur in the narrow zone
between those who ask, "how little must we do/what is the minimum amount we can get
away with?" and those who ask, "how much can we do/what is the maximum amount that we
can persuade the decision-makers is necessary?" My own capacity for flights of fancy has
been somewhat grounded in recent months, so what I will offer you falls somewhere between
my greatest hopes and what I view as important changes that need to be made in the current
system to bring it into better alignment with the contemporary needs of children and families.
Over the past two years I have been engaged in a major effort, titled Quality 2000,
the purpose of which is to develop a blueprint for a high quality child care system, and to
figure out how to get there from here. In the process, my colleagues and I have looked at
how quality issues are dealt with in other countries--including third world countries; in other
sectors--including elder care, environmental protection, and higher education; and in other
professions--ranging from architects to hair dressers. I will be drawing upon this work in
my remarks today, as well as upon my own experience with child caree research and policy.
Child care policy in the United States has historically served many purposes and many
masters: employers, parents, architects of welfare reform, social workers in search of respite
care for families at risk of abusive behavior, and, all too often least of all, children. In
practice, child care falls right at the nexus of the requirements of family life and the
requirements of work. Because work demands tend to prevail, the child care that children
3
experience is often dictated not by considerations of what children need or even what parents
want, but by parents' wages (which determine what they can afford), work schedules, and
access to different types of child care providers. Consider, for example, that almost half of
working-poor parents work on rotating or changing schedules, which automatically rules out
center-based child care and most family day care homes as options that can even be
considered.
As a developmental psychologist (and a working mother of a preschooler), I view
child care fundamentally as a program for children. Knowing that the majority of children
enter care by 11 weeks of age, for close to 30 hours per week, typically experience three
different providers--in addition to their mother--in just the first year of life, and stay in child
care until school entry, it is time to acknowledge that child care is where children are getting
their basic health and nutritional needs met or not met, getting socialized and getting ready
for school. This, in turn, deeply affects the elements of child care that I view as essential to
a system that protects the health and well-being of children--for this is my driving goal.
A related prefatory remark concerns the great extent to which child care is context
bound. By this I mean that the haphazard architecture of the existing child care system is
driven by factors and pressures that surround this architecture--notably the structure of jobs
(with differing issues facing low-, moderate- and high-wage workers), pressures to keep
government expenditures on child care as low as possible, and available local community
resources on which child care providers can draw for such important inputs as staff, training,
funding, materials, and support services--the material and social capitol of child care.
Indeed, if I were really to take a flight of fancy, it would be in the direction of changing the
4
many workplace practices that impinge on family life and, of course, redirecting political will
towards greater concern for quality of life for children and their families.
Let me turn, now, to the main issue that I was asked to address: the ingredients of an
improved child care system. Given that I'm placing children at the center of my concerns, it
won't surprise you that quality and continuity of care figure prominently in my plan. And,
given my emphasis on contextualizing conceptions of quality in child care, it won't surprise
you that I am not going to focus narrowly on the immediate child care settings where
children reside (e.g., ratios, group size), but rather on other resources and settings in the
community--including the resource of child care consumers with real choices-that
influence how child care is organized and supported in our society. Quality, in other words,
becomes a community-level construct. Notions of community stewardship become central to
considerations of quality care. Along these lines, substantial thought has been given to the
essential functions that are necessary to supporting quality early care and education services
(Kagan, 1993). These include an equitable and coordinated financing structure, collaborative
planning and cross-system linkages, consumer and public engagement, a regulatory structure,
and systems for staff and leadership development that link expertise and compensation.
I want to place special emphasis on five elements that I consider to be essential to a
higher quality, more stable and dependable system of child care:
widespread, accessible consumer education about what to look for in early care
settings, including information about regulation and regulatory enforcement;
accessible, rigorous, and publicly recognized training opportunities and
credentials for those who work in early care and education settings.
5
adequate, coordinated, and equitable financing systems that expand, rather than
constrain, the choices available to families;
the presence, effectiveness, and inclusiveness of a community-wide planning
system for early care and education;
a local employer community that demonstrates active involvement in efforts to
improve the quality of early care and education services;
The Consumer Role
I hesitate to use the term "parent choice", because it has become so politicized, but
any workable child care system had to start from a basis of true parent choice--and choice as
informed consumers. This is decidedly not the case today.
Parents have the most immediate personal stake in any effort to improve child care
quality and offer the single most effective and credible constituency for the purpose of
advocating for this goal. In the context of a child care system that combines relatively lax
regulation, substantial variation in forms and qualities of care, and an entrepreneurial
provider base, parents are not only the consumers but also important watchdogs of child care
quality.
Absent parents' direct involvement, the consumer voice has been manipulated in
policy debates by those who have argued that parents' priorities are demonstrated by the
actual child care choices they make--what they use is what they want. Since there is no
uproar from parents, there is no need to improve quality. Indeed, numerous studies reveal
high levels of parent satisfaction with their child care arrangements (Hofferth et al., 1991),
lending additional weight to these assertions that "parent choice" is an operative and effective
6
mechanism for assuring quality care.
In fact, a growing literature on parental satisfaction has revealed that there is one
group that stands out from the pack as being quite dissatisfied: Employed, single mothers
with low incomes (e.g., under $15,000) confess to interviewers that they want to change
their arrangements, that they have had difficulties finding care that is "good for my child",
and that they have concerns that the care they are using is not safe. In a national survey
(Hofferth et al., 1991), 43% of this group of mothers indicated these types of concerns. I
probably do not need to call this groups' attention to the fact that this is precisely the group
of mothers who will be increasing their work effort in conjunction with welfare reform.
Parent choice becomes a reality when gaps between what parents want and what they
are using for child care are minimized. Exercising this choice is part of being a responsible
parent. Assuring parents the opportunity to exercise this choice is a fundamental right that,
like the ideology of equal treatment in the disability movement, could provide a compelling
basis for reframing debates about quality of care. To the extent that parents' reliance on
child care is compulsory, as is the case when use of child care is mandated by welfare
reform, this premise becomes particularly compelling.
The themes of parent choice and responsibility also afford the opportunity to establish
coalitions of support across the family leave and child care advocacy constituencies. If one
considers the decision about when to initiate reliance on non-maternal care as the first in a
series of child care decisions--and perhaps the most constrained of decisions given the lack of
a paid leave policy in the United States--then the debate about child care can be cast within
the context of a "continuum of child care choices". Indeed, a 12-month, paid family leave
7
policy that covers all employers is at the top of my list of the most important child care
policy actions that could be taken given the relatively poor quality and high cost of infant
child care in this country.
Notions of parent choice and responsibility may also offer a particularly effective
lever for enlisting parents as partners in quality improvement initiatives. It is important,
however, to be realistic about the opportunities and constraints that will characterize any
effort to increase the volume of the parent voice in efforts to improve quality. Unlike the
chronicity of the pressures and anxieties that face parents of a child with special needs, need
for quality early care and education is temporary--one can grin and bear it if need be,
knowing that this particular source of anxiety will come to an end. Time for advocacy is
also a precious commodity, and especially so for working parents of young children.
Perhaps the greatest barrier, however, derives from how little parents appear to
demand from their child care arrangements. Of necessity they must find arrangements; their
choices are constrained by place, time, and money; and their standards for quality are simple
and straightforward. To turn the acknowledged misgivings of some parents into an effective,
empowered consumer movement for quality, is among the biggest challenges facing the child
care field, but an essential point of departure for improved child care in the years ahead.
Training
There are not many things that the full range of individuals involved in child care can
agree upon, but one is that the absolute core of quality child care is the provider herself.
Some believe that as long as this provider looks like a mother, talks like a mother, and walks
like a mother, she will provide fabulous child care. This might be the case in many
8
instances. But, the research literature on child care has consistently found that trained
providers do provide better child care and produce better outcomes for children. Most
recently, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care reported that, for infants, in-home providers
(in child's own home, including relatives and family day care home providers) with
specialized training are significantly more likely to offer babies the nurturant, sensitive
caregiving that parents want. This supplements what we already know about the importance
of training and education in center-based care.
Training in the child care field faces a unique set of challenges. Providers who care
for babies undoubtedly need somewhat different training than those who care for school-age
children. Those who provide care in an institutional setting probably need somewhat
different skills than those who provide care in home settings. Moreover, because it is critical
to establish training opportunities that are appealing and feasible for a vast range of
providers, flexibility in when, how, and where training is offered is essential. The Child
Care Food Program, which provides food subsidies and training to regulated family day care
providers, is a highly effective model for training child care providers and actually serves as
incentive for this sector of the child care market to get registered and to participate in
provider networks, thereby reducing the isolation that can come with child care work.
At the same time, there is a core of knowledge that anyone who takes care of
someone else's child should be expected to have, focused on health and safety practices and
child development (e.g., CPR, recognition of common childhood illnesses, immunization
schedules, developmental milestones). People who take care of our hair and our pets have to
be certified as having acquired a basic core of knowledge before they can practice their
9
profession. I would not expect less of those who take care of our children. I would set in
motion all incentives imaginable (e.g., higher reimbursement rates, access to materials,
higher priorities listings with resource and referral agencies) to increase the pool of trained
child care providers from all types of settings.
I would also give serious consideration to the establishment of a system of individual
certification for entry into child care work, as is the case with all of the professions that we
analyzed for the Quality 2000 initiative with the sole exception of travel agents. There are
two major reasons that individuals in certain occupations must have licenses. One is to
protect the health, safety and welfare of the public, especially in situations where the public
is unlikely to judget the competence of a product or service for itself. The other factor is
independence. When an individula practices independently, rather than under the supervision
of others, greater assurance of competence is presumed necessary to protect the public. Both
sets of characteristics apply to child care.
Financing
Child care advocates are always asking for more money, of course. Interestingly,
they tend to ask for less money than do advocates for the elderly, the disabled, the oil
industry, and agribusiness. $100 million is cause for celebration in the child care
community.
I have a more modest wish: to establish a structure for public child care subsidies that
encourages, rather than discourages, continuity of care for children and that rewards work. I
would also like to see a much larger share of public dollars going towards quality
improvement initiatives.
10
Here's what happens now:
(1) The vast majority of federal child care subsidies are channeled to nonpoor families
through the nonrefundable Dependent Care Tax Credit ($2.5 billion versus $1.7 billion for
AFDC, TCC, At-risk, and CCDBG).
(2) As families move from non-working poverty to working poverty they actually lose public
benefits. Counting both direct subsidies and tax benefits for child care, 30% of the working
poor receive subsidies compared to 37% of the non-working poor (Hofferth, 1995).
(3) This perverse distribution of benefits may actually be getting worse, according to state
child care administrators, who are under immense pressures to channel their limited child
care dollars to participants in welfare-to-work programs in order meet federally mandated
caseloads. Because states don't begin to have enough funds to cover all eligible families
(working and non-working poor, as well as those at risk of being poor due to child care
expenses), about 1/3 of states are actually shifting dollars that have gone to working poor
families to serve the non-working poor.
(4) Not surprisingly, working poor families spend, on average 24% of their income on child
care, compared to the 6% that is typically spent by middle- and upper-income families.
(5) Because subsidies now operate as a system driven by parents' activities rather than
following children (source of funding and reimbursement rates change as families move from
nonworking poverty to low-income work and beyond), continuity of care is often disrupted if
states do not make special efforts to avoid breaks in support or drops in reimbursement rates
absent increased income.
(6) Of the $4.2 billion in federal child care dollars, $66 million (about 2%) was spent on
11
quality improvement initiatives.
Here's what I would propose:
(1) A child care entitlement, available on a sliding fee basis, to all families regardless of the
parents' employment status. This is not unlike the famous health care card that stays with
families as they gain, lose, and regain employment. Families should not face diminished
child care benefits at precisely the moment that they get a toe hold on economic self-
sufficiency. Nor should they lose benefits during temporary bouts of unemployment.
(2) The level of entitlement would be set using, as a guideline, a criterion that no family
should pay more than 15% of its family income on child care (the national average), up to
some agreed upon limit per child. The vast inequity in child care expenditures across
income groups must be addressed.
(3) The entitlement funds could be used in any form of child care to enhance parent choice,
but they would come with a brochure about choosing child care and the phone number of a
local child care resource and referral agency.
(4) If the family uses a trained child care provider (or a licensed provider, or a provider
who takes other designated steps to offer high-quality care), the provider would get an
additional supplement to support the higher costs of higher quality care.
(5) In addition, as is done for Head Start and in the military child care budget, 25% of
current federal expenditures on child care (about $1 billion) would go into a quality
improvement pool to be distributed by states and localities. At a minimum, 15% of these
funds must go towards provider salaries to stem the tide of turnover that exposes very young
children to the repeated loss of trusted adult caregivers.
12
Community Stewardship
In addition to expanding the unit of analysis that is encompassed by efforts to improve
the quality of child care, consideration of the community context of child care highlights the
importance of considering quality not only as a product that can somehow be achieved once
and for all, but rather as a process that is on-going. Inclusive planning processes, outreach
efforts, public education initiatives, regulatory enforcement, and the sustained involvement of
community employers constitute procedural dimensions of quality that have been
overshadowed by research and policy efforts that focus on products--the provisions of
regulations, levels of funding, numbers of employer-sponsored programs, and the substance
of parents' definitions of quality.
The comparative research (Bush & Phillips, 1994) that I did in conjunction with
Quality 2000 revealed that other countries place much greater emphasis on processes of
consensus-building as integral to advancing a high-quality early care and education system.
New Zealand, for example, has initiated a "chartering system" whereby local communities
apply for a charter to start a child care system. The programs that are supported within the
local system must abide by national standards on ratios, group size, and caregiver training.
But, the localities have freedom to construct a broader system that meets their unique needs.
Determining these needs involves a consensus-building process among parents, policymakers,
and professionals as an essential step towards submitting a charter for approval.
As Alan Pence has noted based on his research with the First Nation's community in
Canada, "given lack of agreement on 'quality', perhaps the process of involvement should
take precedent over the product" (1992, p. 5). In an environment where child care is
13
explicitly discussed from several vantage points, although disagreement is inevitable, the
process raises the profile of child care, heightens awareness of various viewpoints, and
distills goals and priorities.
Beyond processes designed to enlist community stewardship, the community
infrastructure for child care appears to make an appreciable difference in the delivery of
accessible, high-quality, dependable child care to families. Shelby Miller recently
summarized a broad array of evaluations of efforts to improve the quality of family day care,
in particular. She concludes: "the programs that worked well shared certain characteristics:
the provision of financial and material resources to allow providers to offer high-quality care;
local staff who are familiar and trustworthy and who could reach and engage low-income
providers; cooperative efforts between child care experts and community representatives; and
sufficient time for change to occur and relationships to be established" (Miller, 1994). The
role of intermediary organizations, such as a resource and referral agency, a community
development organization, or a child care association, was critical. The nature of this
organization varied across communities, as one would expect and desire, but their role as a
community hub--linking otherwise isolated providers, providing training and technical
assistance, connecting child care to other resources such as health providers and family
support programs, and enlisting a broad range of community members in the development of
a child care system that serves the diverse needs of the community--was instrumental in
successful efforts to improve child care. The synergy of collective involvement was a very
significant factor. Imagine the day when every community in the United States has such a
hub, equivalent to the local library, where families and child care providers congregate, that
14
provides a valued resource, and that is a source of pride to the community. We have a
growing number of models from which to learn--the challenge is one of taking these small,
highly localized initiatives to scale. In the process, the necessary structures and true costs
of maintaining quality child care must be acknowledged.
Quality as Continuity
I want to close with a few remarks about continuity of care as a guide for public
policy in the child care field. Continuity of care is among the most salient guiding themes in
developmental psychology (Rutter, 1979; Thompson & Grusec, 1970; Wachs & Gruen, 1982).
The literature on continuity has promoted understanding of the continual and progressive
accommodation of the child to the environment that successful development entails. In
particular, this literature has directed attention to environmental transitions as
developmentally significant events. Here the issue is one of the degree of articulation across
settings, and of the predictability and planfulness that characterizes transitions from one
setting to another.
Even a cursory examination of the child care field makes it abundantly evident that
concern for continuity of care has influenced neither policy nor practice. Not only is quality
typically assessed at a single point in time, whether by researchers, licensing inspectors, or
accreditation mechanisms, but numerous obstacles exist to assuring young children well
articulated and predictable patterns of care over the first several years of life. At the policy
level, child care services and benefits have evolved over time in piecemeal fashion, with new
programs layered onto pre-existing programs with little regard for coordination. As a
consequence, families confront a child care system that is characterized by gaps in coverage,
15
splintered jurisdiction, and arcane funding structures.
The extent to which continuity is undermined by these systemic features of care has
recently been documented in a study of state and local efforts to coordinate pre-existing child
care programs with the new federal child care programs that were enacted in the early 1990s
(Ross & Kerachsky, 1993). Significant discontinuities were found between welfare-based
programs (AFDC child Care and Transitional Child Care) and other child care programs
targeted on low-income populations (Child Care and Development Block Grant, At Risk
Care). Parents leaving the AFDC or Transitional programs are not necessarily picked up by
other subsidies. Loss of child care subsidies can force unanticipated changes in arrangements
as a family's eligibility or capacity to pay for a particular program is suddenly lost. It can
also disrupt parents' ability to prepare for and sustain employment (see Phillips & Bridgman,
1995).
At the program level, salaries that only minimally reward higher levels of
professional preparation and the absence of an effective infrastructure of support for child
care fuel discontinuity in the form of staff turnover and program closings. These events are
highly disruptive to families and expose children to an unpredictable array of caregivers.
Recent evidence has revealed that, even during the first year of life, children in care typically
experience over two changes in their child care arrangements (Hofferth, et al., 1991; Study of
Early Child Care, 1995). It is not surprising that, in a recent study, staff continuity (low
turnover) was the strongest predictor of mother's satisfaction with child care (Shinn, Phillips,
Howes, Galinsky & Whitebook, 1992).
In this context, it is critical that notions of developmental continuity infuse our efforts
16
to assess and improve the quality of our existing child care system. Increasingly, we are
inquiring about the long-term consequences of children's early care settings, particularly for
their school readiness and social adjustment. Answers to these questions require that stability
and change in the contexts for development be assessed alongside patterns of stability and
change in children's behavior (Caspi, 1993).
Indicators of continuity of care include, (a) staff turnover rates, (b) rates of program
(home and center) closings, as distinct from overall assessments of supply which may
camouflage the discontinuity that characterizes a system when equal numbers of programs
close and open, (c) parent reports of patterns of change in their child's care arrangements--
those that were sought and those that were unanticipated--and of reliance on multiple
arrangements simultaneously, (d) and analyses of notches in eligibility criteria for subsidies
and programs as family income rises, as well as of other exogenous factors that militate
against families' efforts to sustain continuous care arrangements for their children.
Many of the suggestions I have made above would improve continity of care:
(1)
Family leave during the first year of life will shelter some families from the very
chaotic, poorly developed infant child care system (non-system) in this country.
(2)
Trained child care providers who are part of a visible system of care and connected to
other providers tend to stay in the field longer than do untrained, isolated providers.
(3)
The child care entitlement, if adequately funded, would eliminate discontinuities in
care that are now caused by the piecemeal structure and low levels of public funding for
child care.
(4)
A firm community infrastructure for child care, with strong intermediary structures
17
and high levels of consumer involvement, would presumably lend far greater coherence to
local child care markets, making the notion of a continuum of care more a reality for young
children.
In closing, I want to confess that I was tempted to make this a very brief talk, but
answering Sara's question about "whither child care" with a single wish--that every child
could have the child care that my own son has experienced at the Senate child care center:
remarkably proficient and dedicated teachers who have knowledge of early development,
high levels of parent involvement (it is a parent cooperative, run by a parent board), free
developmental screening, and ample age-appropriate learning materials. But, it costs $7,500
per year. Much more than his public kindergarten education will cost this coming year. The
difference is that society has agreed to support the lion's share of the costs of education; but
to keep the burden of child care costs on the shoulders of parents. So, I'm back to economic
and political feasibility. I would like to think that what is good enough for the Senators and
their staff is good enough for the rest of the nation's families.
18
References
Bush, J., and D. Phillips (1994). Expanding the lens on child care: International approaches
to defining quality. Working paper for Quality 2000: Advancing early care and
education. New Haven, Yale University.
Hofferth, S.L. (1995). Caring for childre at the poverty line. Children and Youth Services
Review, 17, 1-31.
Hofferth, S.L., A. Brayfield, S. Deich, and P. Holcomb (1991). National Child CAre
Survey, 1990. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute.
Kagan, S.L. (1993) (Editor). The essential functions of the early care and education system:
Rationale and definition. Working paper for Quality 2000: Advancing early care
and education. New Haven, Yale University.
Phillips, D. and A. Bridgman (Eds.) (1995). New findings on children, families and
economic self-sufficiency: Summary of a research briefing. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press.
Ross, C. and S. Kerachsky (1995). Strategies for program integration. In D.J. Besharov,
ed., Enhancing Early Childhood Programs: Burdens and Opportunities. Washington,
D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Miller, S.H. (1994). Approaches for improving the quality of family child care. Lessons
learned from a decade of demonstration and systemic changes. Working paper for
Quality 2000: Advancing early care and education. New Haven: Yale University.
SE THENT
Department of Defense
Child Development Program
INSURED
Lessons Learned
Background: Military child care programs have improved dramatically over the last ten years and have
attained a well-deserved reputation for being on the cutting edge of child care in America. During this
time, DoD management and policy makers have learned a lot about what makes a difference in the day to
day lives of children. The military's holistic and systemic approach to meeting the needs of military
families especially those with very young children stands out as a model for state and local agencies.
DoD is committed to providing quality, affordable options for families. Five factors have contributed to
the military success story.
First among five elements is a recognition that quality costs more than most parents can afford to
pay. The DoD is committed to a prescribed level of funding for all Child Development Programs. In
military centers, there is a dollar for dollar match of appropriated funds to parent fees. In family
child care programs we provide indirect financial support through equipment lending libraries, low or
no cost insurance options and training. In many instances we provide direct cash subsidies as
incentives for family child care providers to care for infants. Funds allow both centers and homes to
provide stimulating environments that are staffed with trained personnel and appropriately equipped.
The second element of quality is strict oversight of all programs, and adherence to standards. There
are comprehensive unannounced inspections for all facilities and programs with a mandatory
correction of deficiencies within 90 days. Non-compliance can, and has, resulted in closure. As a
result, facilities and programs are in good repair, and there is high quality, institutional grade
equipment that contributes to the cognitive development of children.
The third and perhaps most critical element directly linked to program quality is the wage and
benefits package that contribute to low staff turnover. Military caregiver wages and benefits average
approximately $10 per hour compared to the minimum wages in the civilian community. While most
civilian child care employers offer few or no benefits to direct care staff, military staff have a full
range of benefits. Because of low turnover children have the continuity of care so vital to their
healthy development.
Fourth and related directly to quality, is training. Training is tied to wages, and an "up-or-out"
personnel policy requiring the completion of training programs. All training is competency based
and caregivers not performing appropriately are not retained.
Finally, the commitment for all military child development centers to meet national accreditation
standards has provided an outside evaluation previously missing. The combination of the DoD
certification and the national accreditation provides a comprehensive review of all center programs.
By sharing the "the military experience" DoD can provide unique expertise to state and local
governments seeking to improve the quality of child care. As a result parents and children not associated
with the Military can benefit from these systems and "lessons learned". As noted in the 1992
Congressional Record "the precedent was set for the military to be the national agent of change in child
care, as it has been in areas such as integration and drug interdiction."
September 1997
Department of Defense
Child Care System
The Department of Defense (DoD) Child Care System is the largest employer sponsored
program in the country serving over 200,00 children (ages birth -12) daily. It includes child
development centers, family child care homes, school-age care programs, and information and
referral services. Through these delivery systems DoD offers full-day, part-day, and hourly child
care, part-day preschools, before and after school programs for school-age children, and extended
hour care which includes nights, weekends, and care for shift workers. There are approximately
1.29 million children (ages birth to 12) of active-duty personnel. Based on this number and a
projected military force of 1.4 million, DoD needs 297,635 spaces. DoD's goal is to provide at
least one affordable child care option for every member who needs it. As of 1996, there were
166,322 spaces.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTERS at over 300 locations provide care for children 6
weeks to 12 years of age. Most child care facilities operate between the hours of 6:00 a.m.
and 6:30 p.m., Monday - Friday. Over the past 15 years the Services have tested 24-hour care
in centers. The results repeatedly show low usage and exorbitant costs. Because the mission
can require unusual hours including shift work, nights, and weekends, DoD has developed an
extensive network of Family Child Care Homes to provide this care.
FAMILY CHILD CARE (FCC) programs consist of in-home care provided by certified
providers living in government-owned or -leased housing. There are 9,793 licensed and
trained FCC providers. Families rely upon FCC to provide night, weekend, and unusual
hours care. To ensure comparable quality of care, FCC programs are inspected in the same
manner as the center programs. All providers have completed background checks, and
receive a comparable amount of training as those working in the centers.
SCHOOL-AGE CARE PROGRAMS (SAC) are offered for children (ages 6 to 12 years)
before and after school, during holidays, and summer vacations. This need is the last to be
addressed and these programs are experiencing growing pains. A 1995 SecDef budget
initiative and the subsequent QoL initiative funded over 20,000 new SAC spaces. DoD
policies encourage use of youth centers and other suitable facilities for SAC rather than take
child development center space. The DODI 6060.3, "School-Age Care Program Instruction,"
December 19, 1996 was published February 1997.
RESOURCE AND REFERRAL (R&R) PROGRAMS for on-base programs are available
at most military bases. Additionally, many offer referrals to child care in the local
community. Since it is impossible to meet 100% of the need on the installation, R&R
services are critical to our ability to refer families to quality child care off the base when care
is unavailable on base.
September 1997
1
OF
Department of Defense
STATE
Funding for Military Child Development Program
BACKGROUND: Military Child Development Program has three major components: Child
Development Centers (CDC), Family Child Care (FCC) homes and School-age Care (SAC) programs.
Through this system, the Military Services provide over 166,000 child care spaces. Although each
program component receives appropriated funds budgeted annually at the installation level, the amount and
type of support varies depending on the component. While all parents pay for child care, the fees depend
on the setting.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER PROGRAMS:
The Military Child Care Act of 1989 established a policy which requires DoD to ensure appropriated
funds available to centers are at least equal to the amount raised in parent fees.
Parents fees for child care are based on total family income not the age of the child. Fees paid by
parents to CDC's and SAC programs are called "non-appropriated funds" and are used to pay the
wages of those personnel (child caregivers) who care directly for children.
All other expenses including some caregiver wages are paid by appropriated funds. These funds go
directly to the program to support training, administration, equipment and supplies and food service.
Maintenance and utilities are paid with appropriated funds. Construction of new CDC's are paid from
military construction funds - also appropriated funds.
Child care fee ranges are set annually by the Secretary of Defense's office for all military CDC's.
Installations are given five income categories and corresponding fee ranges from which to determine
their local fees. The average weekly fee paid for child care in a military center in 1996 was $65. Fees
range from a low end of $37 to a high of $98 per week for 1997-98.
Family Child Care: FCC providers reside in government housing on Federal property. All costs of
administration, oversight and training of FCC providers are paid with appropriated funds. These functions
are viewed as an appropriated fund expense because they are conducted in the best interest of the
government. In addition, appropriated funds are used to provide on an "on loan" basis certain materials,
supplies and safety equipment through lending libraries. Collectively, these are considered "indirect"
support.
FCC providers are viewed as private contractors and as such, negotiate all fees directly with the parent
except when the providers are receiving direct cash subsidies from the government. The Military Child
Care Act of 1989 authorized but did not mandate the use of appropriated funds to directly subsidize FCC
providers. The goal was to provide assistance to providers so that care provided is at a cost comparable to
military centers. The use of this subsidy authority varies widely from base to base.
School-age Care: SAC programs are funded similar to the CDC's with a mix of parent fees and
appropriated funds. A change in DoD policy now requires graduated fees based on total family income.
This new policy will go into effect in 1998.
Total Appropriated Fund Budget for all Child Care Programs for Fiscal Year 1997 is 273M.
September 1997
Department of Defense
Child Development Center Fee Policy
BACKGROUND:
The Military Child Care Act of 1989 required DoD to prescribe uniform fees for Military
Child Development Centers. Fees must be based on total family income and includes basic
subsistence and quarters allowances. The policy applies to children who regularly attend.
The Act also required a dollar for dollar match of appropriated funds to parent fees collected.
The first DoD fee policy was issued in 1990 and consisted of four income categories. Today,
there are five income categories with corresponding fee ranges. The fee ranges for 1998 are:
Category
Family Income
Weekly Fee Per Child
High Cost Range
(optional)
I
$0 - 23,000
$37 50
$42 52
II
$23,001 - 34,000
$47 60
$52 64
III
$34,001 - 44,000
$57 72
$63 77
IV
$44,001 - 55,000
$70 82
$76 88
V
$55,000 +
$83 94
$87 98
For the past two years, fee increases have been tied to the inflation rate submitted in the
President's budget.
Commanders set their installation fees within these ranges. Commanders have the authority
to offer a 20 percent fee discount for each additional child from the same family.
Commanders may also grant hardship waivers for families in financial need.
Last year, the average DoD weekly fee was $65. This fee included up to 11 hours of care and
United States Department of Agriculture approved meals (breakfast, lunch and two snacks).
Nationally, the average weekly fee for comparable center care ranges from $100 for infant
care to $85 for pre-school age care. ("Cost, Quality and Child Care Outcomes in Child Care
Centers Study," University of Colorado at Denver, CO June 1995).
September 1997
THEN
Department of Defense
Military Child Development Program
National Accreditation
BACKGROUND: The Military Child Care Act (MCCA) of 1989 required DoD to conduct a
program to require 50 military child development centers meet standards necessary for
accreditation by an appropriate national early childhood program accrediting body and achieve
accreditation. The 50 accredited centers were to serve as "demonstration programs" from which
other non-accredited centers could learn about best practices. DoD identified the standards
established by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs as the accrediting standards
DoD centers would meet. These standards were developed in 1985 and are recognized nationally
as standards of excellence in programs for young children. By the end of 1992, 55 DoD child
development centers were accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC).
The Rand Corporation conducted a study on accreditation for DoD, entitled "Examining
the Effects Accreditation on Military Child Development Operation and Outcomes," published
1994. The study affirmed that accreditation improved the quality of care and child outcomes.
Increased parent communication and staff morale were also cited as benefits of accreditation.
CURRENT STATUS: The 1996 Defense Authorization Act which codified the Military Child
Care Act of 1989, required all eligible military centers meet standards necessary for
accreditation. Currently over 75 percent of all eligible military centers have achieved
accreditation from NAEYC as compared to the national average of 5 percent.
ACCREDITATION RATE BY MILITARY SERVICE:
Service
Eligible Centers
Accredited Centers
Percent Accredited
Air Force
145
145
100%
Army
154
126
82%
Navy
135
68
42%
Marine Corps
31
14
45%
DoD TOTAL
466
353
76%
The remaining 113 centers are in the required self-study process, waiting for a validation visit or
the results of their validation visit from NAEYC.
September 1997
FINE
Prevention of Child Abuse
In Military Child Care Programs
SEAL
BACKGROUND: Within DoD the Family Advocacy Program (FAP) has the primary responsibility for
addressing child physical and child sexual abuse and neglect. The goal is to prevent abuse whenever
possible, recognize where it exists, and provide treatment as appropriate. There is FAP at each
installation that provides training and resources to Child Development Program staff, family child care
(FCC) providers and families.
A series of highly publicized child sexual abuse cases in military child development centers during the
mid - 80's resulted in Congressional hearings during the summer of 1989. As a result of these hearings
DoD implemented changes in child development program child abuse prevention and oversight.
STATUS: DoD takes allegations of child abuse seriously. Depending upon the jurisdiction (federal or
state) all child abuse allegations are thoroughly investigated by military and/or civilian authorities. DoD
policy establishes procedures for background checks, management and training practices which include:
Background Check Requirements:
Background checks meet the requirements of 1990 Crime Control Act and are conducted prior to
hire; FBI fingerprint check; state criminal history repository check, installation record checks; DoD
central registry of Child and Spouse Abuse check.
All FCC providers and family members have background clearances.
Management Practices:
Facilities are designed for maximum supervision, e.g., vision panels in all classrooms, video
monitoring equipment, alarms on exterior doors.
All visitors must sign in- and out-, wear visitor badges and are escorted while in the facility.
Strict enforcement of adult:child ratios which ensures children are supervised at all times.
Observations of staff working with children.
Monthly unannounced visits to family child care homes;
Strict parent sign in-and out procedures.
An open door policy for all parents.
A DoD-wide 1-800 Child Abuse and Safety Violation Hotline - all allegations are thoroughly
investigate in a timely and confidential manner.
Training:
Mandatory annual training for staff and FCC providers in child abuse identification, reporting and
prevention procedures, guidance, and how to appropriately touch a child.
September, 1997