Expanding the Vision for "Quality Improvement" in Home-Based Childcare Networks

• In Event: Equity at the Center: The Imperative to Reconceptualize Early Care and Education "Quality"

Abstract

Home-based child care networks (“networks”) are an increasingly popular strategy for states and cities wishing to enhance the quality of home-based child care (HBCC) programs, including both regulated family child care and license-exempt family, friend, and neighbor care (Bromer & Porter, 2017; Bromer & Porter, 2019; Office of Child Care, 2021). Networks typically offer a menu of quality improvement supports tailored for HBCC professionals at all career stages, such as visits to provider homes, coaching, training, and peer support. They may be independently operated entities or be affiliated with an early childhood organization, such as a Child Care Resource and Referral agency or a child care center-based preschool program that has specialists on staff who work with affiliated HBCC professionals in the community. Networks may also receive funding from and offer supports around early childhood policies and systems such as QRIS, Early Head Start or Head Start, or a Public PreK Initiative (Bromer & Porter, 2019). Networks vary in how they approach their work with HBCC professionals with some performing an enforcement role while others seek to support and meet the needs of HBCC professionals (Authors, forthcoming).

Increasingly, networks are playing a larger role in supporting HBCC providers in ways that extend beyond the typical visions of “quality improvement.” For example, the implementation of shared services supports (e.g., back office assistance, business and financial support, substitute pools, and even benefits negotiations) and staff that support access to comprehensive services for children and families (e.g., early interventionists, social workers, family engagement specialists; Bromer et al., 2020; Porter & Bromer, 2020) reflect a more holistic view of promoting well-being for children, families, and HBCC professionals. Networks are also ideally positioned to act as bridges between policy and HBCC practice, to create space for HBCC professionals’ voices in policy feedback loops, and to promote grassroots leadership among professionals and especially professionals of color (Authors, forthcoming). Importantly, high-quality networks are those that meet HBCC professionals where they are and help them achieve their own goals for children, families, communities, and themselves.

In this roundtable, we will discuss frameworks and state examples for how networks may be leveraged to help transform visions of quality improvement in early care and education systems, shifting from a focus on ethnocentric, normative understandings of quality and compliance to one that strives for equity, sustainability, and well-being of HBCC professionals and those they care for.

Author

• Samantha Melvin, Erikson Institute
  Presenting Author