1-215 - No One Right Way: Understanding Heterogeneity among Providers and Quality Improvement in Home-Based Child Care

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children suffer when the adults who care for them do not have the capacity to buffer them from potential stressors (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2004). Despite awareness about the complexity of the ecologies of children’s development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Rogoff, 2003; Weisner, 2002), developmental science research too often ignores important variability when examining the adults who provide child care. The papers in this symposium each “zoom in” on home-based child care providers, or people who provide non-parental child care in a home. They are a relatively understudied part of child care systems. Paper 1 presents profiles of home-based care providers who were “unlisted” in the National Survey of Early Care and Education and finds that there is wide variation in the instructional practices in the nearly one million unlisted providers who receive payment. Paper 2 presents qualitative “portraits” of licensed providers and suggests that providers who identified more strongly with child care work were more engaged in quality improvement particularly when they had either relatively less complex circumstances or had effective strategies for sustaining their child care business. Paper 3 presents an analysis of the components of one state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System designed specifically for licensed family child care providers and how the system differentially impacted providers’ success in the system. Taken together, these papers provide important information about the many different ways that home-based child care providers care for children and the supports that can improve the quality of care children receive.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Holli Tonyan, CSUN

Individual Presentations

• Profiles of Unlisted Home-Based Child Care Providers - Presenting Author: Alison Hooper, University of Alabama; Non-Presenting Author: Gerilyn Slicker, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Rena Hallam, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Danielle Riser, University of Delaware

• Maximizing Sustainability: Conditions Impacting How Family Child Care Providers Engage in Quality Improvement Initiatives - Presenting Author: Holli Tonyan, CSUN; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah Malecki, California State University, Northridge; Non-Presenting Author: Kirsten Marianne Reyna, California State University, Northridge

• Engaging Licensed Family Child Care Providers in QRIS: What Works? - Presenting Author: Rena Hallam, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Alison Hooper, University of Alabama; Non-Presenting Author: Martha Buell, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Myae Han, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Melissa Ziegler, University of Delaware