The Experiences of Family Child Care Homes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Exploring the Experiences and Impacts of COVID-19 on Parents, Educators, and Programs for Young Children

Abstract

Introduction
Early care and education (ECE) in the United States operates as a mixed-delivery, market-based system where child care comes in both center- and home-based settings. Going into the COVID-19 pandemic, public funding was distributed unevenly across program types; in particular, family child care (FCC) programs, which are home-based and often licensed, tended to rely on portable vouchers or no public funding at all.

The sudden shock of the pandemic revealed the inequity of this funding structure--and further exacerbated the disparities across program types. As families reeled from job and child care losses, the blowback on FCC programs was particularly severe. It is important to understand the unique strengths and struggles faced by these home-based providers. Our paper explores the upheaval from early 2020 to the present: how have family child care (FCC) programs fared in terms of operations and staffing?

Methods
We use data from representative samples of approximately 2,000 family child care programs in California collected from October through December 2020. In this survey, we gathered data on the pre-pandemic time period as well as the conditions at the time of the survey. Additionally, we plan to resurvey providers in Winter 2022-2023 to identify longitudinal implications. Our paper will explore a range of data across three time periods: pre-pandemic (February 2020), early pandemic (December 2020), and the present (Winter 2022-2023). Topics will include:
General program operations
Approaches to staffing
Wage levels and benefits of teaching staff
Changes in staffing during the pandemic
Turnover of assistants

Results
Initial analysis reveals that family child care (FCC) providers, who work in their own homes, faced the greatest economic challenges and were pushed further into precarity. In terms of staffing, FCCs experienced about a 34 percent decline in the number of assistants. Overall,
there were greater reductions in paid assistants than unpaid assistants (41 percent and 35
percent, respectively). Regardless of FCC size, about one quarter of programs reported having more unpaid staff in Fall 2020 than before the pandemic. Given the economic hardship during the pandemic, laying off paid assistants may have been an inevitable choice for these providers. Perhaps some of these slots were replaced by unpaid assistants.

Implications
Our findings are in line with the mounting evidence regarding the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on more vulnerable socioeconomic groups and small businesses owned by women and people of color (Fairlie, 2020; Furceri et al., 2021; Perry et al., 2021). We must turn a critical eye to why FCC programs were more likely to remain open, yet faced greater economic precarity, during this global health emergency and what state and federal support these providers require during the current health emergency and beyond.

Authors

• Anna Powell, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Yoonjeon Kim, University of California - Berkeley

• Elena Montoya

• Wanzi Muruvi