The New York I-T CHILD Project: Strengthening Quality of Caregiving in Home-Based Child Care Programs

• In Event: Equity Issues in Measurement of Home-Based Child Care Quality

Abstract

In poverty-stricken communities within New York City (NYC) (e.g., Hunts Point, Mott Haven, and Brownsville), 36%-51% of child care options are licensed family child care arrangements (http://data.cccnewyork.org/). Compounded by the deleterious effects of poverty on child development, we are also in a period of extreme trauma brought about by a dual pandemic—a health pandemic brought about by COVID, and a social pandemic brought about by rising racial biases and violence. Our country needs to arm HBCC providers with strategies to cope with unprecedented levels of stress and burnout that are driving many of these providers out of the workforce (Herr Research Center, Erikson Institute, 2020; Martin et al., 2021).
The Climate of Healthy Interactions for Learning and Development (CHILD) Tool is a research-based, evidence-informed framework designed to assess (and improve) the quality of social and emotional interactions. The CHILD’s utility is demonstrated in its application in early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) where licensed mental health consultants conduct site visits to address provider concerns around child behaviors, and to provide support around teaching practices/interactions with children in their care. Informed by data obtained from a previous RCT of CHILD-informed ECMHC in Ohio (Reyes & Gilliam, 2021), we pilot-tested the CHILD-HBCC version in a small RCT of CHILD-informed ECMHC in NYC, serving licensed HBCC programs with infants and toddlers (the I-T CHILD Project).
Thirty-eight HBCC providers participated in the RCT (>60% in the Bronx and Brooklyn; 63.2% identified as being Hispanic/Latine; 50% preferred communication in Spanish; ~60% have family incomes <$50K). Programs served and average of 8.62(SD=3.82) children, 44.23% of whom received child care funding exclusively from local, state, or federal funds.
We hypothesized that compared to HBCC providers in the waitlist-control condition, HBCC providers assigned to the treatment condition would demonstrate: (a) greater self-perceived control over how their own care-providing behaviors impact child development (measured by the Framing Challenging Behaviors Questionnaire; Reyes & Gilliam, 2021); (b) lower job stress (measured by the Job Stress Inventory; Curbow et al., 2000); (c) greater amount of language exchanges (e.g., number of words and verbal exchanges) with the children in their care (measured by LENA, a commonly used research technology that collects and analyzes verbal exchanges between adults and young children); (d) higher scores on the CHILD-HBCC.
Moreover, we hypothesized that compared to waitlist-control children, treatment children would demonstrate: (a) lower levels of risk for being expelled from the child care program due to challenging behaviors (measure by the Infant-Toddler Risk of Expulsion assessment, an age adaptation of a similar validated measure completed by the child care provider); and higher scores on the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment for Infants and Toddlers (Powell et al., 2007). Data will be analyzed using OLS regressions (for provider/classroom outcomes) or HLM (for child outcomes, accounting for nesting within providers). Findings will be discussed within the much larger architecture of early child care and education involving policymakers, state and local agencies, and grassroots programs.

Authors

• Chin R Reyes, Yale School of Medicine
  Presenting Author

• Brooke M Rumper, Yale University

• Katherine Long, Yale University