BUILD Initiative Blog | Supporting Family Child Care in the Time
Strong Foundations For Our Youngest Children

BUILDing Strong Foundations

BUILD Initiative Blog

rss

 

Supporting Family Child Care in the Time of COVID-19

More children, including infants and toddlers, are cared for in home-based settings than in centers. These include Family Child Care and Family, Friend, and Neighbor options. Home-based settings offer many advantages for families such as cultural and linguistic affinity, non-standard work hour availability, care for mixed-age/sibling groups, and a home-like environment. In addition, home-based child care meets the needs of many low-income families who often work shift, hourly, or “gig” economy jobs.

Many family, friend and neighbor caregivers see themselves as just taking care of their grandchildren or helping out their neighbors. Yet these children need to be prepared to enter school with the same knowledge and set of skills as their peers with more formal child care experiences. 

States participating in the BUILD Initiative are expanding access to learning opportunities for family, friend and neighbor caregivers in ways that are inclusive and responsive to the strengths and needs of diverse families. The approaches used are more voluntary and supplementary than the regulatory, directive programs developed for formal caregiving.

By supporting family, friend and neighbor caregivers, BUILD state leaders increase children’s language and literacy skills, social skills, health, and social-emotional development. The BUILD Initiative believes this effort needs to continue.

Right now, however, after years of a decline in the number of home-based child care providers, the ones that remain have to choose between closing their doors and risking financial ruin or keeping them open for essential workers at the risk of their and their family’s health. Several organizations have produced tools for supporting family child care providers in this unprecedented time.

Expanding on BUILD’s earlier library of resources for supporting quality family child care, we have listed new ones below. We will share additional resources as they become available on the BUILD Family Child Care page. 

ALLIANCE FOR EARLY SUCCESS

ALL OUR KIN

HUNT

 HOME GROWN

 NAEYC

 NATIONAL WOMEN’S LAW CENTER

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR FAMILY CHILD CARE

OPPORTUNITIES EXCHANGE

SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

STATE SPECIFIC INFORMATION

California

Illinois

  • Recent guidance is specific and clear about inclusion of licensed and license-exempt home-based child care

Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan

Washington

  • Child Care Aware of Washington and Child Care Resources: Recommendations for State Policy inclusive of needs of home-based child care and the families that choose these providers

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

Alliance for Early Success 

Tom Copeland

Related Posts


  • NCIT State Spotlight: Ohio

    Ready, Set, Soar Ohio is a diverse statewide coalition of early childhood, education, health, advocacy, philanthropy, and business organizations, community leaders, policymakers, and families. This coalition is committed to ensuring that more pregnant women, infants, toddlers, and their families have access to the support they need to be ready, set, and soar to their full potential.

  • Attention to State Child Care Subsidy Systems Essential to Building the Supply of High-Quality Child Care and Supporting Families with Infants and Toddlers

    Advocates striving to ensure that all families—especially low-income families—have access to high-quality child care for their infants and toddlers should focus on strengthening their state’s core child care assistance system. It is a key determinant of both the quality of care that low-income children receive and their families’ economic stability. States now have a tremendous opportunity to improve their child care assistance policies and make them work better for infants and toddlers and their families, thanks to the historic increase in funding for the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) starting in FY 2018.

  • NCIT Spotlight: South Carolina

    Our plan uses infant mental health or the social-emotional well-being of young children as the frame around which we have built our goals for increasing and building quality services for very young children and their families. The thinking behind that is that infant mental health or infants’ social-emotional well-being is really the crux of all other aspects of their health, development, and well-being.

  • Infant Mental Health Consultation: A Wise Investment of CCDBG Dollars

    IECMHC builds the capacity of providers and families to understand the powerful influences of infant and toddler relationships, interactions, and environments on the development of babies. Infant-toddler well-being is promoted and mental health problems are prevented or reduced as a result of the consultant’s partnership with adults in young children’s lives. It can also promote emotional and other important skills for infants and young children.

  • Why the Market Can’t Provide an Adequate Child Care Supply and How States Can Help Fill the Gap

    Almost four million babies are born in the United States every year. These infants require diapers, blankets, baby food, and countless other products, creating a large and profitable market for companies meeting this demand. However, the law of supply and demand fails to hold true for perhaps the most essential good for children, high-quality child care. Why does the child care supply fall so short and how can states close the gap and support families?

  • NCIT State Spotlight: Nebraska

    Nebraska’s early childhood partners are fully committed to ensuring more of our state’s most frequently underserved families have access to systems and resources necessary for the healthy development of our youngest children, beginning with supports in the prenatal period.
Showing 0 Comment


Comments are closed.