BUILDing Strong Foundations

Home-based child care - family child care (FCC) and family, friend, and neighbor care (FFN) - is well-positioned to meet the needs of the families that face the greatest barriers to accessing care, including families of color, with infants and toddlers, who work nontraditional hours, and who seek services respectful of their culture and language. Yet, too often, home-based child care is not included in state child care investments. In addition, the number of family child care programs has declined at an alarming rate over the last several years for a variety of reasons, including the lack of access to some of the quality supports and funding offered to centers, an aging provider population, an increase in regulations and requirements for providers that are ill-suited for home-based providers since they were developed from a center-based care perspective, and the small numbers of new and younger providers entering this field. The majority of home-based providers are women of color and the families that choose this type of care are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, dual language, refugee, and immigrant communities. Building the supply of and supports for home-based child care is a racial equity issues.

Miriam Calderon
BUILD Initiative Special Projects Consultant

As advocates for young children, we must view immigration reform for what it is – an enormous opportunity to pass social policy that’s good for kids. Fully one-quarter of all young children in the United States have an immigrant parent. Many have at least one parent that is unauthorized. These children will become America’s future leaders in a world economy that demands that they fully develop their skills and talents.

Theresa Hawley
Executive Director
Illinois Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development

Ever wonder what it takes to move a program from good to great? I wonder about this all the time, as do my colleagues in Illinois. We are convinced that the reason we are not seeing larger, more sustained benefits from the majority of early learning programs for at-risk children is that programs are not implementing the level of instructional excellence that a great program provides.

Sherri Killins, Ed.D.
BUILD Initiative Consultant

To what extent should program standards, known as QRIS, seek to define program quality by including health, safety and business practices of early childhood programs? Should program standards include hand-washing, CPR, first aide, safe sleeping and medication administration etc.? Should program standards include business practices like annual audits, calculation of depreciation, business plans, record keeping, budgeting etc.?