Exciting news: All Our Kin just released a new report, Examining Quality in Family Child Care: An Evaluation of All Our Kin.
For the past year and a half, we have been working closely with external evaluator Toni Porter to conduct a rigorous quantitative evaluation of All Our Kin’s impact on child care quality. The study (which was made possible by funding from the Grossman Family Foundation) compared the quality of care in the programs of family child care providers who were in All Our Kin’s network with that of similar providers who had no contact with All Our Kin. Trained outside observers visited all providers’ programs for approximately three hours each, evaluating them using two tools: the Family Child Care Environmental Rating Scale – Revised (FCCERS-R) and the Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO). Both the FCCERS-R and the PICCOLO are nationally-recognized tools for measuring child care quality, and both are correlated with positive outcomes for children.
The results are in. The data show that All Our Kin providers significantly outperformed non-All Our Kin providers on measures of quality.
- All Our Kin providers scored, on average, 53 percent higher on the FCCERS-R, and 30 percent higher on the PICCOLO, than providers who were not associated with All Our Kin.
- All Our Kin providers performed particularly well on FCCERS-R subscales measuring Interactions and Listening & Talking.
- Sixty-four percent of All Our Kin providers scored 4 or higher on the FCCERS-R, compared to five percent of non-All Our Kin providers.
- All Our Kin providers’ average scores on the PICCOLO’s Teaching subscale were 76% higher than those of the comparison providers.
- Twenty-nine percent of All Our Kin providers were rated “good” to “excellent” on global quality compared to five percent of non-All Our Kin providers. Other studies using the same research tools have found that just seven to nine percent of family child care providers rate as “good” to “excellent.”
- Fifty percent of All Our Kin providers intended to stay in the field of family child care “as long as possible,” compared to seven percent of the comparison providers. Intention to remain in the field has been shown to be an important correlate of quality.
These results back up what we have been saying all along: that investing in family child care providers creates a measurable difference in child care quality for our communities’ youngest and most vulnerable children.
“All Our Kin has always been deeply invested in evaluation, and this study is exciting because it takes our work to the next level,” says Kayla Reiman, All Our Kin Research & Evaluation Fellow and co-author of the report. “We hired an external evaluator who is highly respected in the field, trained multiple observers with no previous affiliation with All Our Kin, and compared All Our Kin providers to other providers with similar demographic characteristics and from similar cities in Connecticut. Because research on family child care is limited, this rigorous study makes a valuable contribution to the field.”
All Our Words 