At All Our Kin, we are dedicated to partnering with and supporting family child care educators to create nurturing early learning environments that help prepare children to thrive in school and life. This type of work requires the support of organizations and individuals who share our vision for building better and brighter futures for all children through access to high-quality and sustainable early care and education. One of our partners, Omidyar Network, recently crafted a thoughtful statement on why they invest with us, spotlighting a family child care educator-parent relationship as just one of many examples of how our child-centered approach to education works to establish a strong foundation for young children. We thank the writers, Vinice Davis and Isabelle Hau, for this lovely reflection.
Every night before bedtime, Nevaeh tells her mother, “I want to go to Ms. Kelly’s house!” The toddler is not talking about a neighbor or family friend, but her beloved teacher. Since she was just turning one, Nevaeh has attended Debra Kelly’s home-based child care through the All Our Kin Early Head Start program in New Haven, Connecticut. There, Nevaeh thrives, listening to stories, playing with her friends, and dancing to her favorite songs.
She’s not the only one benefiting from this nurturing environment. Lakeia, Nevaeh’s mother, often lingers after drop off to talk to Ms. Kelly about her daughter’s progress and brainstorm new strategies for challenges, such as potty training. “It’s not just daycare, it’s an educational environment,” says Lakeia. “It’s like she’s kin. Like All Our Kin, she’s like kin to me. If you work together, it will create a good outcome for the child.”
Unfortunately, Nevaeh’s experience is not the norm in the US. Most parents struggle to find quality, affordable child care. Supply is scarce, parents’ knowledge about educational standards are blurry at best, and the cost is often prohibitive. Yet, as two-thirds of families in the US have both parents working, most families still need child care.
According to the National Survey of Early Care and Education, nearly 4 million caregivers currently offer care to over 7 million children from birth to age five in a home-based setting, far exceeding the number of children cared for in center-based settings (3.8 million). A disproportionate number of those children come from low-income families, who are drawn to the low cost and convenient neighborhood locations, a family-like setting, care with flexible hours, and educators who often share the families’ cultural and/or linguistic backgrounds.
Home-based child care is an essential, yet complex, part of the early education ecosystem, with many small providers, both unlicensed and licensed, most lacking access to networks of support. Given its sprawling nature, the quality of home care varies widely.
Due in part to concerns about quality, there have been fewer home-based options from which to choose. Per the National Association for Family Child Care, “the supply of licensed family child care is declining when it should be rising to meet the needs of working families and the urgency of early learning opportunities for young children.”
Demonstrating quality in home-based child care could pave the way to a future vision where cities and communities in the United States invest to create high-quality, sustainable child care programs, leading to improved outcomes at the provider, family, child, and system/policy levels.
Read the full post here.
All Our Words 