1997 Community Guide

Early Education and Care

Vision Statement

Travis County will be a community where all children and families have access to a comprehensive system of high quality early education and child care and family support in order to assure that all children have opportunities for successful and productive lives.

Summary

The Early Education and Care issue area seems deceptively simple. In fact, the area is complex and exists with multiple, often conflicting, pressures. Three pressures that must be addressed together are affordability, quality, and staff compensation. Any attempt to improve any one of these factors in isolation has a negative impact on the others. If attempts are made to make child care more affordable, the quality of child care and the wages of child care staff decline. Another area that suffers conflict is the purpose for providing child care: one source may provide funding toward an enriched, child-centered curriculum which meets children's needs where a second source will fund custodial care which allows parents to work but not foster children's social, emotional, intellectual or physical well being.

Education and care provided to young children must be: responsive to children's individual and developmental needs and understanding of the long term impacts on children's lives.

Affordability: The true cost of early education and care is seldom paid by one entity. Parents, government, charity, business, and the early childhood staff (through their low wages and lack of benefits) share the cost of care. Affordability is generally defined as the cost of child care being no more than 10% of a family's income. Many families pay a significantly higher percentage of their income for care. These families need subsidized child care in order to work, finish school, or participate in job training. The high costs of early education and care come when young families have the fewest resources. The families' needs usually continue until the children are in public school and full-time child care costs end. Long-term subsidies provide continuity of care for children while bridging a difficult economic time for young, often single parent, families.

Quality: High quality education and care is essential for the proper development and nurturing of children. Classroom group size, the number of adults to children, and staff qualifications are the top three determinates of quality. The State sets Minimum Standards for child care that address only very basic health and safety requirements. The Standards do not address quality or curriculum. Care at the level of the Texas Minimum Standards is harmful to children, especially children from low income families . A quality program meets a child's needs and his/her family needs, recognizing that each child is part of a family. A program may either provide additional services at the child care site or provide access through referrals to other community resources. Other services might include nutrition and health programs, early childhood intervention services for children with disabilities, social services, mental health services, and parent education. The benefits of a rich experience in early years are lasting.

Staff Compensation: The ability to attract and retain good teachers, directors, and other early childhood staff is directly related to the ability to pay living wages, provide adequate benefits, and have a career ladder. Staff costs usually comprise about 70% of the budget of child care centers. Raising staff pay means raising the cost of care. Adequate compensation results in a better trained staff, less employee turnover, and retention of collective knowledge and experience in the early childhood field. Consistency and continuity of staff increases the quality and effectiveness of early education and care programs. Early education and care needs an organized staff development system with wages comparable to the public school system. The current child care system has a staffing crisis. It is increasingly difficult to hire competent, qualified teachers and directors because low wages, stress, hard work, low status, and a poor career future keep people away. There is a pervasive perception that work with young children can be done by volunteers or by those with low skills or by welfare moms.

Special Needs: Some groups require specific attention and programs within the early education and care field. Low income families need to pay for care commensurate to their income level. Infant and toddler care is in high demand and low supply. It is expensive if done correctly. Children with disabilities, including those with emotional and behavioral needs, require specialized staff training and therapeutic services. Care for school-age children must be flexible and planned for after-school, summer, holidays, and between sessions of year-round schools. Demand is increasing for care during non-traditional hours such as weekends or evenings. Families in transition or crisis such as homeless families, families involved with child protective services, families that have experienced family violence, and families with medically fragile children need programs that are accessible and that provide links to additional services. Teen parents need support to finish school and help in learning how to be a parent.

Family Support: Child care provides an excellent base for the delivery of services to families. Typically, parents are at the facility twice a day five day a week. This frequent contact often results in a relationship between the parents and staff as they share in the care of a child. Staff are often aware of family problems and needs. Unfortunately, early childhood providers seldom have the resources, especially in terms of time and training, to follow-up with family concerns. With support, child care can be an efficient, effective, neighborhood based system for service delivery.

System: Early education and care is operated and funded through multiple sources and systems. Funding comes from unconnected and uncoordinated sources. Each system has its own eligibility requirements. A system that focuses on the consistency and continuity of care for the child insures the best outcomes for children and reduces the number of stressful transitions for child and family. The system must also find funding strategies that increase the availability of early education and care services to families who cannot afford to pay the full cost of services. Child care subsidy programs serve only a small percentage of families eligible for the program.

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Critical Conditions

The quality of child care around the country is deteriorating. Texas' child care, which already ranks in the bottom third nationally on key indicators of quality child care, will deteriorate further when most of the 1995 staff-child ratios are rolled back to abysmal 1985 minimum licensed child care standards. Although the costs of comprehensive child care are high, children, parents, child care providers and the Austin, Travis County community are paying the even higher costs of bad and mediocre child care.

A. The Price Children Pay

Poor and mediocre child care damage children. Delays in language, cognitive and social development, similar to patterns of neglect, have been well documented.
Children do not arrive at school with the prerequisite skills and abilities required for school success
The quality of child care available to Travis County families reflects dismal national trends:
- Child care at most centers (86%) in the United States is poor to mediocre
- 40% of infant and toddler child care has been rated poor in national studies
Only 7% of Travis County licensed child care centers meet nationally established standards for high quality programs. An additional 5% meet state established standards for subsidized care that is between minimum standards and the national standards (i. e., designated vendors)
Poor quality child care appears to be more harmful to lower-income children who do not have access to the enrichment opportunities their more advantaged peers enjoy
21% of children in Travis County live in single parent families
50% of children in single, female-headed families live in poverty
According to 1990 figures, about 19% of children in Travis County live in poverty; this is a 22% increase over 1980 figures
Children suffer grief and stress when they are in "revolving-door" child care arrangements. Too many good-byes interfere with children's ability to form warm trusting relationships with their caregivers. In the absence of secure adult-child relationships, young children's development lags behind.
Many families are forced to create an inadequate "patchwork of child care" to meet their needs:
- 35% of infants nation-wide experience at least three different child care arrangements by their first birthday
- 45% of low-income preschoolers in families headed by a single working mother are in more than one child care arrangement on a regular basis
- These figures are likely to worsen as more families are required to move from welfare to work in low-paying entry level positions
- Fragmented early childhood funding and complex, rigid eligibility requirements increase the transitions of children in and out of care.

B. The Price Parents Pay

Parents, already exhausted from juggling family and work, struggle to find child care they can afford that meets the needs of their children and families.
There is not enough child care for all the Travis County families who need it.
62% of children in Travis County have both parents or their only parent in the workforce
52.9% of children with working or a single working parent are in child care
Finding child care is especially difficult for families with:
- infants or toddlers
- school-agers
- children with disabilities or special health or medical needs
- evening, night or shifting work hours
Comprehensive quality child care is even more difficult to find; it cannot exist without active parental involvement. Parents, often poorly informed or unable to objectively rate the quality of their children's care, do not generate sufficient demand for quality child care.
Child care is not affordable for approximately 56% of Travis County families. Poor families spend about 25% of their income on child care; more advantaged families may spend as little as 6%
Current levels of assistance for families who cannot afford care are woefully inadequate:
- Only 16% of children eligible for subsidized child care receive it
- Only 25% of the children eligible for Head Start Services receive them
A chasm is forming between what parents can afford to pay and the cost of child care:
- Costs at Texas' licensed day care centers have risen an average 3% to 6% per year since 1991 for children below age 6
- Regardless of income, parents pay only about 72% of the actual cost of child care . Removal of these precarious subsidies would increase the cost of care by more than 25%.

C. The Price Child Care Providers Pay

Efforts to keep care affordable have been at the expense of child care providers' ability to be self-sufficient:
- Teachers subsidize 19% of the actual cost of care through low wages and few benefits . Their wages, already among the lowest of any profession, have fallen in recent years when adjusted for cost of living changes
- Low salaries ($5.78/hr. median) and few benefits (only 18% of child care centers offer health coverage to teaching staff) contribute to a high annual turnover among child care workers (21% - 40% for center staff and up to 60% turnover for in-home providers)
- Low salaries and a high turnover rate make the child care profession a questionable choice for parents moving from welfare to work.
The shortage of skilled caregivers impacts the availability and quality of child care.

D. The Price the Austin, Travis County Community Pays

Without quality child care, children will continue to arrive at school ill-equipped to learn, and subsequently, be more likely to drop-out, join gangs, and swell the ranks of the unemployed. These outcomes require expensive intervention.
Without enough affordable child care, employers will continue to pay the costs associated with turnover, absenteeism, tardiness and lost productivity. An estimated $3 billion in annual losses nationwide is due to lost productivity by workers who were having child care problems.
Without comprehensive child care services, many parents will not have opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge which facilitate parental involvement in their children's care and education. Without ongoing parental involvement children are less likely to succeed in school and are more likely to drop out of school.
It is no longer a question if Austin, Travis County can afford to invest in child care. We cannot afford not to invest enough to insure that there is affordable, comprehensive, high quality child care for every family who needs it. For every $1 invested in early education and care, Austin, Travis County will reap the benefits of $7.16 in savings from later intervention efforts

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Desired Community Impacts

A. Family Support

Increase the ability of children and families to achieve optimal levels of development that result in long term benefits including increased self-sufficiency for individuals, families and the community.

B. Early Education and Care Programs

Increase the number of comprehensive, high quality early education and care programs that serve infants, toddlers, preschoolers and the number of high quality before/after and summer care programs that serve school-age children.

C. Community Awareness

Increase community understanding of the critical importance of early childhood development including the positive impact of quality early education and care and the negative consequences of custodial child care

D. Systems

Integrate unconnected funding sources with repetitive or conflicting eligibility requirements into a seamless and coordinated service delivery system of comprehensive family support services that would be available to all children and families.
Develop a stable financial and administrative infrastructure capable of supporting a coordinated system of comprehensive, high quality early childhood education and care.

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Strategies

A. Ensure all families have access to high quality early childhood care and education and/or high quality school-age care programs with first priority given to children and families with special needs, including:

low-income families
families in transition
current and former Child Protective Services families
teen parents
families with children and/or parents with disabilities

B. Provide increased parent education, support, networking and involvement activities which:

are available to parents with children of all ages
take place in a variety of neighborhood settings
promote active ongoing parental involvement in their child's development and education

C. Identify all children with social, emotional, behavioral, physical or learning disabilities and provide individualized early childhood intervention.

D. Provide resource and referral services which:

help parents to locate the best care available for their child
educate parents to be good consumers of child care
help link families to other community resources

E. Provide incentives (e. g., scholarships, free training, mentors, stipends, grants, paid substitutes) to assist child care programs to meet and maintain high quality (i. e., accreditation) criteria which include:

low child-staff ratios
small group sizes
material-rich, child-initiated and active learning curricula
regular observation and assessment of children's development
high level of appropriate parent-child and teacher-child interactions
high level of appropriate parent-teacher interactions
well-trained and stable staff

F. Invest in a professional development and continuing education system which ties compensation to education, parallels the public-school career ladder and assures a skilled, stable and sufficient early education and care workforce .

G. Upgrade existing and build new child care facilities to meet nationally-accepted criteria for developmentally-appropriate, high-quality environments.

H. Develop a community education and awareness campaign which addresses key issues including:the benefits of high quality care and the costs of inadequate or custodial care to the individual, family and the community.

the actual costs of high quality comprehensive child care which, in part, have been subsidized by low wages for child care providers.
the need for support from a broad spectrum of the community (e. g., religious leaders, businesses, government, civic organizations, public education, and parents).

I. Identify and tap previously unrecognized sources of federal, state and local government and private funding, and creatively combine funding from multiple sources to foster the development of a seamless and stable early care and education and family support infrastructure which helps families pay the actual cost of high-quality care.

J. Implement a comprehensive system of early education and care services which effectively links families to needed community resources, maintains continuity of care and prevents disruptive transitions for children and families.

K. Create a centralized data-gathering, evaluation and analysis system for early education and care.

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Outcomes

A. Increased number of children who reach their optimal levels of development.
B. Increased number of children with developmental delays who demonstrate age-appropriate social, emotional, language, intellectual and physical competencies.
C. Increased number of children who reach school ready to learn.
D. Increased number of parents who demonstrate improved parenting skills.
E. Increased number of parents who enter and/or remain in school, work-training or work
F. More parents who remained involved in their children's education.
G. More parents and other members of the community who understand the benefits and impact of high quality child care.
H. Increased number of child development staff will demonstrate improved teaching skills.
I. Decreased rate of turnover of Child development staff.
J. More child development sites that demonstrated high quality criteria in their programs.
K. Fewer children who have experienced abuse or neglect.
L. Fewer children who have dropped out of school in their teen years.
M. Fewer teens who become parents.
N. Fewer children involved in gangs or delinquent behavior.
O. Fewer children who are vulnerable to drug or alcohol addiction.
P. More children finished high school and went to college.
Q. More children who are well-employed as adults and grow up to be active members of their community.
R. More parents and members of the community who are informed and vocal proponents of quality early education and care.
S. More parents who pursued higher education and career advancement.
T. A reduction in tardiness, absenteeism and turnover and increased workplace productivity by persons who are parents.

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