Facts In Action

Welfare reform has stimulated extensive interest in the child care choices and options of low-income families. A study released in August by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) surveyed 1000 single mothers in Northern California who were participating in a new welfare-to-work program to track their use of child care subsidies as well as the quality and type of care they selected for their children.

Researchers assessed provider quality using a variety of measures, including child-staff ratios, provider education, and direct observations of the child care settings. The quality of providers varied depending on the type of care selected by the parents. Children in center-based care receiving financial assistance were enrolled in programs of higher quality than the rest of the community. However, the study found that the quality of care for children placed in family child care and kith and kin arrangements was inferior to the settings observed in the larger community. Interestingly, though, parents who placed their children with kith and kin reported the most satisfaction with their arrangements, due in large part to schedule flexibility, emphasis on individual attention, and the security some mothers feel when their children are in the care of a friend or relative.

The study also focused on why some women entering welfare-to-work programs use subsidies and others do not. Of the 259 parents who had selected a provider when the data was collected, 61% reported they were receiving financial assistance for their child care, and 70% of those receiving assistance had selected licensed care in a center or family child care home. Several factors stand out among the parents not receiving subsidies; these families tend to live in immigrant communities, are more likely to live with one or more adults, and live in less-impoverished census tracks than the mothers receiving subsidies.

This research should help administrators and caseworkers take action to increase the access of specific members of the low-income community to child care subsidies through outreach (for instance, via multi-lingual public service campaigns and by increasing awareness that kith and kin providers can receive payments) and intensive case management.

Source:
"Child Care Aid and Quality for California Families: Focusing on San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties," B. Fuller, Y. Chang, S. Suzuki, and S. Kagan, PACE Working Paper Series 01-2, August 2001.

For more information:
contact PACE, University of California Berkeley and Stanford University, 3653 Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-1670, call (510) 642-7223, or go on-line at pace.berkeley.edu.

Facts in Action, October 2001