Facts In Action

Nationally, the majority of children in non-parent care are in family child care homes, yet most of the research about the cost of quality has been focused on center-based care. In addition, family child care providers work as small business owners with little, if any, external support. Their role as business people sometimes conflicts with their role as caretakers and their labor is often undervalued. A 2003 study conducted by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, "Family Child Care Homes: A Report from the Massachusetts Cost and Quality Study," addressed family child care in Massachusetts focusing on workforce issues, the quality of care in family child care homes, and its relationship to costs. The study attempted to put a value on their labor and other costs to providers in determining the cost of child care.

Researchers studied 203 family child care homes randomly selected from across the state and identified some key workforce issues for providers in Massachusetts:

• The majority (51%) of the licensed providers contribute half or more of their family's income
• More than 10% have no health insurance
• 60% did not take time off for illness
• Only 15% of providers closed to attend trainings
• Providers reported that their largest source of stress is the unpredictability of the income and the juggling of duties their job entails.

The study also reported on providers' motivation for entering the field and some of their workforce concerns. Most providers indicated they do this work because they like children and find the importance of the work to be a major reward for them. At the same time, one quarter of providers reported that this was a temporary career decision, but said they would be more likely to stay if they received benefits and more respect. In addition:

• Support services were considered important by about one third of the group.
• About half belong to a local professional or business group, which is an important source of their training.
• Seventy-five percent of providers reported receiving some form of training through professional groups—including family child care networks, state and regional family child care associations, the National Association for Family Child Care, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and local branches of NAEYC.

One of the main goals of the study was to examine the quality of care provided in family child care homes. Quality in family child care is often viewed as providing a warm, homelike environment, in contrast to the educational function of center-based care. However, the study assumed that both goals are important since children's school readiness depends on a warm and responsive provider/teacher and developmentally appropriate activities and interactions both between children and providers and among children themselves. Researchers broke down quality into four indicators: Safety and Basic Care; Social and Emotional Development; Learning, Language and Reasoning Development; and Needs of Parents and Providers. Interestingly, when researchers asked providers about their goals for the children in their care, they found that they were similar to these indicators.

Researchers measured the quality of care in two different ways. Trained data collectors visited family child care homes for three to four hours and rated them using the Family Day Care Rating Scale (FDCRS). In addition, other data collectors interviewed providers about their education and training, motivations, working conditions, and income and expenses.

While providers felt it was very important to keep children safe and healthy, few homes met the Good benchmark and many homes met only Minimal standards in the area of Safety and Basic Care. However, providers tended to meet the Good benchmark in two areas: greeting the children on arrival and age-appropriate nap/rest times and practices.

Almost half met the Good benchmark for Social Development—the provision of a warm, caring environment—but only two of five met the Good benchmark for Language and Reasoning Development. Finally, family child care providers demonstrated good communication with parents and the ability to balance their responsibilities well, with the majority of providers meeting or exceeding the Good benchmark on Adult Needs.

When researchers combined the scale scores to get an overall picture of quality, they found that 61% of homes met the Minimal standards benchmark, and that fewer than 9% were rated as less than minimal or inadequate. In addtion, Massachusetts providers compare favorably to those in other states. For instance, a 1994 study found that 13% of providers in communities in three different states were rated as inadequate.

In identifying what led to quality care, the study found that the two most significant predictors of quality were the provider's level of education and the provider's beliefs about how children learned best. In terms of education, researchers found that the more education a provider had, the higher the level of quality was in her family child care home. In addition, providers who believed that children learned best through experiences rather than listening to teachers and those who believed in fostering children's curiosity rather than their obedience were shown to provide a more stimulating, language-rich environment and to receive higher global quality scores.

The study aimed to quantify costs, factoring in the labor of the provider as well as use of her home, and to measure quality in a consistent way. After considering the revenue providers take in, and the expenses they incur, researchers found that family child care providers in the state received an average of $3.76 in revenue per child care hour. While the majority of revenue came from parent fees, subsidies and payments from family child care systems played an important role for providers serving low-income families. The study found that quality was associated with higher costs at all levels, even after adjusting for other factors such as operating characteristics, income of families served, and provider education levels.

Researchers caution that while the study demonstrates that quality costs more, the figures do not indicate exactly how additional money should be used to raise quality. However, they suggest that recruiting providers with higher levels of education and encouraging education and training would likely raise the quality of family child care homes. They also point out that as efforts to raise quality lead to increased costs, policies would also need to address issues of affordability and the working conditions of licensed family child care providers.

Source: Family Child Care Homes: A Report from the Massachusetts Cost and Quality Study, N.L. Marshall, C.L. Creps, N.R. Burstein, K.E. Cahill, W.W. Robeson, S.Y. Wang, J. Schimmenti, F.B. Glantz, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and Abt Associates.

Facts in Action, September/October 2003