Recently in Child Care Workers Category

Source: Lynda Laughlin, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P70-121, August 2010

Parents in the labor force face numerous decisions when balancing their work and home life, including choosing the type of care to provide for their children while they work. Deciding which child care arrangement to use has become an increasingly important family issue as maternal employment has become the norm, rather than the exception. Child care arrangements and their costs are important issues for parents, relatives, care providers, policy makers, and anyone concerned about children.

This report, which is the latest in a series that dates back to 1985, shows the number and characteristics of children in different types of child care arrangements in the spring of 2005 and the summer of 2006.
See also:
Press Release

Source: Helen Blank, Nancy Duff Campbell, and Joan Entmacher, National Women's Law Center, June 2010

From the summary:
Getting Organized: Unionizing Home-Based Child Care Providers 2010 Update, provides the latest in unionization developments for home-based child care providers across the country.

Every day, millions of working parents rely on home-based child care arrangements. Unionizing home-based child care providers, a poorly paid and overwhelmingly female workforce, is a promising strategy for improving the treatment of these providers and for increasing overall investments in child care.

Source: Pre-K Now, 2010

* Governors propose a slight increase to state pre-k investments. Should these budgets pass, state early education funding would rise by $8.2 million.
* Nine governors increase pre-k investments. These proposals would increase funding for early learning in these states by a total of $78.5 million.
* Three other states and the District of Columbia anticipate an increase for pre-k through their school funding formulas. In nine states and the District, early education budgets are supported through school funding formulas and grow with enrollment. The other six states do not yet have projections for FY11.
* Ten governors propose to flat fund pre-k. These proposals maintain funding for early learning in these states at FY10 levels and include Alaska and Rhode Island, which both started new programs in FY10.
* Twelve governors are proposing to decrease pre-k funding. In these states, early learning investments would decline by a total of $100.6 million.
* Ten states provide no state-funded pre-k.

Source: Lisa Guernsey, New America Foundation, April 19, 2010

From the summary:
Every three years, every Head Start program in the country must undergo a top-to-bottom review from federal monitors in regional Head Start offices who examine files, observe classrooms and interview parents. The process, known as the triennial review, typically takes a week and can be a nerve-wracking moment for grantees who worry whether they will be deemed "out of compliance" with federal regulations.

For this podcast, we talked with Karen Hughes, president and chief executive officer of The Campagna Center, a non-profit organization in Alexandria, Va., that runs the city's Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Last year, Hughes invited Early Ed Watch to witness her organization go through its review -- a week that showed us just how many regulations these programs must observe and document on a daily basis. We thought our listeners could learn from Hughes as well as she talks about why these reviews matter for quality control and what they mean to Head Start programs.

Source: Child Trends, February 24, 2010

From the press release:
Child Trends, with support from Casey Family Programs, launches the State Child Welfare Policy Database to provide information on child welfare laws, procedures, and agency guidance for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Database can help elected officials, administrators, advocates, practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders keep up to date with the policies that protect our nation's most vulnerable children.

The site can be navigated by state or by topic. You can learn about your state's expenditures on child welfare services, policies for relatives and "kin" caring for children involved in the child welfare system, benefits and services provided to foster youth after age 18, and much more. In addition to the traditional web version, the site is designed to be compatible with your mobile device, allowing for easily accessible information on the go.

Source: Mark Ginsberg, and Rae Pica With Marcy Whitebook, NAEYC Radio, February 2010

From the press release:
In this segment, Dr. Whitebook says that most child care professionals make less than parking lot attendants. In fact, on average child care providers make about $15,000-$20,000 a year depending on where they live and what age group they care for. Dr. Whitebook says the reason for such low pay is that the United States never placed the same value on early childhood education as it has for the rest of the K-12 spectrum. While she says some attitudes have changed some, especially based on research of brain development in the early years, attitudes haven't changed enough to make a significant impact on wages.
See also:
Animal Trainer. Parking Attendant. Child Care Professional.
Source: Lisa Guernsey, Early Ed Watch Blog, February 17, 2010

Source: Center for Law and Social Policy, January 21, 2010

Below are links to fact sheets for each of the 50 states on child welfare financing. In addition to data on child welfare expenditures and the sources of this funding, the fact sheets include contextual data such as the number (and percent) of children living in poverty, the number and types of substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect, and the number of children in foster care.

Each fact sheet contains sections that:

1. Describe the context for child welfare spending by providing data on abused and neglected children, children in foster care, children who have left foster care, and children living with kin;

2. Identify how much child welfare funding comes from federal, state, and local sources;

3. Identify the major federal funding streams that are used to support child welfare and the amount of child welfare funding that comes from each; and

4. Highlight expenditures and trends within the Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Programs, including expenditures for foster care maintenance and adoption assistance payments, administrative and child placement costs, and training.

Source: Teresa Lim, Center for Law and Social Policy, December 10, 2009

As we enter the holiday season, CLASP urges you to remember those families who are the hardest hit by the economic recession. Now more than ever we need public and private resources to help ensure that children and families have what they need to thrive.

* CLASP Releases National and State Fact Sheets on Child Care and Development Block Grant Participation in 2008
* Extending Home Visiting to Kinship Caregivers and Family, Friend, and Neighbor Caregivers
* New Infant/Toddler Resources on Core Competencies and Training
* Update on State Child Care and Early Education Advisory Councils
* Updated Fact Sheets Provide Information on Children of Immigrants in the U.S. and Basic Facts About Low-Income Children
* A Review of Home Visiting Program Models and Their Effectiveness
* The State of City Leadership on Supporting Early Childhood in 2009
* Tennessee Releases Evaluation Report on State's Pre-Kindergarten Program
* Early Literacy Gaps in Maryland
* Promoting Community-Based Early Childhood Education Partnerships in Texas

Source: Hannah Matthews, Center for Law and Social Policy, December 1, 2009

Based on preliminary data from the Child Care Bureau, this fact sheet provides a snapshot of participation in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program in 2008. CCDBG served a monthly average of 1.6 million children. While 19 states increased the number of children served, 29 states served fewer children in 2008 than in the previous year. This fact sheet reviews data, including the ages of children receiving assistance, the types of child care settings used, and the reasons families receive assistance.

Source: CLASP, October 2009

This profile provides data across all Head Start programs (Early Head Start, Head Start preschool, American Indian/Alaskan Native Head Start, and Migrant Head Start) for all grantees. Profiles on individual states are available through "In the States."