Here's everything you need to know. The thought of leaving your baby with someone else all day, every working day, is a daunting one—and a major family decision.
But returning to a post-maternity 9-to-5 is the norm: Among married couples, two-thirds of moms work outside the home , as do nearly 75 percent of unmarried mothers. From nannies to au pairs to daycare centers to deeply involved grandparents, child care options are everywhere.
But cost is also a major consideration: U. For many parents, cost is a deciding factor when considering home-based daycare. Typically more affordable than a daycare center or nanny share, home-based care offers an experience with licensed, trained caregivers in a homey environment where your little one will socialize with age-appropriate peers. From the benefits and downsides—as well as questions to ask and what to look for—here's a primer to deciding if in-home daycare is right for your family.
Home-based daycare also known as family child care is a form of early childhood education in which a caregiver looks after children in their own home, frequently with the help of an assistant. As opposed to a larger daycare center, a child will be dropped off in a comfortable and familiar home environment.
While caregivers aren't required to have formal training in early childhood education to open an in-home daycare, many are dedicated to developing programs based on different early educational philosophies.
You can find home-based child care built around philosophies such as Montessori , Waldorf , and Reggio Emilia. Another plus: smaller groups of children. While in-home facilities are typically limited to six children per teacher, the U. Office of Personnel Management recommends class sizes up to 12 for toddlers in daycare centers. Assuming those warm, responsive interactions between caregiver and child, the lower ratio is ideal. In-home daycares also cater to a wider age group, which makes it easier for siblings to be together.
In addition to teacher-student ratios and teacher wages, program size and the ages of children enrolled also affect the finances of a child care program. Like any business, child care providers benefit from economies of scale. In a larger program, more revenue from tuition covers fixed costs—such as licensing fees, utilities, and program administrators—that do not vary based on the number of children enrolled. However, with almost two-thirds of child care centers serving less than 75 children, many are left struggling to break even.
Serving infants and toddlers alongside preschoolers is also key to financial solvency. To offset the high cost of infant care, providers can use revenues from older children to subsidize the costs associated with infant care.
For safety reasons, when infants are enrolled in family child care homes, most states limit the total number of children for which providers can care. For example, a provider may be licensed to serve up to eight children; but if they enroll just one infant, they might only be able to serve five additional children. As an increasing number of states and cities make needed investments in preschool, 33 they should consider the impact that these initiatives can have on access to infant and toddler child care.
If initiatives only support access to preschool in public school programs, community-based child care providers will struggle to stay afloat due to the loss of revenue from preschool enrollment.
Policymakers can mitigate this impact by designing initiatives that include community-based programs. For example, West Virginia requires at least 50 percent of classrooms funded by its universal preschool program to be offered in collaboration with community partners.
Shared services alliances or staffed family child care networks represent an emerging strategy to support small providers and family child care homes. These alliances or networks can support program operations, helping to increase program efficiency and centralize administrative services, such as fee collection and subsidy administration, thus freeing up program directors to focus on pedagogical support. The network hub is funded either by member fees or by philanthropic or other outside support.
As part of an alliance, providers can also increase their purchasing power, buy supplies in bulk, enter into collaborative contracts for support services such as maintenance, and share administrative staff to reduce nonteacher personnel costs. In this way, shared services alliances can help providers maximize revenue and reduce costs, as well as help teachers and directors focus on their core mission of educating children.
Limited public funding forces families to shoulder the majority of the burden of paying for child care. While the U. The true cost of quality infant and toddler child care is unaffordable for most families. Table 5 shows how much parents would need to spend, on average, to cover the true cost of child care that meets state licensing requirements and how much they would have to spend to cover the cost of a higher-quality program.
On average, parents would need to spend 18 percent of their annual income just to purchase infant child care that meets licensing standards.
While all states provide higher child care subsidy payments for younger children, in most cases, this higher rate is insufficient to cover the difference between the cost of serving infants and serving older children. However, the infant subsidy rate is, on average, only 27 percent higher than the preschool subsidy rate.
In only eight states does the increase in the subsidy rate match the increased costs. Table A3 in the Appendix provides these data for each state. Figure 5 quantifies the financial gap that providers face when serving infants through the child care subsidy system, ranking all 50 states and Washington, D. In only three states—Indiana, South Dakota, and Hawaii—does the reimbursement rate cover the estimated cost of infant care that meets state licensing standards, but it still falls far short of the cost of a high-quality program.
The recent 80 percent increase in discretionary federal funding for the child care subsidy program is a welcome opportunity for states to increase reimbursement rates in order to start addressing these gaps. The disconnect between the cost of child care and what parents can afford to pay—coupled with the lack of public funding—highlights the central challenge at the heart of the U.
While the United States has been slow to invest in early childhood education, compared with many other developed counties, recent polling shows that voters want policymakers to act. Nearly 80 percent of respondents to a recent national CAP survey supported improving the quality of child care and making it affordable for parents, and nearly 70 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports these policy ideas.
The data provided in this report use state and national averages drawn from a variety of sources. While this helps illustrate the significant gaps between current revenue streams and the true cost of quality, conducting a full cost-of-quality study would allow states and communities to better estimate the specific cost of delivering high-quality child care in their area. States should use the results of a robust cost-of-quality analysis to set subsidy reimbursement rates that reflect the true cost of quality.
This should include different rates for each age group that are based on the actual difference in the cost of providing each group care. States can also explore ways to use the subsidy system to incentivize providers to serve infants and toddlers, such as contracting for infant and toddler slots. Quality rating and improvement systems QRIS are a way for states to measure and support quality in their early childhood system.
However, state policies must help all providers achieve a minimum level of quality, providing resources to meet state licensing requirements and offering supports to make quality improvements—not just rewarding providers after they have achieved higher quality. States can tailor additional incentives to encourage high-quality providers to serve infants and toddlers and to ensure that financial incentives are sufficient to cover the actual cost of providing high-quality infant and toddler care.
While the majority of young children in licensed child care attend a center-based program, many families—especially families of infants and toddlers—choose a home-based family child care provider.
One way that states can do this is by supporting the development of staffed family child care networks. These networks bring groups of family child care providers together, pooling resources and building a community, and are a promising strategy for realizing some economies of scale for small family child care businesses. For example, subsidy increases can be designated specifically for workforce compensation for infant and toddler teachers—and states can look to targeted wage enhancement initiatives or teacher tax credits.
States can also look to reduce barriers to higher education for teachers working with infants and toddlers, including by making sure professional development is available where and when teachers need it and by providing scholarship support.
Significant public investment is ultimately the only way to address the lack of affordable, quality child care in the early childhood system. In states, governors and state legislators can prioritize funding for early childhood in order to make significant changes to their subsidy systems, increasing the number of eligible families and increasing the reimbursement rate providers receive to actually cover the cost of a high-quality program.
At the federal level, the Child Care for Working Families Act—introduced in Congress in —provides a comprehensive model of a progressive early childhood system. The bill would also increase subsidy rates to cover the true cost of a quality program, ensuring that providers can operate a high-quality program and that teachers are paid a livable wage.
Licensing is voluntary for these homes, unless the home receives public funds. Compensation can be received for up to 10 children. A small FCC home may be approved to care for three children younger than 2 years of age with no more than two children under 12 months, including the caregiver's own children, under the following conditions:. Colorado has separate rules that apply to infant and toddler and experienced provider homes. A Level II provider has more extensive qualifications, as demonstrated by education, credentials, or experience specified in the rules, and is permitted to enroll more children.
In Level I homes, the provider must meet the qualifications for initial licensure. The following table is an example of the differences that are permitted when the provider is more qualified:. There are two types of large FCC homes.
Type 1 large FCC homes may care for children. In a small FCC home, one provider may care for a group consisting of up to eight children younger than age 12, of which up to five children may be younger than age 5, of which up to three children may be younger than age 2; or up to eight children younger than age 12, of which up to six may be younger than age 5, of which up to two may be younger than 30 months of age. Iowa registers three types of family child care homes: categories A, B, and C.
The data reported in the table for small family child care are for category A homes. Requirements for category C homes are reported under large family child care. Kansas also licenses homes with 7 to 10 children. In these FCC homes, one provider may care for the following:.
Information reported is only for licensed FCC homes. A provider in a Family Child Care Plus Home may care for up to eight children, provided that at least two of the eight children are school age. Large FCC homes providing care to infants only may enroll up to eight infants. The following table summarizes the requirements.
A If all children in care are in the same age group, the following determines the staff-child ratio. C If children in care include a mix of only preschool- and school-age children, the following table determines the staff-child ratio. No inspections are conducted, and there are no standards to meet. Small family child care homes are required to be registered and meet State requirements; large family child care homes are required to be licensed.
Regulations for registered and licensed homes are combined, with specific stipulations included for each type of home. The following tables present the child-staff ratios and maximum group sizes allowed by the State. A large licensed family child care home with 3 providers may care for up to 12 children of any age birth through age Small family child care requirements reported in the table are for homes required to have a residential certificate.
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