Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care

Expand Monitoring and Technical Assistance

Policy Ideas

What policies can states use to move toward this recommendation?

To move toward this recommendation, states may use multiple policy levers, starting from different points. Potential state policies include the following:

Licensing

• Visit licensed centers and family child care homes caring for infants and toddlers at least twice each year, including unannounced visits, to assess compliance with licensing standards.
• Increase the number of licensors/monitors to reduce caseloads to no more than 50, especially for those working with infant and toddler providers, to promote better technical assistance between monitors and providers.
• Train licensing/monitoring staff on infant and toddler developmental needs, how to identify indicators of quality in infant and toddler child care settings, and using age-specific indicators for children under age 3.
• Assign higher risk/weight levels to licensing regulations most critical to infant/toddler care in weighted/indicator licensing systems.
• Provide additional visits and target technical assistance to providers with histories of frequent or repeated non-compliance to areas of regulations most important for infants and toddlers.
• Ensure prompt action to temporarily or permanently close licensed facilities when the health and safety of babies and toddlers is in imminent danger.  
• Collect and use data from monitoring and inspections to identify areas of recurring non-compliance and to focus training and technical assistance efforts for infant/toddler providers and licensing staff.

Subsidy

• Use inspection and compliance reports to provide additional targeted technical assistance and training to infant/toddler providers receiving subsidy payments.
• Ensure parents using subsidies have access to licensing compliance information as they consider which providers to have care for their infants/toddlers.

Quality Enhancement

• Coordinate child care licensing monitoring and technical assistance efforts with those of state QRIS.
• Provide on-site technical assistance in conjunction with monitoring to help providers assess health and safety practices in infant and toddler settings and give grants to make improvements to meet the standards articulated by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and the National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education in Caring for Our Children: National Health and Safety Performance Standards: Guidelines for Out-Of-Home Child Care Programs.
• Ensure that providers with records of non-compliance are referred, when available, to infant/toddler specialists or nurse consultant networks to receive specialized coaching, mentoring, onsite or in-home consultations, technical assistance, and other supports. 

 

Related Project Recommendations

• Promote Health and Safety
• Provide Access to Training, Education, and Ongoing Supports
• Improve Center Ratios and Group Sizes
• Improve Family Child Care Ratios and Group Sizes

 

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Visit page: http://www.clasp.org/babiesinchildcare/recommendations?id=0009