State Policies That Improve Access To High-Quality Child Care And Early Education For Immigrant Families
Dec 17, 2007
State policies can promote, or impede, access to high-quality child care and early education for immigrant families. CLASP recommends that policymakers and other actors look to improve child care and early education policies and programs in the following ways:
- Promote coordination and collaboration between the child care and early education and the immigrant- and refugee-serving communities.
- Design child care and early education programs and policies that intentionally address the needs of immigrant families with young children.
- Strengthen child care and early education systems to improve and expand access to high-quality services for young children in immigrant families.
- Build the linguistic and cultural competency of state and local agencies and child care and early education programs.
CLASP has created a technical assistance tool for states that lists recommended policies that states can implement to address immigrant access to high-quality child care and early education programs. Policymakers will want to evaluate the current set of policies they have in place that support these recommended courses of action as well as to plan for future policy changes and improvements.
Examples of recommended state policies include:
- State encourages and supports local coordination and collaboration between child care and early education programs and agencies and immigrant-serving organizations. This may include incentives for child care and early education programs to partner with immigrant serving organizations and funding for these partnerships. Examples of local collaboration include: mutual representation on governing boards, joint training opportunities, joint development of documents and materials for families, and joint applications for creating and expanding programs to meet the needs of immigrant families.
- State dedicates resources, using contracts and other dedicated funding mechanisms, to expand access to high-quality child care and early education programs for immigrant families or to create new programs targeting immigrant families.
- State funds targeted child care and early education outreach to immigrant families. Outreach uses cultural mediators, bilingual and culturally competent staff and is conducted in appropriate formats and in the primary languages of immigrant communities.
- State policies incorporate linguistic and cultural competency in all program and content standards, including: licensing and monitoring, early learning guidelines, pre-kindergarten standards, quality rating and improvement systems and, professional development systems.
- Immigrant and limited English proficient providers have meaningful access to the child care licensing and subsidy systems. The state has reviewed all materials, regulations, and policies to ensure access and provides training and technical assistance to diverse providers to work toward licensure.
Go to our state policy checklist to see all recommended policies.