Child Care Task Force Report: Ambassadors for Children
Executive Summary from Child Care Council Report
Good child care is an integral part of our community's infrastructure, contributing to a strong economy and a competent workforce. The challenge of raising children in the 90's has been immense: parents have not been supported with resources to enable them to balance often conflicting responsibilities to their employers and to their families. When good child care is affordable and available for working parents, children and parents benefit. Employers benefit when parents need less time off to care for their children and when they are less distracted by child care-related anxieties; reduction in tardiness and absenteeism are measurable and there is less turnover when child care is stable. There has been a documented negative impact in the ability to attract new businesses to Austin related to the quality, access, and affordability of child care in Austin.
Recent studies indicate that 80 percent of the available child care in the United States is inadequate. Among the states, Texas ranks 45th on major indicators for quality child care such as group size and staff-child ratio. There is a dearth of candidates for teaching positions and turnover of child care teaching staff is on a par with fast-food restaurants, averaging 35 percent annually compared to 6.6 percent for public school teachers. The average pay for a child care teacher in Austin is $6.44 per hour; benefits rarely include sick or vacation leave and even more rarely, health insurance. Qualifications for child care teachers in the State of Texas are minimal: 18 years of age, high school diploma or GED, and only 8 hours of training.
The cost of child care has increased about 50 percent in the past five years in Travis County (for a single parent making minimum wage, child care costs for one child may approach 50 percent of her wages), but the income generated from tuition alone is not enough to either pay teachers adequately or to purchase developmentally appropriate learning materials. As a result, the classroom environment is unlikely to provide a child with the kind of materials which foster learning and the teacher is both underpaid and undertrained.
The consequences of poor quality child care are devastating- inadequate care can significantly delay or permanently damage brain development. Bad child care is even more harmful to children who live in poverty; they do not have access to the range of experiences and opportunities enjoyed by their more economically advantaged peers. Research has demonstrated that children who attend programs which just meet the ""minimum standards" (as established by the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services) perform poorly on developmental assessments of language, social and problem solving skills, when compared to children who attend programs which meet higher standards.
Unfortunately, the former category hugely exceeds the latter, with significant negative consequences in later school years and into adulthood. During a child's early, most formative years, he or she develops the foundation for success throughout life; a sense of self-esteem, emotional competency, and grasp of the fundamentals of literacy are formed in the child's first few years. Without an appropriate learning environment in which the child is nurtured and receives positive guidance and stimulation for brain development, future success is jeopardized.
With good child care, children thrive, building a strong foundation which will result in high functioning, healthy, happy adults. Experts state that good child care may have far-reaching benefits:
- Fewer children will experience abuse or neglect
- Fewer children will face a future burdened by the disability of illiteracy
- Fewer children will require future intervention
- Fewer children will drop out of school in their teen years
- Fewer teens will become pregnant before completing high school
- Fewer children will be involved in gangs or delinquent behaviors
- Fewer children will grow up to be vulnerable to drugs and alcohol addiction
The vision of what child care services in Austin could be and the reality of the current fragmented, undersupported child care system demands that we, as a community, take action:
Recommendations
To improve the accessibility and affordability of child care in the City of Austin, the City, as a leading partner in community efforts, will undertake the following strategies and initiatives:
- The City of Austin will establish and provide seed funding for a Community Child Care Fund. The City will make an initial, substantial contribution ($1 million) and collaborate with additional partners from other sectors (private foundations, corporations, other) to build a significant fund.
- The Child Care Fund will be the collection and distribution point for funding direct child care for eligible families and child care quality improvement efforts, via a child Coordinating Board which has oversight and monitoring responsibilities.
- COA funds and other funds generated will be used to leverage federal/state/corporate/foundation dollars.
- The Mayor and City Council will establish a Blue-Ribbon Committee of community leaders who will be vocal, effective advocates for investment in the vision of affordable, accessible, quality care for all Austin children, as an issue fundamental to the long-term quality of life in our community.
- Implementation of a planned-giving campaign will provide an endowment fund, with renewable income generated from the endowment used to support ongoing local investment in child care.
The City will act as a model employer, integrating internal policies which support families and exploring a range of strategies to improve employees' ability to parent their children (excerpted).
As Policy Maker, the City will explore and establish mechanisms to reduce operating costs to child care providers, while maintaining quality standards, allowing redirection of center resources to supplement staff wages and benefits (excerpted)
Return to Top
