As the working mother of a 3−year−old, Brown said she never considered sending her son to anyplace other than The Children's Center in Sanford. Before she even needed day care for her son, Brown researched the options available to working parents in Sanford. She decided that The Children's Center's developmental programs and emphasis on learning was the best environment for her son.
Brown knows that not all parents have options for safe, healthy and affordable care for their children while they are at work and that issue was the focus of a conference she recently attended. Brown, who works as Resource Development Director for Child Care Services of York County, was one of 44 parents from across the country selected to represent their states at a national child care conference in Washington, D.C., last month.
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA), which works with more than 700 state and local Child Care Resource and Referral agencies (like CareLink in York County) across the country, hosts the National Policy Symposium on child care every year. This year the organization invited parents to share their experiences and concerns, and to advocate for quality, affordable child care.
Brown said she soon discovered that many of the other parents at the symposium were there because they had had difficulty in finding quality child care they could afford or had distressing 12; and in some cases, tragic 12; experiences with child care providers.
"Parents don't really know what good child care looks like," said Brown. "When you go into a child−care center you think they're trained ... in early childhood education, but Maine doesn't even check the sex offender registry."
Although the federal government provides assistance to help parents pay for child care through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to states, there are no federal standards for child care. It is left to each state to develop its own standards and those standards vary widely, according to the NACCRRA. Most states do not require that family child care homes be licensed at all, so they do not have to be inspected or meet minimum standards.
Brown said she is "passionate about child care because I know that 90 percent of brain development occurs in the first five years of a child's life."
More than 11 million children under the age of 5 are in some type of regular child care every week for an average of 36 hours.
About 5.2 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are home alone, without an adult, from the time they arrive home from school until a parent gets home from work.
In a survey done by NACCRRA last fall, Maine ranked 38th overall in its regulation of child care centers. The survey included all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and the U.S. Department of Defense, which provides on−post child care as well as a network of Army−sponsored off−post child care centers for military families. The 52 entities were scored on their oversight of child care centers, including licensing requirements and inspections.
Maine "partially meets" NACCRRA's recommendation that all child care centers be licensed, because family child care providers who care for two unrelated children (in addition to their own children) do not have to have a license. Maine "marginally meets" a recommendation that child care centers be inspected four times a year 12; Maine does just one inspection visit a year.
The states, D.C. and Department of Defense were also scored on their standards, including staff to child ratio, staff education levels, training and background checks, and curriculum.
Maine "substantially meets" the recommended staff−to−child ratios and fully meets staff training recommendations 12; child care staff are required to have orientation training, first aid, CPR, fire safety and other health/safety training and all teachers must have at least 24 hours of ongoing training a year. Maine falls short in the area of education, however. The state does not require that directors of child care centers have a bachelor's degree or higher in early childhood education or that teachers have an associate degree in early childhood education or a related field. Maine does, however, require background checks of staff, including criminal history and checks the child abuse and neglect registry, but does not require the use of fingerprinting. Nor does Maine require a check of the state's sex offender registry.
In the area of curriculum, NACCRRA recommends that child care programs address six developmental domains: physical, language/literacy, cognitive/intellectual, social, emotional and cultural. Licensed child care facilities in Maine are required to address only the first three domains. Brown and other parents attending the March symposium had an opportunity to speak to their legislators on the importance of affordable, high quality child care and to voice their support for NACCRRA's proposal that Congress strengthen and reauthorize the CCDBG program. The agency is asking that, through the grant program, the federal government set minimum standards for states in order to protect children.