Family Child Care
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Early Years (Birth-5), Middle Years (5-9), Choosing Child Care
When home-based care is provided by a nonrelative outside a child’s home but in a family setting, it is known as family child care, or family care. In this arrangement an individual caregiver provides care and education for a small group of children in the caregiver’s home. Seven percent of children under five in child care are in family care. It generally involves one of three types of settings: homes that are unlicensed and unregulated by a state or local agency, homes that are licensed by regulatory agencies, or homes that are licensed and associated with an administrative agency.
Both the quantity and the quality of specific services provided in family homes vary from home to home and from agency to agency. However, almost 50 percent of family child care providers spend a substantial amount of their time in direct interaction with the children. Consider the unique features of Bridges Family Child Care in Madison, Wisconsin, and the ways the director, Vic McMurray, and her staff address the issues of quality, accessibility, and affordability:
- Establish sliding-scale fees to encourage affordability
- Offer parents social support
- Provide information on parenting skills and ideas about what has worked successfully for other families
- Keep parents current on community support services they may be eligible to receive
- Provide a low staff-to-child ratio of 2:8
- Support children’s activities
- Help-yourself project/ art tables
- Book areas stocked with pillows
- Regular sessions in music, rhythm, dance and drama
- Encourage children to wash, dress, and toilet independently
- Provide balanced nutrition
- Serve organic meals and snacks, free from additives, hormones, and pesticides
- Involve children in cooking, composting, and gardening
- Stress respect for students and staff
- Provide an inclusive environment (including children with blindness, with autism, with cerebral palsy, with Down syndrome, or born to crack-using mothers)
- Offer fair compensation (including health care, continuing education, and paid holidays, vacation, and personal days)
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© 2009, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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