Where Does Family Child Care Fit in the Early Childhood Education System?

Safiyah Jackson

Introduction to the Theme of Family Child Care

Working across center-, school-, and home-based learning environments, I’ve witnessed each sector distinctively contribute to the early childhood education (ECE) system. The presence of two conditions promote positive developmental outcomes for children, regardless of location. First, each program setting operates with a standard of licensed quality while consistently working through cycles of quality improvement. Second, practitioners demonstrate specialized qualifications, backed by credentials, degrees, and ongoing professional growth strategies.

While the authors in this section consistently support the idea of earning degrees, the issues of degree type and level, plus the process for acquiring them, dominate their four pieces. One author emphasizes that acquiring degrees is a matter of urgency if the ECE field is to be professionalized. The other three support the idea with caveats. They underscore the importance of professional supports; developing a career ladder as an incentive for earning degrees; and honoring the nuance of family child care (FCC). I stand with these authors in believing that when FCC providers earn degrees, it authenticates home-based learning environments.

As former director of Taking the Lead Leadership Academy,¹ I observed FCC providers demonstrating what is possible when considering these authors’ ideas. Like Tracy Elbert writes in “In-Home Childcare Providers Need to Step Up to the Importance of Formal Education,” providers believed it was critical for them and other providers to work toward earning formal degrees. Within each academy cohort, approximately 80 percent registered to earn college credit. Affirming Josephine Queen’s position in “For Family Child Care Providers, Attaining a Degree Presents Unique Difficulties,” successful completion was linked to supports responsive to FCC providers’ individual circumstances. Monthly courses were held on Saturdays, course fees were largely subsidized, and curricula aligned with their concurrent roles as business owner, educator, and advocate. When trained in the intersection of administrative and pedagogical leadership,² FCC businesses, like their center-based counterparts, can become stable environments that offer continuity of care for children and families. And for this reason, I often suggest we expand the idea of education entrepreneur³ to include FCC.

Similar to the authors in this section, many of the providers I’ve worked with acknowledge the contrast between their view of themselves as professionals and parents’ reported views of them as babysitters. As Jessica Sager noted in “It's Tough to Step Up Without Steps: Building a Ladder for Family Child Care Providers,” when FCC providers earn college degrees, higher wages and greater professional recognition typically doesn’t follow. Yet despite the absence of external rewards, these providers have been committed to professional growth, often telling me, “I’m doing this for me, for children, their parents, and for my neighborhood.” It is a consistent perspective that providers often express and speaks to Mary Tuominen’s concept of community care work.⁴ Similarly, Sonja Crum Knight, in an unpublished qualitative study, found that many providers are keenly aware of the connections between their professional growth and its impact on those they serve.⁵

Expanding the Conversation

With this said, though, I question whether the ECE field has become so focused on degree attainment that it’s ignoring child care’s changing context, particularly the steep decline in the FCC sector.⁶ As a result, the field seems to be overlooking an opportunity to position FCC as a vital sector benefiting infants, toddlers, and the ECE system. The ECE field can continue debating the inherent value of degrees and whether they should be required, but all the while, the FCC workforce is shrinking. For many reasons,⁷ those entering this sector aren’t keeping pace with those exiting.

For one, expansion of pre-K programs⁸ has increased the number of families who qualify for subsidized learning environments for their prekindergarten-aged children, resulting in many center-based programs competing with and losing families to school-based programs.⁹ Centers are then left with the challenge of either expanding their number of infant and toddler classrooms or closing their doors because, as cost models¹⁰ reveal, this type of expansion is financially questionable. The decline of FCC settings and center-based options—and the absence of school-based choices—means the scarcity of infant and toddler child care is getting worse.

The ECE field’s policy and advocacy agendas tend to omit FCC, despite the fact that, when last surveyed in 2015, approximately 75 percent of child care subsidy providers were home-based.¹¹ Based on this statistic, I’d argue the field has an obligation to revisit its stance on FCC and open itself to the possibility that FCC offers a solution for addressing infant and toddler childcare.

FCC providers and their networks¹² have what it takes to meet the demand. To realize this potential, though, the ECE field needs to temporarily shift its energies from questions of FCC degrees to those of FCC availability. Some may say I’m prioritizing quantity over quality. I’d say we have studied program quality for years and know what it looks like. After the field positions and reinforces the FCC sector as a long-sought solution to the shortage of infant and toddler care, it can circle back to discussions of provider qualifications and program quality. Debates on preparation, education, and status become more relevant when a pipeline exists for FCC providers to enter and thrive as part of ECE’s workforce. Then answering the question of how the FCC sector fits into the ECE system becomes evident: the FCC sector is a “market niche” of qualified education entrepreneurs who meet the demand for infant and toddler care.

Questions for Further Exploration

The viability of this proposal requires additional study of the structure, impact, and value of FCC. The questions below invite examination of the FCC sector’s pros and cons as a solution to infant and toddler care deserts:¹³

• Home-based learning environments challenge public narratives regarding educational settings most conducive to children’s development. How does family child care differ from its center- and school-based counterparts in terms of (a) offering responsive caregiving that promotes infants’ and toddlers’ optimal development and (b) the ability to expand and sustain infant and toddler programs?
• Given the shortage of infant and toddler child care, in what ways do family child care business models differ from center-based programs when it comes to business development pilots in child care deserts?
• Women of color are disproportionally represented in the child care workforce.¹⁴ They also are helping drive entrepreneurial trends.¹⁵ How could repositioning the FCC sector address issues of racial equity and change the narrative¹⁶ associated with a history of women of color lifting up their own and other families and communities?¹⁷
• Some FCC providers are educators who want to own intimate learning environments. Others may be career changers seeking entrepreneurial options. How can the ECE field respond to this variety of professional training while heeding Bela Moté’s warning in “Apples and Oranges: Family Child Care Homes Shift the Thorny Knot's Paradigm,” to avoid reliance on solutions oriented to center- and school-based providers?

Moving into Action

• Convene conversations to examine how licensed FCC providers contribute to advancing child and family outcomes; include FCC providers.
• Apply brand-positioning strategies to shift public perception of licensed FCC.
• Encourage development of policy agendas that elevate the FCC sector.
• Organize networks to examine licensed FCC as a possible solution to the infant and toddler care shortage.
• Encourage higher education systems to recognize FCC providers as education entrepreneurs and reduce the barriers to their growth and development.

Safiyah Jackson, EdD, is the early childhood systems director at North Carolina Partnership for Children.

By Bela Moté

Many conversations around the professionalization of early childhood education (ECE) as a field of practice revolve around the triad of workforce directives to credential, better compensate, and diversify. However, I find these conversations tend to ignore the circumstances that family child care providers confront in this regard. If ECE continues to approach these expectations solely through the lens of center-based care, though, or by trying to force a center-based peg into the family child care hole, family child care (FCC) providers will continue to be slighted, along with the children and families they serve.

As CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning on Chicago’s West Side, I have gained an appreciation for how the underlying logic of ECE’s thorny knot shifts in the context of family child care. As a field, we need to realize that a host of assumptions are embedded in the knot analogy that derive from the status of the center-based model. For example, when discussing compensation, we typically are referring to salaries and benefits. When talking about bachelor degrees, we usually are referring to ECE degrees. And when advocating for a diverse workforce, we mostly are thinking of individuals who wear the familiar hat of “educator.” While largely the case for center-based sites, these assumptions overlook the fact that FCC homes are businesses.

The ECE field needs to expand beyond its center-based stance if it wants to ensure that solutions to its thorny knot increase access to high-quality ECE for children in family child care settings as well as in center-based programs. As Jessica Sager writes, family child care is an essential resource, in particular for economically vulnerable families that, for cultural or geographical reasons, prefer the intimate environment of home care for their child.

Several of the compendium authors, however, have conflated this sensitivity with an assumption that the field’s thorny knot exists in similar, if not more acute, form in FCC settings. Sager, for instance, contends that FCC providers are unlikely to reap compensation commensurate to their degree, while Fabienne Doucet argues in “Is the Cart Being Put Before the Horse?” that a degree requirement will hurt diversity among FCC providers, especially for women of color.

I disagree with these assessments, though, because they rely on a narrow understanding of home providers. I have learned from leading an organization that has operated a family child care network for over two decades that, in fact, this delivery model has more flexibility than center-based programs to accommodate the field’s growing decree for credentials and degrees, increased compensation, and sustainable diversity. But for this potential to be realized, home providers have to be understood as more than educators; their settings have to be acknowledged as small, independent businesses, and they have to be recognized as small business owners.

Recognition of the additional responsibility, however, requires a fuller accounting of what compensation means for home providers. Obviously, more than salaries and benefits are involved because the home setting involves revenues and expenses. This is where the network concept increasingly in vogue becomes key: a network model, also commonly known as a shared services model,¹⁸ can leverage economies of scale, providing budget relief for items that would be analogous to capital expenses in a center-based setting. This model can also reduce or eliminate costs for marketing and recruitment; back-office equipment and support; supplies; trainings; and professional development, line item expenses easily forgotten if we ignore that FCC homes are businesses. A network model can not only increase the revenue available to providers, it can also allow their businesses to expand and boast new offerings. It also allows the network’s “home office” to solicit funding opportunities oriented towards economic and workforce development.

The implications of this broadened perspective apply to the thorny knot’s credentialing and diversity threads, too. Many FCC providers, with Tracy Elbert being just one example, tout the importance of ECE degrees. Others enter the field with bachelor degrees in other fields, such as business or psychology, adding to the field’s diversity. While the content of an ECE degree is important, I believe FCC providers offer proof that a requirement for bachelor degrees in ECE may represent another example of one-size-fits-all thinking that warrants revisiting. I would advocate instead for ECE bachelor degree programs with a business administration component for family child care providers and, as Josephine Queen suggests, course credit for experiential learning. This would allow providers to find their voices and identities as small business owners as well as educators.

When it comes to the field’s thorny knot, I think ECE has two choices. It can recognize the distinctive context and potential of FCC providers or it can continue to ignore the sector’s distinctions from its center-based colleagues. If the first option is chosen, we can expand opportunities to provide families who prefer home providers with quality options. And if the ECE field truly wishes to serve families no matter their program choice, including family child care voices as both educators and business owners will move this conversation forward.

Bela Moté is chief executive officer of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago.

By Josephine Queen

According to Nelson Mandela, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”¹⁹ I agree. It’s not only a powerful tool; it opens doors to endless opportunities. So it stands to reason that someone who spends her days educating young children should also have an education. But what does this entail? Is a four-year degree as presently designed the best indicator of being educated? Is its present structure conducive to further educating those of us educating and caring for children in family child care settings? I think not.

Tracy Elhert contends that “in-home child care providers need basic child development knowledge and training on developmentally appropriate practices.” I run a family child care, and I have an associate’s degree in child development, which I earned prior to starting my business. So I agree with her premise, but too often the challenges this presents for practicing family child care providers are overlooked.

Consequently, Elhert and I disagree when it comes to believing that becoming educated is dependent on family child care providers investing in “more formal education.” My resistance comes from knowing Elhert’s aspiration is not easily attainable because of the costs associated with earning a degree and our sector’s insufficient access to supports such as those described by Sue Russell. In my estimation, Elhert underestimates the impact of these variables in her advocacy for family child care providers with degrees.

The family child care providers I know tend to be working or lower income, living paycheck to paycheck. A formal education degree is financially out of reach for most of us. Some also are single parents who lack resources to pay for child care while attending classes. Plus, running a home-based business means few of us can carve out time to gain the required practical experience and requisite hours needed for degrees since, typically, working in one’s own home child care under one’s own supervision and tutelage is not credit-bearing.

Finally, as family child care providers, we are responsible for every aspect of our business, including purchasing equipment such as books, toys, furniture, food, and arts and craft and first aid supplies. Our evenings and weekends are spent preparing and organizing the learning environment for the next day. In terms of time and money, we are stretched thin.

Sue Russell writes about North Carolina’s success in providing scholarships and support to early childhood educators, including family child care providers, and how this support transformed the education level of the state’s workforce. Too often, though, family child care providers are not included in these kinds of initiatives. This is why organizations such as, All Our Kin²⁰ are needed. All Our Kin provides us customized training and workshops, mentors and support, and resources. But similar organizations are not nationally available.

One way for higher education to become more feasible for family child care providers, however, is by having our daily experiences recognized when exploring how to boost the education level of the early childhood education (ECE) workforce. Our experiences with children should count towards education degrees we either voluntarily seek out or are required to obtain. Physicist Richard Feynman perhaps best expressed the merit of experiences such as those in abundance in family child care settings when he stated, “you can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird….So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts.”

We, as family child care educators, are immersed in the lives of the children we care for and teach. We know what they love to play with, which toys or activities they prefer, which projects they delve into, and which they steer clear of. We know who loves to get muddy and dirty and covered in paint; we know which ones prefer to stay clean, which ones love bugs, which ones love water, and which ones cringe at the feel of grass between their toes. We adjust the learning environment and plan activities to reflect their needs and preferences. We know their parents’ fears, concerns, and hopes, too.

Too often higher education institutions ignore these hard-earned insights. These experiences with children and what we learn each day from them deserve recognition in the form of credit hours towards attaining a higher education degree.

Albert Wat noted that “states and communities have helped teachers with diverse backgrounds obtain higher education by investing in strategies like peer support programs,²¹ scholarships and grants,²² articulation between two-year and four-year colleges, and ways to give current teachers credit for their experience and competencies.”²³ Yet, too often, family child care providers don’t have access to these opportunities. A standard expectation for the education level required of all early childhood educators, including family child care providers, would be ideal. But we need to have access to the same resources and funding provided to the rest of the ECE workforce. Course credit for the experiential learning that comes from directly interacting with children also needs to accompany formal classroom preparation.

A degree recognizing our formal education level is all well and good, but becoming part of children’s lives needs to be recognized, too. I support the idea of family child care providers attaining higher education degrees, as long as the obstacles are acknowledged and appropriate supports are provided.

Josephine Queen is a family child care provider living in Connecticut.

By Tracy Ehlert

When in June of 2017, Albert Wat²⁴ wrote that a “four-year degree should be the standard for ECE teachers,” I began digging deeper into my feelings about the early care and education (ECE) profession. I’ve concluded his assertion is correct and want to be sure it includes in-home early childhood educators.

I run an early learning program for preschool-age children in my home and hold a master of science in early childhood studies with a focus on teaching and diversity. Especially in light of Wat’s assertion, my accomplishment should be a source of pride. Yet when sharing what I do for a living, I instead often feel belittled. After revealing my education level, I typically get a bewildered look and a response along the lines of, “Why do you need a master’s degree to sit at home and watch cartoons with kids?” because people assume that loving and playing with children defines my work.

Unfortunately, this presumption is not unique to those outside of ECE. In-home child care providers often express similar views. Too few of my colleagues understand it’s not enough to just love children, change their diapers and clothing, feed them, and play with them. At the very least, in-home child care providers need basic child development knowledge and training on developmentally appropriate practices so, for example, three-year-olds are not seated in front of a worksheet and expected to sit still and complete it and taught so many academics during the day that they have little time to play. Further, we need to be knowledgeable about community resources, proper nutrition, first aid, program administration, communication with families, and more. Because we work alone, we assume every role involved in an ECE program.

Yet too many of us in the in-home based sector do not know these basics because we have not sought the formal education that would expand our knowledge base and alter our practices. While Head Start and pre-K programs increasingly are requiring their lead teachers to have bachelor degrees, based on conversations across Iowa where I live, including a recent survey conducted to inform new QRIS expectations for this sector, in-home child care providers are not following suit. Given what research²⁵ tells us about education’s positive consequences, I’m stumped as to why in-home child care providers aren’t interested in pursuing degrees.

As an in-home early childhood educator, I understand the logistical barriers. I run a full-time business during the day, work as a continuing education Instructor in the evenings and on weekends, serve on multiple committees, and volunteer weekly. I also have a husband and children with whom I want to spend time. Finding time to further one’s education is a balancing act, and too few supports are available for in-home providers’ formal preparation as early educators.

Further, as a middle-class mother with limited income to spend on school (and financial aid already maxed out from a previous degree), I understand the financial barriers as well. I also hear from colleagues that they are intimidated by the age gap between themselves and students who have just graduated from high school. Others contend they will soon be retiring and do not see value in furthering their education. And still others consider themselves experts because of their accumulated experiences and view urgings to take college courses insulting.

Finally, there’s another barrier I understand only too well—the public’s denigration of in-home child care providers. I routinely overhear myself being called “the sitter” or “the daycare lady.” I’m often considered a glorified babysitter, despite the prominently displayed diploma parents see each morning while hanging up their children’s coats.

For in-home child care providers to be recognized as the professionals so many of us claim to be, we must step up to what this designation requires and acquire more formal education. We must put in the time and possibly spend personal funds to prepare ourselves for the important work we do. Even if they are not as widely available as we might wish, Sue Russell’s essay, “Education is a Game Changer for Women as Well as Children,” makes evident that resources and supports are available to those of us ready to take this next step.

Children, families, and the ECE profession deserve better than the status quo. Stronger education guidelines should be in place for in-home child care providers. Although other options are available, I support a bachelor degree as the preferable choice because it provides a thorough understanding of the topics that are core to working with children.

When in-home child care providers become better educated, we will be better prepared not only to educate children but also their families, and to attract others to a field they would be proud to work in because we are respected as professionals. And maybe, just maybe, we would finally get the higher wages we deserve as well.

Tracy Ehlert is an in-home early childhood educator and the state representative for Iowa House District 70.

By Jessica Sager

Family child care educators play a critical role in our child care system. They often nurture our youngest, poorest children and children with the greatest barriers to accessing quality care.²⁶ And as Tracy Ehlert and Josephine Queen described in their pieces, they are eager to achieve high levels of education and credentials—to “step up,” as Ehlert puts it, as early childhood educators.

However, family child care (FCC) is at a moment of crisis. Across the country, FCCs are closing at alarming rates.²⁷ And, as Queen highlights, family child care educators face particular challenges in obtaining formal education and credentials. They often work alone, caring for children 10 to 12 hours a day, making it difficult, if not impossible, to attend daytime classes. Limited financial resources too often make the cost of formal education out of reach. And available professional development opportunities tend to be offered only in English, a significant barrier to the large proportion of family child care educators for whom English is a second language. In short, most current offerings are not designed to work for family child care educators’ real lives, effectively excluding them from participation–even as the field moves towards increasing education requirements–and exacerbating inequities in the early childhood workforce.

Perhaps the most challenging disincentive, though, is the limited recognition and compensation accorded FCC educators given their critical contribution to the delivery system of early childhood education (ECE). Few or no incentives exist to pursue the limited professional development and continuing education opportunities available to family child care educators. Additionally, what they can charge is driven by the economics of children and families in their neighborhoods, rather than their credentials. Consequently, FCC educators are unlikely to reap financial benefit from investing in their education. In the absence of career ladders that acknowledge and recognize continued growth—in contrast to what is available to their center-based colleagues—encouragement for advancing their education is further diminished.

In this landscape, staffed family child care networks, such as All Our Kin,²⁸ play a critical role²⁹ in offering ongoing learning opportunities to FCC educators. These networks offer professional development and training, coaching and mentorship, peer support, and leadership opportunities that make a difference in the quality of care³⁰ that FCC educators offer, their earning power, and their businesses' sustainability.³¹

On their own, however, staffed FCC networks are insufficient to meet two critical, and twinned challenges. First, many FCC educators seek to obtain formal credentials—specifically, college degrees—and while many staffed family child care networks offer training leading to the Child Development Associate credential, these networks are not degree-granting institutions. Second, FCC educators want and need pathways for continued growth and advancement on a scale beyond what small, staffed FCC networks can offer.

In All Our Kin’s 2019 publication, “Creating the Conditions for Family Child Care to Thrive,”³² we outline strategies for partnering with and supporting family child care educators across several key areas, including funding streams, licensing, business supports, and multisector engagement. We also share a number of workforce training and education strategies. We discuss how to design professional development systems that actually work for FCC educators’ real lives; share recommendations on how to create pathways for competency-based credentialing and continuing education, leveraging partners like community colleges, that are accessible to FCC educators; and discuss the role that quality rating & improvement systems (QRIS) can play in incentivizing and supporting FCC educators in reaching the highest levels of quality.

Community colleges, for example, have long served as sources of innovation and creativity in designing educational approaches that work for adult learners, particularly learners who face barriers to access. Some community colleges offer training specifically tailored for early childhood educators.³³ These efforts are highly localized, however, and, in many cases, don’t go far enough to alleviate FCC educators’ burdens. Courses need to be offered at night and on weekends; located in communities where FCC educators live and work; delivered in English, Spanish, and potentially other languages; and tailored, in terms of content, to FCC settings. Partnerships with staffed FCC networks can be one effective way to respond to these needs.

State QRIS can help create career ladders for FCC educators tied to increased responsibility and compensation. QRIS can draw on FCC educators’ knowledge and expertise by engaging them as paid coaches who dedicate a portion of their time to mentoring others, either by visiting on evenings and weekends or by hiring staff to provide part-time coverage. This addition to QRIS would enable FCC educators who complete formal education and demonstrate high levels of program quality to be recognized publicly and recompensed for contributions to their colleagues’ learning and development.

If we truly value equity in ECE, it’s critically important to create opportunities that include family child care educators and the children and families that they serve. It’s time to start designing systems—it’s time to start building ladders—with family child care in mind.

Jessica Sager, JD, is the co-founder and CEO of All Our Kin and a lecturer at Yale University. She is a Pahara Aspen fellow and an Ashoka Fellow