TEMPLE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS EVALUATE NEW CHILD CARE INITIATIVE IN PHILADELPHIA
A multidisciplinary team of Temple University researchers is evaluating a Philadelphia child care project to determine what resources are useful in increasing access to quality and affordable child care to low-income children and their families.
With high worker turnover, low wages and a flourishing underground day care market plaguing the city's child care industry, the need for accessible quality day care has never been greater, child care advocates report.
With a nearly $1.5 million grant from the William Penn Foundation, researchers at Temple will evaluate Child Care Matters (CCM), a $10.7 million multifaceted child care intervention also funded by the William Penn Foundation and the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
CCM is a three-year collaborative effort undertaken by regional service and advocacy organizations to increase people's access to quality and affordable day care and to change the child care environment in the Philadelphia area. It includes public awareness campaigns targeting state legislators, business leaders, and media outlets, and two demonstration components: a Neighborhood Demonstration Project (NDP) targeting the Kensington and Germantown/Nicetown neighborhoods and a Regional Quality Initiative (RQI), a four-county regional effort providing resources directly to families and providers in the local child care market.
Temple's interdepartmental team of researchers will evaluate CCM's campaign to determine the impact of the Philadelphia child care initiative, according to Anne Shlay, associate director of Temple's Center for Public Policy and the principal investigator of the evaluation project.
"Our job is to determine if CCM works. CCM is intended to change the political climate that supports child care. It is designed to show the positive effects on children when there is a public investment in child care," says Shlay. "Our evaluation will tell us whether CCM makes a difference in state and local child care policies."
Shlay is joined by Temple colleagues Marsha Weinraub and Elizabeth Jaeger of the department of psychology, Priscilla Murphy of the department of journalism, public relations and advertising, and Kathleen Shaw of the department of educational leadership and policy studies.
In addition to evaluating CCM's efforts to increase child care awareness and advocacy, the Temple researchers will examine CCM's demonstration components, NDP and RQI, to determine if improvement has taken place in child care quality, resources and levels of services to inner-city children, their families, and day care providers.
They will examine which specific resources are most effective in improving child care quality for low-income children: These include increased education, training, and pay for care providers and the accrediting of child care programs.
Shlay says the NDP and RQI are designed not only to increase financial support and resources for children, families and child care providers, but also to train caregivers, reduce teacher turnover rates, and to help child care providers become accredited. Improving quality accessibility and affordability of child care could go a long way toward helping parents and caregivers secure and maintain employment, the researchers note.
"CCM is strategically designed to comprehensively attack the child care problem," says Weinraub, who is also co-principal investigator, with Jaeger and Temple professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, in a national, 10-site federal study of early child care.
"The results of our evaluation will answer some crucial questions with regard to child care," she continues. "Depending on the findings, Philadelphia could be involved in mapping strategies for child care nationwide."
The Temple evaluation team will release interim reports over the course of the project.
For more information, call Anne Shlay at 215/204-5176, or contact the Center for Public Policy at 204-6696.
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