The three papers in this briefing provide guidance for planners and program designers responding to the child care challenges of the 1990s. Rebecca Maynard explores the child care market for low-income parents, finding that even though family day care is plentiful in low-income areas, child care centers operate at or near capacity, and neither family day care providers nor centers report much capacity to care for more infants. In discussing the importance of quality in child care, Ellen Eliason Kisker identifies five indicators of child care that appear to have a positive influence on child development: small group size; appropriately trained caregivers; stable child-caregiver relationships; educationally oriented curricula; and high staff-child ratios. In Stuart Kerachsky's article, it is maintained that implementation of the child care assistance provided under the Family Support Act (FSA) will require attention to the continuity and consistency of child care coverage, the method of subsidization, and the procedures for matching care with the needs of parents and children. Kerachsky also asserts that it is important to begin thinking about what will happen to low-income working parents and their children at the end of the year of transitional child care that the FSA provides. (RH)