Describes the October 1997 White House Conference on Child Care, including points made by major speakers such as President Clinton, the First Lady, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. Discusses the sobering information about child care quality/availability presented at the conference and the…

Briefly discusses problems of and prospects for child care policy under the Reagan administration. (RH)

Examines progress being made in South Africa to bring quality child care to the nation's children. Describes recent government efforts to develop an interim policy for early childhood development, review accreditation standards, and build the capacity of governmental and nongovernmental organizations to develop early childhood programs. Describes…

Publicizes collaborative efforts of national organizations to generate increased support for child care and to develop national child care legislation to be introduced in the 100th Congress. Reprints letter sent to national organizations; lists charter member organizations of the "Alliance for Better Child Care;" and states principles…

Critics of the care of children outside the home claim that day care is detrimental to cohesive family life and less than satisfactory for child rearing. Research findings do not support these contentions. (Author)

Examines how states are responding to the increased need for quality child care and the funding issues raised by the costs of such care. Includes sidebars discussing federal child-care proposals, differential reimbursement rates, and programs for families with a stay-at-home parent. (HTH)

As more mothers have entered the labor force, services for preschoolers have expanded rapidly, though somewhat haphazardly. Firm political and economic commitments must be made if organized child care is to meet parents' and children's needs. (Author/GC)

Examines the attitudes of the public authorities in various countries concerning child-care services for working parents and the different systems of care in operation in industrial and developing nations. (Author/CT)

Notes a need for policies to provide comprehensive health, social work, and early-education services for young children and their families. Presents a decision-making matrix, which displays major policy options for early childhood and a range of criteria by which to judge the relative efficacy of those options. (Author/LPP)

Constructed a child care subsidy tax investment model to investigate the contribution to families' self-sufficiency and to government cost-effectiveness of child care subsidies. Concluded that subsidies act both to keep families from ever needing welfare and to help move families from welfare to work, and that while reaching these goals, the…

Evaluates the public-private mix of child-care policies in Texas with data from two surveys, each of 1,000 randomly selected households. Most parents with children under six were satisfied with their child-care programs, but substantial dissatisfaction was identified for lower-income and minority parents. (Author/JAC)

Sketches the problems of urban "street" children in Mexico City, the emergence of collective child care arrangements, and the failure of the state to provide for child welfare. Describes community-based approaches arising in the absence of government action. (SK)

Discusses a book by James E. Levine on "Day Care and the Public Schools, Profiles of Five Communities." Criticizes Levine's approach as emphasizing quantity and low cost and giving little attention to quality. (GC)

Reviews the rationale for the systematic involvement of government agencies in early childhood care and education programs. Discusses barriers to the development of a universal rationale, emphasizing the role of widespread popular and official ambivalence about the role of women outside the home. (FMW)

Discusses results of a child care legislation survey of child care experts and professionals. Survey questions addressed controversies that differentiate among major federal child care proposals. (RJC)