In March 2020, when public health stay home orders began in order to halt the spread of COVID-19, child care as an industry was drastically and abruptly impacted. This public health emergency highlighted the weaknesses in the child care system in the United States. This study investigated the changes in operations cost, child enrollment and…

Background: State-level child care quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) have been implemented in a majority of states in the U.S.A. One goal is to improve developmental outcomes for young children, especially from families with fewer resources. Research is needed to determine if QRIS can produce quality improvements that will support the…

Background: Providing enriched learning environments is important to stimulating children's development in early childhood. Early child-care policymakers in many states in the US have adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) as a way to verify quality of child care and to support children's school readiness. Objective: The purpose of…

Background: Existing research suggests that there is a relationship between greater exposure to center-based child care and child behavioral problems though the mechanism for the impact is unclear. However the measure used to document child care has usually been average hours, which may be particularly unreliable in the early months when fewer…

This study seeks to determine whether center-based and family-based child care services differ with respect to process quality, as measured by the Educative Quality Observation Scales ("EQOS", Bourgon and Lavallee 2004a, b, c), for groups of children 18 months old and younger. It also seeks to identify structural variables associated…

In Pennsylvania, Family Day Care Homes (FDCH) are private residences used to care for up to six children in a 24 h period. These homes are often times the most affordable alternative to day care centers parents have in low-income communities. The aims of this study were to evaluate FDCH providers' knowledge of hazards and their understanding of…