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DoD child care tops 50 states, report says

The Defense Department’s child development centers have extended their lead in providing high-quality child care and protections for children when compared to the states, according to a report released March 12 by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

“DoD has good standards and accountability. That’s the model we want for the nation,” said Linda Smith, executive director of NACCRRA. Smith also was the primary architect of the military child care system before joining the child care association.

The Defense Department’s child care center program ranked No. 1 for both regulations and oversight in 2008, just as it did in 2007, when NACCRRA first ranked the states. No other state made it to the Top 10 list for both elements.

Although the Defense Department ranked first, with a score of 131 out of a possible 150 points, it still received a B grade. No state earned an A, and 33 earned failing grades.

But partly because it used military child care as a model, Smith said, the District of Columbia moved from being ranked 25th two years ago, to second last year with a score of 111 — earning D.C. the only C in the group. “They rewrote their regulations, and they modeled a lot of what they did on the military child care program,” Smith said.

Smith praised defense officials for taking steps to improve their child care program, including requiring a check of the sex offender registry as part of the background process before hiring child care workers. That helped raise the Defense Department’s child care center score by 14 points from 2007 to 2008. Another factor in the higher score was a decision to make inspection results available to parents, Smith said. But the department got only partial credit for that move because the reports are not posted online.

Overall, Smith said, the report is “good news for DoD. We’re pleased they took the report seriously and made some improvements.”

Nationwide, more than 11 million children under age 5 spend an average of 36 hours a week in some type of child care setting. The quality of child care varies, and many families struggle with the costs. Yet in a weakened economy, NACCRRA officials contend, the stress on families makes it even more important to provide high-quality child care for the healthy development of children.

NACCRRA has drafted a proposal for a nationwide law that is comparable to the Military Child Care Act of 1989 to strengthen civilian standards for child care. The Department of Health and Human Services would have oversight.

“Much of what we’ve learned at NACCRRA is because of what we’ve done with DoD,” Smith said.

If DoD standards are put in place in the community with the correct support for training and oversight, communities will and do meet those standards, she said.

Some of the standards are not that difficult, she noted, such as regulations for hand-washing.

NACCRRA has been involved in five initiatives designed to help military families find licensed, high-quality child care in their communities. There is a shortage of child care available on many military installations, and those in the National Guard and Reserve communities often do not have access to military child care.

Among the lessons learned in working with the military, NACCRRA found:

• There is not enough high-quality child care, even for families who can afford to pay the higher cost.

• The military child care system is accountable for how its child care funds are spent. But there is little accountability required of the states for how federal child care funds are spent.

• Cost is a barrier to improvements in child care. It costs more than most parents can afford, so providers do not have an incentive to make improvements, because they can’t pass on the cost to parents.

• The cost of quality is built into the way the military does business with its child care. But quality in the civilian community is viewed as optional.

• Unlike the military, there is little or no consistency in qualifications or pre-screening and pre-service training requirements for child care workers in the civilian community.

• Civilian and military parents generally are confused by the state of child care and the terms used to describe it. Also, across the income and socioeconomic spectrum, most people don’t know how “high-quality” child care is supposed to be defined.