Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Rethinking the selfare state 132
One of the most important design issues that must be addressed in the context of early
childhood education is how to construct a program that minimizes information failures.
In North America many eligible families currently do not take advantage of the child care
subsidies that are available to them. The largest barrier is a lack of knowledge—about the
existence of the program, the eligibility requirements, and the program details.
Shlay et al. conceptualize information failure as a first-level barrier to subsidy use.
“The first level represents barriers created because of knowledge deficiencies, either of
subsidies altogether or people’s eligibility and opportunities to use them.” 79 The
pervasiveness of this problem cannot be underestimated. Several studies have found that
somewhere between one third to one half of sample respondents are unaware of the
existence of child care subsidies. 80 Shlay et al. find that among those who said that they
need help “Approximately 44 percent incorrectly believed that they were not eligible to
receive these subsidies.” 81 This suggests that child care subsidy systems may be grossly
deficient in informing eligible recipients about their entitlements.
Many parents eligible for subsidies are also misinformed about the program details of
child care subsidies. Fuller reports that many mothers believe that “day care” is
synonymous with “center” or “preschool.” 82 There is also evidence that eligible families
have misperceptions about whether or not certain groups had priority in the subsidy
system. 83 “Concerns for both efficiency and equity demand that more active steps be
taken to inform potential applicants about benefits.” 84
Other information failures arise at the level of quality assessment. Because the
consumers of child care (the parents) do not always directly observe the product,
monitoring the quality of child care services can be difficult. Even conscientious parental
observation is rife with pitfalls. Cryer and Burchinal find that “parents give higher
average ratings on every item than do trained observers, by about one standard deviation
on average for preschool age classrooms and by about two standard deviations on
average for infant-toddler classrooms.” 85 One of the major advantages of demand-side
subsidies, in general, is that consumers are able to take their business away from lowquality
suppliers and move it to high-quality suppliers. If consumers are unable to
distinguish between high- and low-quality suppliers, then this benefit is largely lost.
We would suggest that the introduction of a universal system of child care voucher
eligibility would have to be accompanied by adequate advertising to ensure program use.
Eligible recipients (all parents of young children), could also be identified and informed
of eligibility through the income tax return system or through social assistance in the case
of unemployed parents. Comprehensive lists of suppliers containing statistics on various
quality measures such as staff-to-child ratios, group size and training/certification of staff
would be provided to all voucher recipients. The availability of a government hotline for
quality complaints and counseling services might also be helpful. Parents of special needs
children in particular may require some form of assistance in determining the best child
care options.
In sum, we argue that quality in child care provision should be monitored by
government accreditation agencies and that voucher support should only attach to those
agencies that meet minimum requirements. These accreditation requirements should
ensure that early childhood development is the focus of all publicly subsidized child care
facilities, while not setting accreditation requirements so high that competitive pressures
and parental choice are unduly restricted. More efficient and rigorous quality control will