Financing Child Care in the United States - Ewing Marion Kauffman ...

technical assistance on an individualized basis at child
care program sites. This includes staff resource materials,
professional staff development, and resources for
families. Based on the experience of the pilot phase, the
Partnership increased the proportion of funding dedicated
to consultation and technical assistance, which are
available both pre– and post–accreditation. The second
area, child care program improvement, is supported
through a grant program that provides funding for
facilities and equipment. Funds may be used for
renovation, remodeling, furniture and equipment needs in
the classroom. In addition to addressing these two
primary funding areas (consultation/technical assistance
and improvement grants), the Partnership is responsible
for the development of a public awareness campaign and
an evaluation.
HOW FUNDS DISTRIBUTED
The Chicago Accreditation Partnership, an independent
nonprofit organization, is responsible for overseeing the
disbursement of funds and managing the overall effort.
The Partnership provides consultation and program funds
to eligible child care programs.
Partnership sites must participate in subsidized child care
provided through contracts with the Chicago Department
of Human Services or the Illinois Department of Human
Services. These contracted child care subsidy programs
work in concert with child care centers, Head Start
programs and family child care homes. Additional factors
used to determine program participation include the
director’s tenure (which must be at least one year) and
geographic and ethnic diversity. A readiness index was
developed during the pilot phase of the accreditation
project that preceded the Partnership, which is used to
assess the programs applying to participate in the
Partnership. The Partnership provides funds to programs
without regard to the program’s profit status, although
for–profits must ensure that enrollments consist of at
least 50 percent subsidy–eligible children.
Funds are distributed based on a plan for quality
improvement that is jointly developed by the Partnership
staff (and its consulting technical assistance partners)
and the staff of the individual child care program after
initial program observations have occurred. The amount
of funding for any one child care program is set on an
individual basis and is linked to classroom observations
and the recommendations made in the quality
improvement plan. Individual programs are required to
comply with licensing regulations and must demonstrate
how they will address any licensing concerns noted
during the initial application phase.
POPULATION SERVED
The Partnership is open to child care and Head Start
programs in Chicago in which at least 50 percent of the
children enrolled participate in Illinois’ subsidized child
care program. The Partnership anticipates expanding the
program to include family child care homes during the
course of 2000.
STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS
• The pilot that ran from 1994 through 1998, and its
positive results, was central to the mayor’s decision to
become a primary financing partner in the Partnership.
The pilot also is credited with having achieved the
necessary initial results to interest philanthropists
beyond the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which has
had a long–standing interest in program improvement
through accreditation. The programmatic offerings of
the Partnership also were influenced by the pilot
project. For example, the Partnership works with three
subcontractors, Ecumenical Child Care Network, Office
of Catholic Education and National–Louis University, to
provide individual consultation and technical assistance
to the participating programs. This is an innovation
added after the pilot phases ended.
• In developing the initial pilot, and then the Partnership,
the executive director of the Partnership learned that
the accreditation goal could be not reached without an
additional focus on the credentials of the staff of the
child care programs. As a result, it became necessary
to use other resources to assure that child care staff
and teachers could obtain appropriate credentials and
degrees. This was done by forging relationships with
local colleges and universities. It was necessary to
leverage existing financial commitments, such as the
City of Chicago’s financial commitment that supported
the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential.
• The Partnership has been affected by the general
problem of staff turnover in the child care field, and the
length of time required for accreditation is growing as
programs find it more difficult to fill open staff
positions. The Partnership believes this problem is
more acute for those programs in which accreditation
has taken hold, and in which the standards for staff
qualifications and overall staff quality have been raised.
• Two factors were cited as having made it possible to
obtain the $5 million financing commitment from the
City of Chicago for the Partnership. First, the existing
designation of the City of Chicago’s Department of
Human Services as the State of Illinois’ contractor for
the subsidized child care program meant that there
was a strong child care knowledge base within city
government. Second, Chicago’s mayor had a strong
interest in education reform and was open to a
city–based investment as part of his education reform
agenda.
• Initially the developers of the Partnership sought to
achieve a public–private partnership with the State of
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