child care in cook county - Illinois Action for Children

In 2009, there were 1,456 full-timechild care centers offering 100,780child care slots during the full yearor school year, as well as 19,225full-time slots during the summermonths. Child care centers offeredmore than half of the total knownfull and school-year capacity inCook County.As of June 2009, DCFS had listed3,946 licensed family and groupchild care homes in Cook Countywith slots for 36,383 children. Eachprovider was licensed to care foran average of 7.4 children duringthe day, not including up to fouradditional school age children theymay be licensed to care for duringout-of-school time. However, onlyproviders with assistants can carefor more than eight children atone time. 10The tables also indicate the numberof known license-exempt homeproviders and their available slots.As mentioned, license-exempt homeproviders are a much more elusivegroup to gather statistics on. NeitherDCFS nor the Illinois Action forChildren Resource and ReferralProgram has significant informationon license-exempt home providers,although we learn more aboutthis group every year through theResource and Referral Program.We know most about those licenseexempthome providers who receivepayments from CCAP for providingchild care to low-income workingfamilies, so those are the ones wereport on here.In 2009, some 34,600 Cook Countylicense-exempt home providersreceived CCAP payments during atleast one month of the year, thoughfewer participate at any one time.In June 2009, there were 17,451license-exempt home child careproviders receiving CCAP payments.Home providers who have licenseexemptstatus may legally care foras many as three children who arenot their own. 11 While we provisionallyestimate 52,353 slots in knownlicense-exempt homes in Table II-2,the reader should be aware thatmany, though not all, license-exempthome providers do not offer childcare slots in the same way thatcenters and licensed homes do.Instead, many are relatives, neighborsor family friends who chooseto care for particular children forparticular periods of time rather thanoffer care to any child as part ofan ongoing business.B.WHERE ARE THEPROVIDERS AND SLOTS?Some parents will have a moredifficult time finding child carebecause of where they live. The120,005 spaces in child carecenters are almost evenly dividedbetween Chicago and suburbanCook County, though there aresome differences. School ageprograms are more abundant,or at least better reported, in thesuburbs, while summer-onlyprograms are more abundant,or better reported, in Chicago.Two-thirds of the 36,383 licensedhome spaces are located inChicago. Table II-3 shows howcenter and licensed home slotsare distributed throughout theregions of Cook County.Table II-4 presents the distributionof the 52,353 known license-exempthome slots. Again, these datarepresent only a portion of theactual number of license-exempthome providers—those servingfamilies using CCAP. We know,however, that license-exempt careis used widely across all incomes.Seventy-eight (78) percent of thelicense-exempt home providers15