Sharing Web Resources

On November 14, 2012 Child Care Aware® announced that they have joined forces with Parents magazine to focus on the national child care crisis.  They stated that parents are having difficulties finding affordable, quality care together are asking readers to write to member of
Congress to support protections for children attending child care.

I think that Child Care Aware® is looking for partnerships that support their mission, but are not the typical advocacy partnership.  The safeguards they are seeking would increase requirements for most all states basic licensing requirements and these safeguards can be costly.  I personally agree with the safeguards that they are seeking, but in our state we just did public hearings on our revised licensing requirements and some of the items such as increasing initial training to 40 hours would not pass in our state the way the system is currently set up where states set their standards.  So some of the items that they are pushing for in their package to Congress could become controversial to the child care industry as a whole.

This information is very political and coupled with the information we have read about making the investment in early childhood it is critical that we provide high quality care.  The safeguards that they are seeking will increase the health and safety for young children thus increasing the quality of care.  I think that going to parents is the key to getting the word out and engaging them in a magazine that they regularly read is genius because they already have a trust in the brand.

Reading the public policy blog Child Care Aware® has opened my eyes to begin thinking about early childhood through the lens of the parent.  While I have always known that parents are key partners in working in this field Child Care Aware® does a very good job at keeping that parent focus and writing for the parent viewpoint versus the early childhood professional viewpoint.  I feel that I have read information that I already knew, but seeing it through a different lens strengthens the information.  Reading about Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) through the lens of the parent is very different from the lens that I typically use so I think it is making me a better early childhood public policy fanatic!