Partnerships for Quality: Improving Infant-Toddler Child Care for Low-Income Families.

This report describes what has been learned in the first year of a study to examine collaborative community initiatives designed to improve low-income families' access to good-quality infant-toddler child care; the report examines the Early Head Start/child care partnerships in detail and identifies emerging themes to consider in more depth as the study continues. The research questions guiding the study addressed five broad themes: quality, affordability, state policy, barriers faced by families, and challenges to collaboration. A literature view, interviews with government officials, child care researchers, and other experts and focus groups conducted with child care providers, Early Head Start staff, and others serving families with infants and toddlers were used to identify promising collaborative community partnerships working to address comprehensively the barriers faced by families. Key players in these partnerships were interviewed. Findings indicated that staff of Early Head Start/child care partnerships could point to progress in a number of specific areas: improving quality, expanding supply and improving access, getting more resources for child care providers, increased community collaboration, and building community awareness of early childhood issues. Enduring challenges were identified and may be similar to those faced by like initiatives: improving quality while complying with performance standards, achieving and maintaining continuity of care, matching child care arrangements to families' needs, and staffing issues. Future study will involve the development of case studies of collaborative infant-toddler child care initiatives in three diverse communities. The report's appendix includes the telephone interview and focus group discussion guides. (Contains 65 references.) (KB)