Why Our Focus on Family Child Care?

P R O V I D E R Graphic

While the Soho Center does not endorse family child care as better than center-based care, surfacing and positively affecting large numbers of unregulated providers makes sense for a very simple reason - most children in child care across the nation are in family child care. As such, targeting family child care providers is a logical approach to cost-effectively affecting large numbers of children. A look at the numbers makes a compelling case for our approach in Virginia and is typical of the situation in many other states.

Here are some facts. 

According to the 1990 Census, there are 1,110,500 children 0-to-13 years old in Virginia. Of these children - 
 

  • 28% are in day care centers
  • 63% are in some sort of non-center day care

    •        (44% in family day care and 
             19% in their own homes)
    Furthermore, of Virginia children 0-to-5 years old - 
  • 75% are in non-center day care

    •        (57% in family day care, and 
              18% in their own homes)
    Clearly, a huge percentage of children spend the bulk of their waking hours with family child care providers. Unfortunately, of the 67,000 family child care providers in Virginia, only about 5,000 are regulated and participating in the USDA Child Care Food Program. And there are very low levels of participation in training and child care associations. 

    Recent national research by Families and Work Instituteshows that regulated providers who network, get training, and participate in the USDA Food Program tend to offer higher quality child care. 

     

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