Policy Brief - Illinois Action for Children

POLICY BRIEF
JUNE 2016
Child Care Needs of Families with
Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules
The overwhelming majority of children spend considerable
time with non-parental caregivers while their parents work.
Over three-fourths of children under the age of five with
employed mothers are in child care, averaging 33 hours
per week in care.1 These children are cared for in a range
of settings, from child care centers and preschools to
license-exempt home-based providers, often referred to as
family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) caregivers. High-quality,
stable, and affordable child care supports parents in their
goal of economic stability and provides the foundation for
a lifetime of learning for children. This policy brief spotlights
the child care needs of low-income families with nonstandard and unstable work schedules. Working evening,
weekend, and variable hours has become almost standard
in today's economy, especially in retail, janitorial, health
and food service sectors where many low-income parents
find employment. Moreover, employers increasingly control
labor costs through “just-in-time” scheduling practices.
These scheduling practices can not only create logistical
difficulties and stress for parents, but also for children and
child care providers, whose care schedules mirror the
instability of parental work schedules.
Illinois child care policy, like federal child care policy, recognizes that child care can advance not only families’
economic success by allowing parents to work, but also children’s wellbeing and healthy development, including younger children’s school readiness. A robust policy agenda reflects these different aims. It sustains a child
care and early education infrastructure that serves children at different times of day and in different settings,
and it supports standards of quality that are reflective of and appropriate to diverse arrangements. By exploring
the challenges that nonstandard and unstable work schedules pose for parents seeking quality, stable, and
affordable care for their children, this brief provides several policy recommendations to improve the care
options for families struggling to make ends meet in today’s economy.2
Defining Work Schedules
Several dimensions of work schedules pose challenges for child care. (See box on Pg. 2.) Nonstandard work
hours – or work outside of regular daytime, weekday hours – have received a great deal of attention because
of the difficulty in finding child care programs during the evenings, overnights, and weekends. In addition, child
care is difficult to arrange for parents who receive their work schedules with limited advance notice, whose
schedules change at the last minute, or whose work hours fluctuate daily, weekly, or seasonally.
www.actforchildren.org
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 2
When working parents with variable schedules have little
say in the number and timing of their work hours, it is especially difficult to accommodate caregiving demands and
responsibilities. The employer who at the last minute
assigns a parent to work extra hours in the evening may
cause the parent to be late picking up their child from a
child care center. The employer who tells a parent upon
arrival for their scheduled shift to go home because
business is slow may not realize that the parent still has to
pay the child’s caregiver that day despite the lost earnings
caused by the canceled shift. These examples of child
care changes outside of a parent’s control can negatively
impact parent-caregiver relationships and compromise the
quality and stability of care that children receive in all
types of care.
Child Care Choice and Work Schedules
Parents with nonstandard and unstable work schedules
face limited child care options in the formal sector. These
families disproportionately rely on family, friend, and neighbor providers and multiple arrangements to accommodate their variable care needs. As reported in a previous
Illinois Action for Children (IAFC) research brief, Cook
County Parents, Nonstandard Work and Child Care,7
almost half (46 percent) of all employed parents receiving
assistance to help pay for child care in Cook County
worked nonstandard hours, and these parents disproportionately used license-exempt home-based providers (64
percent compared to 22 percent of parents working
standard hours).
Important licensing regulations, such as ratios of staff to
children, make it especially hard for licensed child care
centers to offer flexible enrollment schedules compared to
licensed family child care homes and license-exempt FFN
care. Staffing part-time and variable hour scheduling
options may be prohibitively expensive for centers without
additional government supports. This regulatory environment helps explain why center schedules are typically
restricted to daytime, weekday hours and often require
children to enroll in full-day, full-week sessions. Nationally
only about 8 percent of centers offer any hours between
7:00 PM and 6:00 AM or on weekends.8 In Illinois, the
percentage is about the same.9
Some Challenging Work Schedules
Nonstandard work schedules: While there is no
set definition of "nonstandard hours," it is usually
defined as working some hours outside of a
conventional daytime, weekday schedule.
Previous research by IAFC found that two in five
workers in Illinois regularly work nontraditional
hours and/or weekends.3 Nationally, one-third of
workers, and about half of low-income parents,
work the majority of their hours during nonstandard times.4
Unpredictable work schedules: Schedule unpredictability includes work hours that are assigned
with limited advance notice, “on-call” work, and
schedules that are changed by employers after
being posted. Unpredictable work schedules
leave many parents scrambling to find child care
at the last minute. There is no set definition of
“advanced notice,” although receiving a
schedule with one week or less notice may be a
reasonable marker that indicates schedule
unpredictability. Research shows that over 40% of
hourly workers receive one week or less advance
notice of their work schedule.5
Variability in hours: Many workers experience
fluctuations in the number of hours that they work
each week and the time of day and length of
their daily shifts. These fluctuations can affect the
scheduling of child care needs. For workers paid
by the hour, fluctuations in work hours also
translate into erratic earnings, leaving parents
with considerable uncertainty about their family
budgets. Research shows that over three-fourths
of workers—part-time and full-time—report
fluctuating work hours, and variability in hours is
common across demographic groups.6
Part-time care options, and especially variable hours of care, are also uncommon among centers. Nationally,
only about three in ten child care centers have part-time slots.10 In Cook County, Illinois, less than 17 percent of
centers offer a part-time or variable hours option.11 The few centers that do accept families needing part-time
care or variable hour care seldom have part-time or variable rate structures, making these options out of reach
for most low-income families, especially parents whose work hours, and hence earnings, are variable and
unpredictable. Overall, then, child care centers’ more rigid hours of operation do not reflect the needs of many
working parents with nonstandard or unstable work schedules. This is especially concerning given that high
quality classroom-based instruction teaches children self-regulation skills that are an important aspect of school
readiness, especially for the highest risk children.
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 3
Licensed family child care homes (FCCs) are slightly
more responsive than centers to the needs of workers with challenging schedules. A number of family
child care homes offer part-time care and drop-off
options for parents with nonstandard schedules.
While many have licenses to provide evening,
overnight, and even weekend care (e.g. 68 percent
in Cook County, Illinois are licensed to operate in the
evening12), they do not necessarily serve families
during nonstandard times. In 2012 the National
Survey of Early Care and Education found that 34
percent of family child care homes offered child
care during nonstandard hours.13
Family, friend, and neighbor providers are by far the
most likely to offer child care during nonstandard
hours and they provide more flexible schedules and
affordable rates as compared to other child care
options. The majority of FFN providers offer child care
between 7:00 PM and 6:00 AM or on weekends.14
Because FFN providers often have additional
employment and caregiving responsibilities of their
own, parents who rely on FFN care frequently must
cobble together multiple arrangements to address
their nonstandard and precarious work schedules.15
Thus, only parts of the child care market – some child
care centers and licensed family child care homes,
but mostly the FFN sector – are able to respond to
the child care needs of parents with nonstandard,
unpredictable or variable work schedules.
Child Care Subsidies and Work Schedules
Illinois’ Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP)
supports parental employment by providing financial assistance for child care during working hours.16
CCAP also aims to increase the care options available to low-income families by reducing financial
barriers to accessing a preferred child care or early
education program such as a center.17 Even with
financial assistance, however, work schedules can
significantly drive parental child care decisions.
Given today’s 24/7 economy, many CCAP families
use family, friend, and neighbor caregivers to
accommodate work hours that don’t conform to
conventional center or licensed family child care
schedules. As noted earlier, our study found that
over 64 percent of parents with nonstandard work
hours who received child care subsidies in Cook
County chose license-exempt FFN care rather than
licensed family home care or center care.
Historically Illinois has been a leader among states in
providing a full range of child care options for
families that use CCAP, including those who work
nonstandard and unstable schedules. Nevertheless
in Illinois, as in other states, it has been challenging
for nonstandard workers and those with unstable
work schedules to take advantage of licensed family
child care homes and especially centers because of
scheduling constraints. Because Illinois families are
eligible to use subsidized care only during their
working hours (plus some transportation time), it has
been difficult for parents whose hours and shifts
fluctuate to use a program that requires children to
attend a regular schedule.
In 2014, the federal government reauthorized the
Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the
federal program that funds CCAP. The reauthorized
law re-affirms the dual purpose of CCAP as a work
support and a critical policy lever to support child
development, while adding several provisions that
directly address the employment circumstances of
CCAP families.
The key provisions of the law aim to increase the
quality and continuity of children’s care arrangements by requiring states to: (1) adopt “family-friendly” program eligibility and redetermination of
eligibility policies that do not disrupt parental
employment, (2) establish standards and monitoring
of child care settings to ensure the health and safety
of children while in care, and (3) implement strategies to increase the supply of high quality care,
especially for underserved populations and communities including families with nonstandard work
schedules. (See box on Pg. 4 for description of key
CCDBG provisions.)
These changes in CCDBG law have the potential to
increase CCAP stability and child care continuity
and quality for families with complicated employment circumstances like nonstandard and unstable
work schedules, while at the same time benefiting
employment stability.18 On the other hand, some of
the new provisions designed to improve the safety
and quality of child care, such as the addition of
mandatory criminal background checks, increased
health and safety standards, and additional monitoring requirements for license-exempt providers, could
act as a disincentive for FFN providers, who disproportionately serve families with nonstandard and
unstable work schedules, to participate in CCAP.
Thus, it is critical that Illinois implement the CCDBG
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 4
changes with these potential unintended
consequences in mind, and monitor the
impacts of the changes on CCAP-eligible
families, including those with nonstandard work hours and unstable schedules.
The reauthorized CCDBG law offers
exciting opportunities to extend a wider
range of child care options to low
income families with nonstandard and
unstable work schedules. The past few
years, Illinois has seen a crippling budget
deficit that has affected its ability to fully
fund many programs that low-income
working families rely on, including the
Illinois Child Care Assistance Program.
CCAP income eligibility guidelines have
been lowered and child care providers
have experienced payment delays.
Despite this, Illinois Action for Children is
optimistic about the future of the Child
Care Assistance Program. CCAP continues to serve as a viable solution to
expanding high quality and stable child
care options for children whose parents
work nonstandard and unstable work
schedules.
Policy Recommendations to
Increase Child Care Options for
Families with Nonstandard and
Unstable Work Schedules
Illinois needs an inclusive policy agenda
that strives to serve all children in affordable, high quality, and stable settings,
while simultaneously supporting parental
employment. Lessons learned in Illinois
can serve to inform a national policy
agenda that recognizes the realities
working families face in today's precarious economy. We propose several
recommendations to better align child
care assistance policies with parental
work schedules and increase the access
parents have to the full range of care
options, including licensed centers,
licensed family child care homes and
family, friend, and neighbor caregivers.
We also propose several recommendations targeted at the child care workforce to accommodate the children of
nonstandard and variable hour workers.
Key Provisions of 2014 Child Care Development
Block Grant Reauthorization Related to
Work Schedules19
I. Family-Friendly Provisions to Facilitate Access to Child Care
Assistance that Supports Stable, Continuous Care
• Determination/Redetermination of eligibility must account for
irregular fluctuations in earnings
• Redetermination processes cannot unduly disrupt parental
employment
• Requires 12-month minimum eligibility period for child care
assistance regardless of temporary changes in employment,
education, training or income, up to federal maximum of 85%
state median income
• Permits states to continue child care assistance for nontemporary job loss or termination of education and training;
A minimum of 3 months of job search is required if states
choose to end assistance in these circumstances
II. Health and Safety Requirements to Protect Children in Care
• Establishes minimum standards for health and safety in CCDBG
child care settings, including pre-service and continuous
provider trainings
• Requires criminal background checks for all CCDBG child care
providers and inspections for all licensed child care and
license-exempt non-relative CCDBG providers
III. Provisions to Improve the Quality of Child Care
• Supports child care providers by requiring states to establish
Early Learning and Development Guidelines, ongoing professional development requirements, and strategies to strengthen
provider business practices
• Requires states to implement strategies to increase supply and
quality of child care for several priority populations, including
children who need care during nontraditional hours.
• Directs states to target investments in high quality care to
children living in areas with concentrations of poverty and
unemployment and a scarcity of high quality care
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 5
Our recommendations include financial incentives,
technical supports, and professional development
opportunities that would enable providers to
successfully expand hours and increase program
flexibility without compromising program quality,
child safety, or financial stability.
Recommendation 1. Better align child care assistance policies with the work schedules and employment circumstances of low-income families.
CCDBG reauthorization provides an opportunity for
states to increase access to safe, affordable, quality
child care for low-income families with nonstandard
and unstable work schedules who are in need of
child care assistance. As Illinois institutes child care
reforms to come into compliance with the CCDBG
law, it should:
• Ensure that families eligible for child care
assistance maintain access to FFN care. It is
critical that the license-exempt home-based
sector remains fully part of Illinois’ Child Care
Assistance Program and that parents who
choose family, friend, and neighbor care remain
eligible for CCAP. As CCAP providers, these caregivers have access to a range of services, such as
food and nutrition supports and technical assistance to support quality improvements and
licensure, that they may otherwise not be aware
of or have access to. Moreover, without the CCAP
option, many low-income families with nonstandard and unstable work schedules would be
unable to access subsidized child care, which
would deal a devastating blow to their child care
options and their ability to remain employed.
• Minimize compliance barriers to CCAP participation for license-exempt FFN providers. The monitoring of FFN providers should be limited to nonrelative caregivers as is allowable by CCDBG law.
Compliance with participation requirements such
as background checks and health and safety
trainings should be affordable and easy to access.
These reforms will ensure FFN care remains available to subsidized families who depend on these
providers to care for their children during working
hours.
• Simplify CCAP application, redetermination, and
employment verification processes. CCDBG law
requires that states eliminate undue employment
disruptions and unnecessary burdens on subsidized parents and their employers. Illinois should
simplify the process of employment verification by
accepting client self-report of work hours when
pay-stubs are unavailable and eliminating reporting requirements for job, hour, and work schedule
changes. Forms to determine and redetermine
eligibility should be revised and shortened to
clearly and succinctly communicate the required
information; and any additional documentation
requested for application and redetermination
should be kept to a minimum. Such changes
would reduce administrative burdens and
processing delays that can lead to employment
disruptions and ongoing hassles for all CCAP
families; but especially for parents with variable
schedules and fluctuating hours, who may face
more arduous application and redetermination
requirements and a more onerous employment
verification process in the current system.
• Relax CCAP rules requiring subsidized child care
hours to match parents’ work schedules. Current
Illinois CCAP rules require a relatively strict match
between parents’ work schedules and their
eligible hours of subsidized child care. Consistent
with CCDBG law, CCAP rules should allow flexibility
in determining the hours and schedules of subsidized child care that working parents are authorized to use in order to increase the range of child
care options families have and promote continuity
of care. For example, a parent who works an
unpredictable schedule of 20 to 40 hours per
week, mostly during weekday hours, should be
able to enroll her child in a center full time. By
allowing a more flexible link between parents’
work schedules and eligible hours of subsidized
child care, the CCAP program opens up more
child care options for parents working nonstandard and unstable schedules, contributing to child
care quality and stability. Moreover, such flexibility
simplifies the process of documenting and monitoring work and child care hours, which reduces
burden on providers, parents, and program
employees.
Recommendation 2. Encourage expanded hours
and variable scheduling options in all types of care.
Child care providers across all settings should be
encouraged to expand their hours of operation and
consider creative scheduling options to accommodate children needing variable hour care. These
efforts are especially needed for centers because
they have the least flexibility to offer nonstandard
and variable hours of care. Expansions of child care
options with variable starting and ending times and
schedules that extend even one or two hours
beyond the conventional 6 PM closing time of
centers would fill a critical care gap for many
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 6
working families with nonstandard and unstable
schedules. To increase the supply of child care
programs with expanded hours and variable scheduling options, Illinois should:
• Provide technical supports and financial incentives to child care programs that extend closing
times and permit variable drop-off and pickup
times and part-time care. Technical assistance
should be offered to providers to facilitate
program changes enabling extended hours and
variable scheduling without compromising
program quality or child safety. To incentivize
participation and support financial stability of
providers, tiered reimbursements for subsidized
providers (e.g., CCAP add-ons) and other financial incentives to nonsubsidized providers (e.g.,
employer tax credits) should be tied to expanded
hours of operation and variable scheduling
options. All care types, whether center, licensed
family child care home, or license-exempt
home-based care, should be eligible for financial
incentives and technical supports if they expand
hours and adopt flexible scheduling while maintaining and building quality.
Recommendation 3. Enhance child care quality for
children whose parents work nonstandard and
unstable schedules.
Children whose parents have challenging schedules
deserve high quality child care. When designing
quality initiatives, policy makers should be mindful of
the unique employment circumstances of these
parents and the types of settings necessary to
accommodate their complex care needs. Currently
in Illinois, the state quality rating and improvement
system, ExceleRate Illinois, is primarily targeted to
centers and licensed family child care homes. We
recommend that Illinois:
• Establish a tracking and monitoring system to
assess the reach of Illinois' quality initiatives
and determine the degree to which families who
need care outside of daytime, weekday hours,
who need part time care, and whose care needs
are variable from week to week are served by
providers who participate in state quality initiatives
such as ExceleRate Illinois.
Recognizing that FFN care is a critical child care
alternative for parents with nonstandard and unstable schedules, and for many families it is the only
option available to them, quality initiatives should
support the work of FFN providers.
• Quality initiatives that use a social capital framework may be especially useful to raise the quality
of FFN care. (See text box below.) Specifically,
FFN providers may benefit from efforts designed to
connect them with peer networks and resources
provided by social service agencies, community
groups, licensed child care providers, and with
government programs. Such increases in social
capital, in turn, can result in child care quality
improvements through gains in provider knowledge, access to resources, and opportunities for
further development.
What is social capital? Social capital refers
to the resources gained through ties with
individuals and organizations. Through
social connections with families, caregivers,
social service providers, teachers, civic
leaders, and community residents, child care
providers gain valuable knowledge, access
new resources, and establish trusting and
supportive relationships that are vital to a
healthy, caring, and productive society.
A social capital service model facilitates
the creation of both bridging capital –
linkages to new resources, community
organizations, and professional opportunities, and bonding capital – the joining
together of child care providers in peer
networks to share information and support
one another. Illinois Action for Children
recognizes the power of bridging and
bonding social capital to leverage opportunities, advance knowledge, and strengthen
peer support for the benefit of caregivers
and the children and families they serve.
• FFN care initiatives should include a combination
of informational, material, and financial supports
to encourage quality improvements and reduce
caregiver burnout and isolation.20 For example,
FFN providers may welcome information and
materials that support developmentally appropriate practices for nontraditional hour care in
informal home-based settings, like advice about
caregiving routines, practices for mealtimes and
bedtimes, and sample activities that are appropriate for evening and early morning hours. They
may also benefit from gaining access to programs
and grants that address the health, nutritional,
and safety needs of children.
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 7
• Programs should be available to all family, friend,
and neighbor providers, regardless of their interest
in becoming licensed. For providers who want to
become licensed, resources and supports directed specifically at reducing barriers to licensure
may be particularly useful.21 However, traditional
pathways to professional development or formal
training programs geared toward licensure and
professionalization might be less effective for
reaching many FFN providers than a “family
support” approach that includes home visiting,
coaching, and peer support, especially for those
providers who view their work as an extension of
family care and not a career.22
• Encourage local collaborations between formal
early care and education programs and licensed
family child care homes as well as with family,
friend, and neighbor providers. Collaborations,
such as Illinois Action for Children’s Community
Connections preschool program that link children
in home-based settings with part-day, centerbased preschools, provide an exciting opportunity
to increase social capital and expand the formal
learning opportunities of children in licenseexempt home-based care.23 To work effectively,
these programs require transportation assistance
between programs, the coordination of program
and family schedules, and financial incentives to
support safe, stable, and quality care in both
settings.
• Increase financial incentives to encourage participation in quality enhancements for FFN providers.
Similar to the Quality Improvement grants available to some licensed family child care homes
and centers through the ExceleRate Illinois
program, the provision of small grants and
material supports to FFN providers may directly
support quality improvements by allowing providers to update or add to book collections, materials
for activities, etc. For some FFN providers, tiered
reimbursement rates that are tied to CCAP participation, similar to the CCAP add-on incentives for
silver- and gold-rated licensed programs in Illinois’
ExceleRate system, may also be an effective
incentive to encourage participation in quality
initiatives.
As We Move Forward
For thousands of Illinois families, the challenges of
raising children in today’s economy are exacerbated by unpredictable and variable work schedules
that require parents to be away from their young
children during evenings, weekends, and even
overnight. Parents who work nonstandard and
unstable schedules struggle to find safe, affordable,
and high quality child care to accommodate these
challenging work demands. It is time for a robust
policy response to this precarious employment
context that advances a system of child care and
early education that truly serves the diverse caregiving needs of all working parents and their children.
With its skilled, engaged, and committed community
of early childhood professionals, Illinois is poised to
be a leader among states to ensure our child care
system is responsive to the realities of working families
in the 21st century.
The Child Care Development Block Grant reauthorization offers opportunities for the Illinois CCAP
program to increase access to safe, stable, and high
quality child care for children regardless of their
parents’ work schedules. This policy brief surveys the
unique needs of families with nonstandard and
unstable work schedules to recommend initiatives
and directions to policy makers who hope to
improve access to CCAP for both these families and
their child care providers; increase the supply of
formal child care available to parents with nonstandard or unstable work schedules; and raise the
quality of FFN child care. The set of policy recommendations also reminds policymakers to understand that families with unstable work schedules and
families who work outside of daytime, weekday
hours might have different but complementary
policy needs.
Public policy would benefit from our paying special
attention to FFN providers because families with
challenging schedules mostly use this type of care.
Illinois has traditionally been a leader among states
in its child care assistance policies. It respects families’ reliance upon FFN child care given the prevalence of nonstandard and unstable work schedules
and the limited supply of formal child care that can
accommodate these schedules. Given this history,
Illinois policymakers should not shy away from taking
up positive opportunities presented by provisions of
the CCDBG reauthorization to ensure that parents
with challenging work schedules may select child
care that meets both their economic needs and the
developmental hopes they have for their children.
Policy Brief: Child Care Needs of Families with Nonstandard and Unstable Schedules – 8
References
1
Laughlin, L. (2013). Who’s Minding the Kid: Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2011. Household Economic Studies, P70-135. U.S. Department of Commerce,
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-135.pdf
2
This brief focuses on the child care needs of low-income working families with nonstandard and unstable schedules. Importantly, the instability these parents
experience is also common for other groups, such as low-income student parents and parents in job training programs. Many recommendations put forth in this
brief may improve the child care options of these groups as well.
3
Stoll, M., Alexander, D., & Sugimura, N. (2006). Working Later in Illinois: Work Schedules, Incomes, and Parents' Access to Child Care. Illinois Action for Children.
http://www.actforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/MDP_ResearchPublications_PDFs_WorkScheds.pdf
4
Enchautegui, M. E. (2013). Nonstandard work schedules and the wellbeing of low-income families. Paper 26. Urban Institute: Washington DC. http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/412877-Nonstandard-Work-Schedules-and-the-Well-being-of-Low-Income-Families.pdf
5
Estimates are based on a nationally representative sample of early career workers, age 26 – 32 years old. See Lambert, S. J., Fugiel, P., & Henly, J.R. (2014).
Precarious Work Schedules among Early Career Employees in the U.S. Labor Market: A National Snapshot. Research brief issued by EINet (Employment Instability,
Family Well-being, and Social Policy Network) at the University of Chicago. https://ssascholars.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/work-scheduling-study/files/lambert.fugiel.henly_.precarious_work_schedules.august2014_0.pdf
6
Ibid
7
Illinois Action for Children (January 2016). Cook County Parents, Nonstandard Work and Child Care, Research Brief, Chicago, IL: Illinois Action for Children,
available at http://www.actforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CCAP-Work-Schedules-Research-Brief-Jan-2016.pdf
8
National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team (2015). Fact Sheet: Provision of Early Care and Education during Non-Standard Hours. (OPRE Report
No. 2015-44). Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/resource/fact-sheet-provision-of-early-care-and-education-non-standard-hours
9
State of Illinois, Department of Human Services, Illinois Child Care Report FY2015. http://www.dhs.state.il.us/OneNetLibrary/27897/documents/HCDdocuments/ChildCare/2015ChildCareAR032816.pdf
10
National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team (2014). Fact Sheet: Characteristics of Center-based Early Care and Education Programs. (OPRE
Report No. 2014-73b, Washington DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/characteristics_of_cb_fact_sheet_final_111014.pdf
11
Illinois Action for Children Research Department (2016). Report on Child Care in Cook County for FY 2015. http://www.actforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2015_Report_Child_Care_Cook_County.pdf
12
Ibid
13
Reasons for providers not serving children outside of standard hours even when they are licensed to do so are not available. Licensed family child care
homes are not identified as such in the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE). We use the NSECE category of “listed” child care homes to
approximate licensed family child care homes. National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team (2015). Fact Sheet: Provision of Early Care and
Education during Non-Standard Hours. (OPRE Report No. 2015-44). Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children
and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/research/project/national-survey-of-early-care-and¬
education-nsece-2010-2014
14
The National Survey of Early Care and Education found that a large majority of “unlisted” home providers offer child care between 7PM and 6AM or on
weekends – 63 percent of the paid “unlisted” home providers and 82 percent of the unpaid “unlisted” home providers. License-exempt family, friend, and
neighbor providers are not identified as such in the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE). We use the NSECE category of “unlisted” home
providers to approximate FFN care. Ibid
15
Henly, J.R. & Lambert, S. (2005). Nonstandard work and child-care needs of low-income parents. Chapter 30 in Bianchi, S.M., Casper, L.M., & King, R.B. (Eds.),
Work, Family, Health, and Well-Being, 473-492. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.; Henly, J.R. (2002). Informal support networks and the maintenance of
low-wage jobs. In Munger, F. (Ed.), Laboring Below the Line: The New Ethnography of Poverty, Low-Wage Work, and Survival in the Global Economy, 179-203.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
16
Several studies show a positive relationship between subsidies and employment: Ahn, H. (2012). Child care subsidy, child care costs, and employment of
low-income single mothers. Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 379-387; Crawford, A. (2006). The impact of child care subsidies on single mothers’ work
effort. Review of Policy Research, 23, 699-711; Goerge, R., Harris, A., Bilaver, L. M., Franzetta, K., Reidy, M., Schexnayder, D., Resnick, D. M. (2009). Employment
outcomes for low-income families receiving child care subsidies in Illinois, Maryland, and Texas. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation,
Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Service.
17
A positive relationship between subsidy receipt and use of center-based care has been shown in several studies: Ertas, N., & Shields, S. (2012). Child care
subsidies and care arrangements of low-income parents. Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 179-185; Weinraub, M., Shlay, A. B., Harmon, M., & Tran, H.
(2005). Subsidizing child care: How child care subsidies affect the child care used by low-income African American families. Early Childhood Research Quarterly,
20, 373-392.
18
A study of child care subsidy dynamics in Illinois and New York found that the application and recertification processes can be cumbersome and cause
delays in processing. These problems were especially common for clients with nonstandard work arrangements who sometimes reported difficulties getting
employer verification of their work status and noted work disruptions due to subsidy-related application and recertification problems. See Henly, J.R., Sandstrom,
H., Claessens, A., Pilarz, A.R., Gelatt, J., Kim, J., Healy, O. (2015). Determinants of subsidy stability and child care continuity: Final research report for the
Illinois/New York Child Care Research Partnership. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/2000350-Determinants-of-Subsidy-Stability-and-Child-Care-Continuity.pdf
19
Matthews, H., Schulman, K., Vogtman, J., Johnson-Staub, C., & Blank, H. (2015). Implementing the Child Care and Development Block Grant Reauthorization:
A guide for States. Center for Law and Social Policy. http://www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/publication-1/ccdbg-guide-for-states-final.pdf
20
Porter, T. (2007). Assessing initiatives for family, friend, and neighbor child care: An overview of models and evaluations. Research-to-Policy Connections Brief
No. 5. Child Care and Early Education Research Connections. www.researchconnections.org
21
Lesser, D. 2000; Bromer, J. & Henly, J.R. 2003. Policy Initiatives for the Informal Child Care Sector. Poverty Research News, Vol. 6(1), Jan-Feb, Newsletter of the
Northwestern University/University of Chicago, Joint Center for Poverty Research.
22
23
Bromer & Henly, 2003; See Porter 2007 for extended discussion on family support and home visiting models.
Bromer & Henly 2003