Child Care

Many initiatives nationwide seek to improve the quality of family child care. These initiatives are financed both from public and private sources, and many receive funding from more than one source. Most of the $8 billion in federal support available in fiscal year 1993 went to subsidies to help parents pay for child care, but GAO estimates that about $156 million was available for efforts to improve the quality of care. Among the 195 family child care quality initiatives GAO identified, two federal sources were used most often: the Child Care and Development Block Grant run by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Child and Adult Care Food Program run by the Agriculture Department. GAO's on-site visits found that the initiatives used the money from both private and public sources to fund a variety of programs to enhance the quality of family child care, including training providers; supplying them with equipment, educational materials, financial aid, and other support; and linking them to resources and professional associations. Many welfare reform proposals are being discussed, most of which would require large numbers of welfare mothers to participate in education, training, and work programs. This will likely increase the use of family child care, making the enhancement of the quality of care even more urgent. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Family Child Care: Innovative Programs Promote Quality, by Leslie G. Aronovitz, Associate Director for Income Security Issues, in a field office hearing in Portland, Oregon, before the Subcommittee on Regulation, Business Opportunities, and Technology, House Committee on Small Business. GAO/T-HEHS-95-43, Dec. 9, 1994 (eight pages).

GAO found that: (1) many national initiatives seek to improve family child care quality and are financed both from public and private sources; (2) although most of the $8 billion in federal child care support in 1993 went to subsidies to help parents pay for child care, approximately $156 million was used to improve the quality of child care through 195 different initiatives; (3) the two child care quality initiatives that are used most often are the Department of Health and Human Services' Child Care and Development Block Grant and the Department of Agriculture's Child and Adult Care Food Program; (4) research shows that child care quality improvement activities are critical to enhancing the quality of care in all types of child care settings; (5) family child care is expected to grow and is particularly important to poor children; and (6) these initiatives can provide information on ways to improve quality in family child care settings.