High-quality early childhood education (ECE) can positively shape children's developmental trajectories and increase female labor force participation rates. Though most children under age five spend time in non-parental care, lack of access to high-quality and affordable care that meets parents needs is an increasing challenge. In my postdoctoral work I have the privilege of contributing to three projects that tackle different challenges facing the ECE field.
Projects
The Illinois Early Learning Access Project
The underenrollment of children involved in the child welfare system in ECE is a nationwide challenge. A project I contribute to seeks to increase the referral, enrollment, and attendance of young children who are involved with the child welfare system in ECE programs. Working in two communities (Chicago and East St. Louis), the project is engaging child welfare system-involved caregivers with young children, child welfare workers, and ECE providers in a Human Centered Design (HCD) process aimed at identifying facilitators and barriers to accessing ECE programs.
My contributions to this ACF-funded project include:
Conducting key informant interviews; analyzing interview data;
Co-authoring a report on the interview findings; creating project tracking tools;
Collating project tracking data for ACF reports;
Collecting observational data in the HCD working groups
Collaborating and communicating across project partners
The Illinois Nontraditional-Hour Child Care Project
This project addresses critical gaps in knowledge about what quality looks like in child care; the experiences of families who search for and use NTH child care; the lived experiences of providers who offer care during these hours; and the types of supports needed to maintain, sustain, and grow the supply of NTH care. The knowledge gathered will provide the Illinois Department of Human Services and other state agencies with new knowledge to inform policy development aimed at building supply and increasing equitable access, enhancing quality, and sustaining a thriving NTH child care workforce.
My contributions to this ACF-funded project include:
Co-designing a sampling strategy for a survey of parents who work non-traditional hours
Co-designing a survey that examines parents’ preferences for nontraditional hour care
Food Access in Home-Based Child Care
This study aims to understand how the federally-funded nutrition and food program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), could more equitably reach low-income Illinois children in subsidized home-based child care (HBCC). The project activities consider how provider demographics and program characteristics relate to providers’ access to and provision of nutritious foods. This research is also designed to better understand factors that contribute to HBCC providers’ limited use of CACFP, particularly among license-exempt family, friend and neighbor (FFN) providers.
My contributions to this RWJF-funded project include:
Merging and analyzing administrative data
Collaborating and communicating with our community partner
Authoring a report with findings of the experimental intervention aimed at improving license-exempt HBCC enrollment in CACFP
Directing a qualitative follow-up study with intervention participants
Managing and training students to help with qualitative analysis
Analysis of qualitative data
Authoring a manuscript incorporating the quantitative and qualitative components of the project