Choosing Childcare

By Stevanne Auerbach

Choosing Childcare offers the original, detailed, concise, practical guidance on selecting childcare. Provides essential answers to best services. Includes information, checklists, potential arrangements, interviewing, understanding choices, tips on selection, pros and cons, planning budget, resources, schedules and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stevanne Auerbach
• Release date: Nov 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9780978554040

Book preview

Glossary

About the Author

Choosing childcare notebook checklist

Babysitter information checklist

Comments about Choosing Childcare

An excellent book. I would like to see this guide in the hands of every parent.

---Dr. David Friedman, Pediatrician, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

Parents who use this guide can select the best childcare arrangement based on their needs.

---Tim Lewis, San Francisco, CA

Concise and practical handbook for parents to help them choose the best possible childcare.

---Dixie DeVienne, Montreal, Canada

The book covers all the things I'd like parents to consider. I liked its details and specifics and will recommend it to any parent. I ordered a copy for our school library.

---Dr. Millie Almy, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Exceptionally well written and informative.

---Dr. Joan Bergstrom, Wheelock College, MA

Read this book, as it will help reinforce your instincts and provide good common sense counsel in what can seem to be an overwhelming task.

---Jennifer Cross, San Francisco, CA

This is an excellent book which fully accomplishes the aim stated in its subtitle: providing a guide for parents in the task of choosing childcare.

It has been heartening to see childcare, the stepchild of the education family, come away from the fireplace and join the rest of the family in the living room. As part of this new respectability, a burgeoning literature describing procedures and practices has become available. However, most of this literature is directed toward the student, the para-professional or the professional in an allied field who wants to become part of the childcare movement.

Relatively little has been written directly for parents, to help make them more aware of the importance of making a wise choice about the type of childcare likely to meet the needs of their children and to find the information with which they can make a wise decision. This book fills that gap and should be required reading for every parent about to make that choice for the first time, or about to make a change.

In Choosing Childcare, Dr. Auerbach provides a step-by-step guide for parents who are in the process of making this important decision. Sometimes parents find it difficult to know what to say to prospective childcare personnel. Auerbach provides the kinds of questions to which parents will want answers.

Also provided here are informal procedures which parents will find helpful in evaluating possible settings for childcare. Most importantly, the author is careful to present objective descriptions of the various alternatives for childcare: in-home sitters, family childcare, and center-based care, available in most communities. By carefully considering the pros and cons of each setting, all parents should be able to choose the pattern of childcare which would simultaneously fulfill the needs of their children and their needs as parents.

---Betty M. Caldwell, Ph.D., University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AK

Preface: The History of Choosing Childcare

In 1969, as a single mother in Washington, D.C., I had to struggle to make precarious arrangements to care for my preschool child while I worked to survive. My salary as a teacher barely covered expenses, so I sought another position and found one in the Office of Education (now the Department of Education).

Working with other federal employees who were also parents, I discovered a huge unmet need for childcare among these employees. I organized over a two-year period to create the first childcare center for the children of federal employees, located in what had previously been the Department of Education's Executive Dining Room. The center opened and became a model childcare program for the entire government and private industry.

I testified on the need for childcare¹ before the Congressional Committee reviewing proposed childcare legislation. Later, I transferred to the Office of Economic Opportunity to plan and administer the first National Research and Development Program for

Day Care.

Over two years, $2.5 million was allocated to support a variety of projects to obtain more detailed information on programs, standards, licensing, facilities, resources, research, and more. I also worked on the committee that helped launch unanimous support for childcare's being selected as the first priority at the White House Conference of 1970; then the first bi-partisan legislation to support quality childcare passed Congress, but the legislative program was vetoed by then-President Nixon.

Frustrated by that veto, I left Washington, D.C., to complete my Ph.D. studies and conduct the first cross-cultural study of childcare.² After my doctoral dissertation was published, I wrote the first book to guide parents to find childcare services: Choosing Childcare.³ This book was republished by Dutton,⁴ and then by Barron's.⁵

Now this new, revised edition of the original Choosing Childcare: A Guide for Parents is available to assist you in your search for the best quality childcare arrangements you can locate.

I wrote other books⁶ documenting needs, programs and the potential of childcare services, as well as articles,⁷ and chapters⁸ in other books. I remain an advocate for the improvement of services to children and families.

---Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D.

1 The Need for Day Care for the Children of Federal Employees. Testimony to the Select Subcommittee on Education and Labor, in Hearings on Child Care, HR 13520, Comprehensive Preschool Education and Child Care Act of 1969, Congressman John Brademas, presiding. U. S. Government Printing Office, 10 pp.

2 Parents and Child Care: A Report on Child Care Consumers in San Francisco: A Study of Parental Expectations for Child Care from a Cross Cultural Perspective. San Francisco, CA: Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, 1974. 195 pp. (In Dissertation Abstracts Vols. X-XII. Order from University Microfilms International Dissertations, P.O. Box 1347, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346; [phone].

3 Choosing Child Care. San Francisco, Parents and Child Care Resources. 1976. 80 pp. $3.00. LC- 7523842.

4 Choosing Child Care. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981. 116 pp., $12.95 (cloth) ISBN 0- 525- 93217-8. $5.95 (paper) ISBN 0- 525- 93201.

5 Keys to Choosing Child Care. New York: Barron's Educational Series, 1991. 152 pp., $5.95 (paper) ISBN 0-8120-4527-0.

6 Other books on childcare:

Confronting the Child Care Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. 127 pp., $9.95 (cloth) ISBN 0- 8070- 412.

Child Care: A Comprehensive Guide. 4 Vols. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1975- 1979. (cloth)

Vol. I Rationale for Child Care Services Programs vs. Politics. 197S. Foreword: Senator Walter M. Mondale, Vice President, Ambassador to Japan. $13.95. ISBN-87705-218-2.

Vol. II Model Programs and Components. 1976. Foreword---Congressman John Brademas, President, N.Y.U. $14.95. ISBN 0-87705-256-5.

Vol. III Creative Centers and Homes.1978.Foreword, Edward Zigler Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Yale University, Dir. OCD. $14.95. ISBN-0-87705-275-1.

Vol. IV Special Needs and Services. 1979. Foreword---Jeanette Watson. Head, Early Childhood, Texas.$15.95. ISBN 0-8775-349-9.

7 Articles on childcare:

Day Care: The Forgotten Priority. National Elementary Principal, Arlington, Va. Vol. 55, No. 6, July– August 1976

"Choosing Child Care [Excerpt] Parent's Magazine ( NY) Vol. 51, No. 5, May 1976 [special insert, front cover]

Child Care Services: Should the Public Provide Them? Phi Delta Kappa, Bloomington, Indiana: Vol.57, No. 8, April 1976.

Child Care in The Public Schools: An Interview with Albert Shanker. Day Care and Early Education Magazine, (NY) Vol. 3, No. 1, September–October 1975.

What Mothers Want From Childcare. Day Care and Early Education (N. Y Vol. 1, No 4, April 1974.

Child Care from a Parent's Perspective. Children's House (Caldwell, N. J.) Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 1974.

Child Care: A Cruel Hoax. The Humanist Magazine (Buffalo, N. Y.) Vol. 32, No. 6 December 1972: 19–29.

What Mothers Want From Child Care. Day Care and Early Education, N.Y. Vol. 1 No 4, April 1974

Child Care From a Parent's Perspective, Children's House, Caldwell, NJ Vol. 11, No 2, Summer 1974

Unmet Needs in Child Care. [Perspective] San Francisco Magazine, November 1972.

8 Chapters in books:

Federally Sponsored Child Care. [in-depth analysis of federal programs] chapter 6 in Child Care: Who Cares? Foreign and Domestic Infant and Early Childhood Development Policies. (Ed.) Pam Roby New York: Basic Books: 172–190. (Cloth)

Child Care in The Workplace" Chapter in Humanizing the Workplace, (Ed). Dr. Roy Fairfield (cloth) Prometheus Press, Buffalo, NY, 1974, pp.215-222.

Introduction

The combining of work with parenthood is a delicate and challenging task. The job requires all the resources, ingenuity, skill, good humor, and strength you can muster. Millions of parents are working or must return to work after their children are born. Others want to return to school, volunteer in the community, or need some time to pursue personal needs and responsibilities. Before they can do any of these things, however, they must see that their children are well cared for while they are away from home.

Some fortunate parents have friends or relatives living nearby to assist them in caring for their children in an informal and inexpensive way. Many do not and must look elsewhere in their community to locate the best available and most affordable childcare.

The goal of this unique guide, the first book published on Choosing Childcare, is to help you find, evaluate and select the best care possible for your child. Using the guide may help you find not only the most suitable arrangement more quickly, but also help you feel better about your choice and maintain your trust over time.

Choices vary. A caregiver may tend your child in your home, in a family childcare home, or in a childcare center. However, finding a good and convenient arrangement is not easy. Good childcare programs usually have long waiting lists, may be inconvenient to reach from your home, or may cost more than you can afford. Most communities fall short in providing enough good childcare services to meet the demand for quality, accessibility and affordability.

All parents in search of childcare seem to want the same thing---a secure place that will provide consistent