The following government collected statistics are used by several child care resource and referral agencies:
1.2 million people provide child care in the formal settings of child care centers or family child care homes.
1.1 million caregivers for children are relatives, neighbors and friends who are paid for their time.
94.6% of child care workers are female.
16 percent of the formal child care workforce is African-American and 16.8 percent are Hispanic.
Out of the 50 States in the USA, 38 do not require any formal training for people to be employed as professional child care workers.
55% of child care workers do not have any college education.
In 2007 the average child care worker earned $19,670 a year. The official poverty line in the USA for 2007 was $17,170 annually for a family of three.
Out of the 821 different types of occupation listed by the Bureau of labor Statistics only 20 were worse paid than child care.
These are astonishing facts that paint a bleak picture for the way America regards child care workers and by extension how America values the importance of early care and education for children (ECE).
The 'moral majority' in America espouses strong family oriented values and yet has let the issue of child care remuneration go totally under the radar. It is a profession with a 30% to 40% annual turnover in staff. It is poorly paid work that appears to be valued no higher than residential cleaning. Indeed pool cleaners often make more than child care workers.
Against this background of financial disincentives to be a professional child care worker it must be remembered that many families employ such people because both parents have careers and incomes. The cheapness of child care workers appears to be necessary to maintain the feasibility of family units having two income providers. This is the economic reality under a system where child care is funded by the end user.
The solution to funding is a difficult one. In European countries there is a lot more public funding available for child care centers. Most European countries also have childcare or early childhood education certificates, and it is demanded that all paid child carers have the appropriate certification. By legitimizing and regulating these countries are doing 2 important things:
Improving the quality of early child education
Improving the wages of child care workers
These two goals are inextricably bound up in each other. A deregulatory approach does damage to children and discourages excellence in the field of child care.
Numerous studies have shown the importance of Early Child Education. The benefits of professional education for children are better early social skills and better academic performance at school. Child care workers can help to reinforce early literacy tendencies and make a child more able to adapt to formal education.
Children are influenced by their environment even before they are born, and the early stages of infancy are vital to the future development of the adult. There is more proof to show that nurturing influences during the first 5 years of life have a stronger correlation to delinquency than any supposed 'criminal gene'. Nurture is everything, and the best nurturing is needed to provide healthy, happy and smart people for the future.
Human Services Policy Center or HSPC is an organization dedicated to this message of the need for the excellence in child caring and early childhood education. HSPC is an independent organization that collects data about child care workers and the best practices for child care workers. The organization is also looking at the issue of funding; trying to find ways of to get both public and private funding for child care centers. The American social services system is in disarray: federal and state laws do not match up. Some areas have access to better financial resources than others. It is often unclear to people working in the child care profession what state and federal assistance is available and how this assistance can be applied for.
The following articles are devoted to the issue of early childhood education. The opinions given by the authors of these articles are not those necessarily held by HSPC. Rather they are published as a way of raising awareness of the funding problem at the heart of child care profession in the USA. They are also intended as a way of promoting legitimate debate regarding the best practices for early child education.
In addition to the myriad problems outlined on this site about the funding and education of child care programs and employees, there is yet another danger lurking: the health risks involved with sending a child to a facility that is using unknown chemicals.
Holly Miller of Mira Hair Oil Brands is an advocate of all-natural health and beauty products and has worked tirelessly to improve the environmental health of the child care facilities in her local area.
“We are sending our young children off to facilities that may be full of harmful chemicals, from pest management to cleaning products to hazardous renovations. I have worked with child care facilities in my area to be more transparent to parents about the chemicals that their children may be exposed to,” Holly says.
So many children today have sensitive systems and are allergic to many foods and chemicals. Although public schools are subject to much more rigorous standards when it comes to protecting children from potential allergens, unregulated child care facilities are not subject to these standards. In addition to advocating for stricter standards for employees of child care facilities and better funding, attention must be paid to the potential hazardous environment of these facilities as well. The work of Ms. Miller can and should be duplicated in any location by both parents and regulatory agencies.
It’s very easy to put up a web site with information on child education, awareness or protection but it’s more difficult to reach your audience. For example there are many wonderful resources on how to prevent child bullying in the UK but many of them don’t get the audience they deserve.
It’s definitely a waste of time to spend resources on developing a site if you don’t put some thought and effort into promotion. How you promote the web site is of course largely dependent on your audience. If your site is designed for kids and young adults then publicizing in periodicals and education journals is going to have minimal effect.
Spending some money on promoting through Facebook or Myspace will likely have much more benefit. Advertising can be targeted very precisely using Facebook tools so you can be sure they will only be directed at a specific audience. Of course many of these web sites are developed by charities so they are less likely to have a large advertising budget.
There are other options of course, one that shouldn’t be ignored is the practice of SEO. Most web designers should be able to assist in this area. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and ensures that your web site can be found in the major search engines. If done properly this can also be used to target specific audiences by focusing pages on your site on specific topics. For a brief overview of SEO practices and how you can market your site for free – click for more information.
Children are particularly susceptible to second hand smoke and the toxins they contain. The recent smoking bans in US workplaces has gone a long way to protecting both children and adults alike. There are however still problems when it comes to children being cared for at home. A lot of the time children are being exposed without the adults even realizing as most of the toxic fumes in smoke are in fact invisible to the naked eye and can linger and spread within an enclosed environment.
Ever had a cigarette at the back door or at an open window whilst children are in the vicinity? This could well be doing them harm as toxins linger long after you have extinguished the cigarette. Even third hand smoke is beginning to come to light in recent studies, this is where the toxins can linger on surfaces for days and weeks after a cigarette was smoked.
What is being done about this in child care facilities?
Indoor smoke laws have been passed in most States and some have even banned smoking in public places. Governments have also put in place steps to educate both child care staff and child care parents on the dangers of second and third hand smoke.
If you are a private child care worker as well as a smoker then you also have a great responsibility to uphold the law or quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. There are other alternatives out there such as electronic cigarettes which you can learn more about here. There are also nicotine patches and gums that can help you control the need for nicotine whilst in the company of others. Whatever way is chosen action needs to be taken to protect the children.
If we’re going to be honest, even the guy at the local mall who sells wine club gift memberships around the holidays can tell you that we have a problem with alcohol in this country.
The real question is how can we control it?
The easiest thing is to continue to stop children from getting their hands on alcohol. Look, we all know the statistics. If a kid drinks heavily before age 12, he is destined to be an alcoholic.
It’s a simple process. Require ID’s at stores. Stop people from buying for minors by making the rules and punishments so severe that no one aside from the criminally stupid would even think of doing it. Don’t let minors buy online, or make sure Fedex is going to check ID’s as well. I mean really people, is it that difficult?
The internet has simplified life so much so that there are many tasks that are performed at the comfort of the home or office that would have needed a lot of moving from one place to another. However, not everything on the internet is good and some people who are regular online are there for sinister reasons. Therefore, it is important to be carefully and be well educated on the dangers that one can meet online. Most adults are able to detect information or people online that do not have good intentions but this cannot be said of children who are quite vulnerable. The use of the internet by children is obviously much more than that of their parents and many times they are able to interact much easily on social network sites as well as other websites. It is on these sites that they meet individuals that may want to cause them harm or swindle them out of money. Therefore, it is important for parents to invest in the education of their children on the dangers that they might face while using online media. Social networking sites such as Facebook have taken over social media but have an age restriction for those who are allowed to sign up. Parents should advise their children on the need to wait till they are of age to join these sites. The restriction should also apply to those who would want to sign up on dating sites so that they are protected from dangerous people. Cyber bullying is also done to teenagers by their age mates who are usually anonymous and use the internet to threaten or embarrass another child. It is important for children to report such threats to their parents so that appropriate action is taken and they are able to protect themselves as well. Read more here
The Thai economy has been growing at an average of 7% for a number of years. In the last 4 decades the country has undergone many changes due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. These rapid changes have raised the standard of living for many Thai people, but with it there has been a new set of problems created. One of these problems is the chronic shortage of professional child carers in the country.
Based on current population growth rates, Thailand will need about 200,000 more child carers by 2015. Traditionally mothers stayed at home with the child while the father went to work. In busy times such as during harvests the women would join the men in the fields and one of the extended family would take care of the children. This was often the grandparents.
As more Thais move to the big cities to find work in factories, service industries and tourism there has been a separation from the extended family. Moreover, the higher cost of living in cities means that women have had to find employment. As a result the child is left at a day care center. At present there are no qualifications needed to work in a day care center in Thailand. Thus, the quality of the care provided to the children in day care centers varies greatly. As more mothers go to work so the demand for child minders increases.
Since the job of looking after children in Thailand is poorly paid so the profession does not attract enough people. This is a common problem both in developed and developing countries: people want good child caring centers but aren’t prepared to pay for them. The Thai government is also reluctant to step in to subsidize child minding services.
In coastal areas of Thailand such as Khuk Khak beach in Khao Lak people are drawn by the wages to be had in the tourist sector. They are forced to leave their children with their family who are often from the poorer rural areas in the North and North East of the country. While the care a child receives from its grandparents, aunts etc. maybe good it creates a psychological confusion where the child comes to view the grandparents as the parents. Repeated on a large scale this will no doubt affect the national psyche.
The answer is to make tourism subsidize child care in such areas as Khao Lak so that children are not separated for long periods of time from their parents.