Strengthening the Quality of Informal Child Care in Washington State
We are implementing and evaluating Promoting First Relationships, a promising program aimed at increasing the skills and knowledge of adults who care for children from birth to age 3. The program focuses on how to promote healthy social and emotional development in young children, and teaches caregivers to deal with challenging behaviors in kind and nurturing ways. We are implementing this program with low-income grandmothers who care for infants and toddlers. Grandmothers make up the largest group of family, friend, and neighbor providers, and low-income caregivers often need additional support. For the evaluation, we will compare caregiving skills in grandmothers assigned to an 8-week group-based program, a 10-week home-visiting program, and no program. We are beginning a local pilot evaluation in two communities and hope to conduct a national evaluation in several sites over the next several years.
This project, a collaboration between the Human Services Policy Center in the Evans School of Public Affairs and the Department of Child and Family Nursing at the University of Washington, is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
