Listed Home-Based Child Care Providers and Child Care and Early Education Policies Series: Health and Safety Regulations
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Key Findings
- Approximately nine in ten providers reported receiving an inspection or attending a health and safety training in the prior year, and these rates were even higher among providers who reported interacting with other CCEE policies.
- Virtually all listed HBCC providers agreed that background checks are important for children’s health and well-being, although some perceived discomfort about them or reported that they created hardships in their businesses.
- In communities with higher concentrations of Hispanic/Latino/a and Black, non-Hispanic residents, and communities with higher rates of poverty, listed HBCC providers were less likely to report health and safety trainings and inspections, and were more likely to perceive that some providers experience discomfort and associate burdens with background checks.
- For some listed HBCC providers, difficulties complying with regulations and requirements contributed to their decisions to leave the CCEE workforce, although financial reasons such as low wages were reported most often.
- Increases in state CCEE health and safety regulations between 2012 and 2019, and the addition of mandatory background checks in particular, was associated with a decrease in the percentage of listed HBCC providers who received subsidy funding.
In 2019, approximately 91,000 child care and early education (CCEE) providers cared for one or more young children in a home-based child care (HBCC) setting and were “listed” by state or local CCEE agencies. Listed HBCC providers experience three predominant CCEE policies:
- The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) provides funding to states, in part, to subsidize CCEE costs for families with low incomes.
- State-administered regulations set and enforce minimum requirements related to health and safety in all CCEE settings.
- Quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) assess the quality of and support quality improvement in CCEE settings.
This brief, focusing on health and safety regulations, is part of a series of three policy research briefs and accompanying technical report presenting findings from the first nationally representative analysis of listed HBCC providers’ reported interactions with these CCEE policies, as represented in the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) Home-Based Provider Survey. This brief also includes data from the 2012 NSECE and on state regulatory policies for HBCC providers from the National Association for Regulatory Administration Child Care Licensing Study, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and National Women’s Law Center.
The technical report for this series provides additional details about data sources and methods, full results tables for the main analyses, and supplementary analyses that support the main results.
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