FSSA's Quality Rating System - Who Pays?

"Recognizing the positive impact of Paths to Quality, a rating system for child care, Mitch Roob, secretary of Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration, has announced the program is going statewide next year.

Paths to Quality helps parents identify and select the best early care for their children by establishing four levels of quality for early care programs. 1: health and safety needs; 2: an environment that supports children's learning; 3: a planned curriculum that fosters optimal development; and 4: national accreditation indicating the highest quality for children.

Paths to Quality was launched in Allen County in 2000 and has since expanded to five more counties in northeast Indiana and 12 counties in southwest Indiana. This program grew out of a Foellinger Foundation grant invitation and is funded by the Child Care and Early Education Partnership, which includes the Foundation, the Early Childhood Alliance, and several other foundations and organizations with a vested in interest in early childhood development.

Reaching these quality levels will definitely improve the quality of care. But, how do we expect providers to reach these levels without additional private partnerships or without government investment?

Let's consider the following:

Facts:

• Out of nine major industries in Indiana, child care employment is 4th from the bottom at $25,204 annual salaries - that is less than gasoline attendants, and personal and laundry services.
• There are over 400,000 children in out of home care for working parents with only 100,000 high quality licensed spaces.
• Business and economic development leaders throughout the state have expressed concern that there are not enough well trained young workers in the state; there is difficulty in attracting and retaining young workers; and, there is a child care shortage, especially for infants and toddlers.
• Each region of the state expressed a desire to improve the workforce and the child care situation.

The challenge to expand Paths to Quality to a statewide program requires a financial commitment by FSSA to directly assist the child care industry along with an aggressive effort to build additional private partnerships.

If we do not rise to this challenge, the child care industry will remain an unrecognized and undervalued industry - families will continue to be forced to confront the challenges of family time, the growing conflict between work and home and a pervasive anxiety about the future of their children.

It is also a challenge to Indiana to decide how our culture will participate in the reshaping of childhood.