Friday, January 25, 2008
NACCRRA’s most recent report released this week, Leaving Children to Chance: NACCRRA’s Ranking of State Standards and Oversight of Small family Child Care Homes, reveals that many states fail to protect the health, safety, and well being of children in small family child care homes.
About $11 billion in federal and state funds are spent each year on child care subsidies. Yet, the federal and state governments have no idea about the condition of care they are paying for in many states. Overall accountability is lacking, leaving too many children in too many states to chance.
The report ranks every state, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense (DoD) child care system, on 14 different standards focused on ensuring the health, safety, and well-being of children while in home-based child care programs serving six or fewer children. The findings of the report reveal that states have a long way to go to improving their family child care regulations to guarantee that children are safe and learning. NACCRRA calls on not only state governments, but also Congress, professional organizations, and parents alike, to do their part in improving the quality of family child care.
This report is not necessarily a report on the staus of family child care, but rather a ranking of the accountability to the state of those programs. Oklahoma comes in first with the highest score and Kansas is the worst. So where does Minnesota rank? 12th. There is much room for improvement...
Download the press release, full report, and supporting materials here