The family child care trilemma and community development : seeking a balancing strategy

Abstract

This thesis examines promotion of licensed family child care businesses as a strategy for community development. Accessing high quality, affordable child care is a vital need in low income communities. Often times, however, the care available is of low educational value, prohibitively expensive, or located far from the neighborhood. The research in this thesis examines how community development corporations have innovated to deal with these three challenges. The thesis conceptualizes of child care in terms of the three parties most affected by it-children, parents, and child care providers. Given how the child care agenda is commonly conceptualized and executed the interests of the players are often seen to be in conflict. The tripartite model developed in the thesis analyzes the intimate linkages and delicate balance among the three groups, showing that any interventions that focus on one group -such as improving the quality of care that children receive -affects the well-being of the other groups, often with negative impacts, such as raised parent fees or reduced provider income. In order to create initiatives to address the challenges faced by each group, the thesis delineates three categories of interventions that provide a comprehensive framework for action: professionalism to speak to quality, resources to speak to affordability, and space and place to speak to accessibility. From this research, an emerging best practice for the child care system begins to materialize. The model emanates from the work of a diverse network of organizations and institutions working on child care at various scales from local to regional to national.

(cont.) Through an iterative process based on service needs and organizational capacities, the network and its member organizations constantly adapt their program design and agenda in order to provide services that positively affect children, parents, and providers and create interventions that address professionalism, resources, and space and place. Finally, the thesis explores the work of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC), a community development corporation in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Through the organization's eight years of work in child care, it has found ways to navigate through the complexities of the child care system and embed itself within a network of other child care organizations. JPNDC and the other organizations cited in the thesis provide models of how community development corporations can begin to substantially improve the provision and supply of child care of their communities.