Quality child care for
children 0-5 is extremely limited in California.
According to the State Children and Families Commission, only one
in seven early child care and education centers is found to provide a
level of quality that promotes healthy development and learning.
They go on to say "high staff turnover is one major component
of early care that has a detrimental effect on the quality of
programs" and is due to the low wages and poor benefits for these
positions. "Seventy
percent of early care staff earn poverty level wages.
The consequence is that teachers and providers (especially the most
skilled and educated) leave the field at an alarming rate, and thus
quality suffers”.
Sites that pay better wages
experience double the retention rate of other sites.
Yet, the efforts to keep child care services relatively affordable
for families have ended up displacing the burden of costs onto early care
staff themselves. And
although monies have been invested in training programs, there are no
current programs offering sufficient pay raises or other incentives for
providers to stay in the field. The
State Commission has recognized this problem and has created a matching
fund pilot program to join with local Commissions in investing in
compensation programs aimed at retaining highly qualified early care and
education providers by providing wage increases, stipends, health
insurance, respite/substitute time and or benefit packages.
This statewide problem is
evident in El Dorado County. Several
areas reported in a survey on the El Dorado County Child Care Workforce
conducted by the Early Care and Education Planning Council (CCDPC) in
2000 provides local corroboration. This
survey was responded to by almost one-third of the child care providers in
the county (28%). One of the
most pertinent results is that although education levels of El Dorado
County child care and development teachers are significantly higher than
those of child care teachers nationwide, a local child care center teacher
earns an average of $21,687/year, while a local public elementary school
teacher starts at $32,000/year. In
terms of center staff turnover, most El Dorado centers reported a 38% rate
of staff turnover, meaning staff stays less than three years in the field.
Of additional concern are the responses from family child care
providers, 66% of whom reported that they did not know how long they would
continue to provide care. They
did report, however, that economic improvements would encourage them to
remain in the field. And in a
recent telephone survey of child care providers conducted by the CCDPC,
approximately 50% stated that the most important improvement would be
providing stipends, the other 50% reported that the most important
improvement would be to provide benefits.
