Childcare Worker Compensation
Childcare Worker Capacity( Quantity)
Childcare Worker Capacity( Quality)
General Collaboration
All universities and colleges should have dedicated childcare centers staffed with students.
This is an overarching issue across the country. As a society, we want individuals in the nonprofit sector, childcare, human services, etc. to be highly educated and highly trained( certification). This requires more schooling, so many people take out student loans, and a lot of these positions offer lower wages. Honestly, I don ' t think anyone is going to continue their education in ECE without a significant overall raise in wages and accessibility to benefits. The secondary and postsecondary options are there, but the investment in education by an individual does not pay off in the hourly wage or salary, compared the nature of a highly skilled teacher utilizing the post-secondary education oral and written communication skills needed to deliver high-quality care Professionalism means ECE staff with postsecondary degrees should be paid like K-12 educators. Many of us have B. S. Eds or master’ s degrees, but we cannot charge the same rates to families that community taxes generate to employ public school teachers. At our part-time NAEYC accredited program we have a high degree of staff education and are highly professional, but we are still seen as babysitters or ' day care '. My comments will feel like a broken record, but that ' s what every director in a focus group will tell you. it ' s all about the money. Hopefully if a childcare wage covers more than the childcare, more adults will want to work in the industry
Substitute pool for the area to make sure that centers are able to operate with safe ratios due to the career being plagued with illness due to germs. Small agencies are struggling to maintain a workforce, and many have a waiting list. We need an excessive amount of support for behaviorally challenged children who cannot function in the program without one-on-one assistance more than 40 % of the time. Parents are in denial. There are not enough ECE staff or funding to allow programs to employ one-on-one aides to children who may have undiagnosed behavior challenges to help them progress in the classroom while the lead teacher and assistant focus on the function of the class as a whole, not just individual needs. I have almost quit the field twice because of my safety and mental health. I have lost staff for the same reason, and we are a PTQ 4 / NAEYC program. If we can ' t do it and the child cannot get into the school system, the opportunity for a child to receive a high-quality ECE experience with their peers is a sad situation. No one is happy. Strict business solutions are not going to solve this problem!
I think to increase providers, we need to think out of the box. We don ' t need more, we need better. Ongoing professional development
Getting the existing organizations to work together to achieve the common goal. There are little to no resources available that strengthen a collective impact model.
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