Two CAYL Institute events take on child care challenges

The CAYL Institute is looking at ways that child care in Massachusetts can become stronger, more equitable, and more responsive to families’ needs. Two recent CAYL events explore these issues in detail. 

A community convening

Last month, at an event called “Collaborating on Child Care Challenges: A Conversation With The CAYL Institute,” early educators, advocates, leaders, and legislators gathered at Roxbury Community College.

“As child care throughout the United States is in crisis, we wanted to seize the opportunity to gather key policy and program leaders to spark discussions focused on creating pathways for change,” CAYL says in a LinkedIn post.

A synthesis of the event shares crucial questions, themes, and advice for stakeholders.

Among the questions:

“How do we define equity? Does it include access for families? Does it include compensation? Does ensuring equity for the workforce negatively impact equity for families and access?”

One of the key themes the emerged was increasing public respect for the early childhood field and honoring the field’s basic human rights by providing adequate compensation, mental health support, and wealth building opportunities such as pensions.

Another theme was expanding the workforce by welcoming men and setting up pipeline programs in more high schools, developing more apprenticeships, and creating career ladders. 

The synthesis also shares opportunities for impactful change, including maintaining a “Focus on sustainability for the field,” by creating “an actionable long-term, 10-year plan.”

And the list of advice for stakeholders includes a call to, “Turn one-off lessons, grants, and funders into systems change.” In other words, if a new idea or pilot program works, scale it up and make it sustainable. 

CAYL also shared information about its Good Jobs Metro Boston Coalition Child Care Sectoral Partnership, which is working to build a “Workforce System that can source hundreds of educators.”

Proposing a new policy approach

A few days after the Collaborating on Child Care event, CAYL’s 2023 Fellows presented their policy papers on Strategies for Children’s 9:30 Call.

The policy papers point to three challenges and how they can be addressed.

The first challenge is a lack of data about infant and toddler care. To improve this, Massachusetts could:

• develop and expand data systems

• encourage stronger collaboration between state agencies and child care providers to facilitate better planning and implementation of services for infants and toddlers, and

• create a commission on infants and toddlers

The second challenge is a lack of mental health support that could help stabilize the early childhood workforce. This could be improved by:

• creating a “state-supported mental health and wellness system to specifically support the early childhood education workforce”

• ensuring that this system offers “a menu of services” that give local programs a choice, and

• conducting an “EEC-led marketing and outreach campaign” about the proposed system that would raise awareness about what it offers

And the third challenge is making the board of the Department of Early Education and Care stronger and more diverse, which could be done by: 

• seeking out board members who represent the “geographic, economic, racial, and cultural diversity of the children and families throughout the Commonwealth”

• adding three new seats to the board, one from each sector of the mixed-delivery system, so a center-based seat, a family child care seat, and a school-age/afterschool seat

• improving communication between EEC and providers as well as between EEC and families, and

• strengthening program quality by bringing “educators’ expertise and experiences to the creation and implementation of policies and regulations,” and by sharing “on-the-ground information about the challenges and opportunities of each sector from the perspective of programs, staff, children, and families”

As the policy papers point out:

“Massachusetts is home to 204,232 babies, representing 2.9% of the state’s population. It’s a well-established fact that the infant and toddler years are critical for brain development and that an ‘environment of relationships’ is crucial for the holistic development of the child.

“Nevertheless, infants and toddlers in Massachusetts are clearly at a disadvantage in receiving the financial support needed to optimize their development. Even though Massachusetts is a well-known leader in early education, the state continues to invest fewer dollars in its infants and toddlers in contrast to older children. Because of this relatively low investment, we ask: How might Massachusetts boost its investments in infants and toddlers?”