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A look at Canada's short-lived experiment with national daycare during the Second World War.

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Center-based programs that have positive impacts on young children's development provide some combination of the following features:

· highly-skilled staff,

· small class sizes and high adult-to-child ratios,

· a language-rich environment,

· age-appropriate curricula and stimulating materials in a safe physical setting,

· warm, responsive interactions between staff and children

- A science-based framework for early childhood policy, 2007.

This summary comes from a research report from the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. At the same time, personal ideas about quality child care can vary depending on values, beliefs and cultural or social context and also on who is making the judgment.

Through the eyes of children

For children, a high-quality program may mean feeling accepted for who they are no matter what their ability or culture. It means having friends and responsive adults, being emotionally and physically comfortable and the possibility of having a variety of fun, interesting and engaging activities.

Through the eyes of parents

For most parents, quality child care safeguards a child's health and safety; the child is happy, and the program is conveniently located and affordable.

For many parents, quality child care is key to balancing work and family, so that parents have peace of mind while they are at work.

Other parents may define a high quality program as incorporating tangible school readiness activities, such as pre- or early reading or learning to count, or highlighting learning social skills such as cooperation. Or they may define a quality environment as one in which their families' culture and their child's abilities are respected.

Or parents may define high quality child care as an environment in which their child is happy, makes friends, has interesting and positive experiences, and learns about a wide variety of things.

Or... all of the above...and more.

Overall elements of quality

While there is no single definition of quality in child care, there are some overall elements of child care that are identified as critical to the well-being of children. These include:

Health, safety and good hygiene

Good nutrition

A well-maintained environment set up for children

An adequate number of staff who are sensitive and responsive to children

Opportunities for active play-especially outdoors

Opportunities for quiet play and rest

Opportunities for developing motor, social, language and cognitive skills through play

Positive interactions with adults

Practices that support positive interaction amongst children

Facilitation of emotional growth

Participation of, support for and communication with parents

Respect for diversity and difference, gender equality and inclusion of children with disabilities

As well, high quality child care is generally understood to have

Broad learning and development goals for children, going beyond narrow academic aims like early literacy and numeracy to social, emotional, cultural, artistic and physical goals

An approach that "lets children be children", which means learning through play and experiencing a wide range of artistic, cultural, cognitive, social and physical activities.

Unregulated child care

Many families with parents in the labour force and no close family members who can provide child care use an unregulated arrangement, either in a family child care home (a caregiver's home) or in the child's own home. This means parents have sole responsibility for assessing the quality of the child care, managing the relationship with the care provider and are on their own in finding a new provider if the arrangement breaks down or ceases.

Guidelines for assessing quality in unregulated child care

When looking for an unregulated child care arrangement it's advisable to become well informed about health and safety and the elements of high quality child care.

One way to start is to get to know your province or territory's requirements for regulated family child care as a starting point and a point of comparison in such areas as

Health and safety

Programming

Maximum numbers of children by age

Physical space

Caregiver training and support

This approach can provide some basic guidelines for assessing unregulated family child care, since there is no public oversight or monitoring, no support system and no training requirements.

You may want to consider a written contract with an unregulated family child care provider. A contract or agreement should include such things as payment amount and schedule, benefits, hours, sick days and holidays, cancellation and termination of care, etc. A sample contract for the Live-In Caregiver Program (below) may be useful for designing this contract.

Child care in your own home: Terms of employment

When the child care is in your own home, you will need to negotiate the terms of employment with the caregiver.

In the case of in-child's-home care provided by a caregiver who is part of Immigration Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, there must be a written contract between the employer (the parent) and the employee (the caregiver). It must include: job duties, hours of work, wages, holiday and sick leave entitlements and termination and resignation terms. A number of the elements included in this program's sample contract may be useful for families using other varieties of in-child's-home child care.

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What is quality in early childhood education and care?

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Center-based programs that have positive impacts on young children's development provide some combination of the following features: · highly-skilled staff, · small class sizes and high adult-to-child ratios, · a language-rich environment, · age-appropriate curricula and stimulating materials in a safe physical setting, · warm, responsive interactions between staff and children - A science-based framework for early childhood policy, 2007.

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Early-childhood education embraces a variety of group care and education programs for young children and parents.

Early-childhood education embraces a variety of group care and education programs for young children The traditional focus on day care, nursery school and kindergarten has expanded recently to include attention to the needs of infants and school-aged children in primary grades, but programs designed for children in the 2-to-8 age range still outnumber those for older and younger children.

Various types of day-care and nursery programs are designed for the care and education needs of preschool children. Although different kinds of day care exist, there is increasing demand for the kind of group program associated with a centre. In schools, kindergarten and the early primary grades are considered within the purview of early-childhood education. For some Canadian children, entry to kindergarten or first grade represents the first organized early-education experience.

Although, depending on the age and experience of the children involved, programs may emphasize either the care or the education of the child at a particular time, all early-childhood education is guided by concern for the individual child and by an awareness of the need to nurture all aspects of his or her development. Early-education practice reflects the thinking of Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1829), the renowned Swiss educator whose concern young orphan children is generally acknowledged as being responsible for the birth of early-childhood education.

The influence of European educators, such as Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori and Margaret McMillarn, is obvious in North American and European early-childhood education. The Montessori schools in Canada are a concrete example, but the more widespread and enduring impact of these educators is reflected in classroom practices based on their beliefs about child development and their respect for a child's individuality. In the latter part of the 20th century, early-childhood education has been strongly influenced by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget's theories. Piaget's studies of children's thinking, in particular, have stimulated a wave of research exploring children's intellectual development, resulting in many innovations in early-childhood programs.

Compensatory education for preschool children, developed principally in the US with extensive government funding, was intended to meet the needs of socially and economically disadvantaged children. Some programs designed by groups of educational researchers and developers challenged the long-standing early-childhood education emphasis on social and emotional development and emphasized intellectual development. The conflict between the more traditional and the experimental programs and the effect of these programs on the children became part of the general discussion about the means and ends of the preschool experience.

In Canada, some of the questions related to special needs are associated with the needs of second-language learners and of children identified as having particular learning or developmental needs. Children of parents who have recently immigrated to Canada frequently enter kindergarten or first grade with little or no facility in English or French. Opinions differ regarding the best approach to developing the child's competence with the language of the school. The identification of other special needs and capabilities at the time the child enters school is the objective of the early-identification procedures adopted by many school boards. Again, there are different views regarding the best means of identifying existing and potential problems and of meeting the needs that are identified.

The early-identification movement is concerned with identifying physical, social, emotional and learning problems in preschool and early-primary children. Screening procedures have been designed for this purpose, and some follow-up in response to the identified needs of individual children is encouraged.

Perhaps the greatest influence on early-childhood education in Canada today has been the philosophy and practice of the British infant and primary schools. Frequently referred to as "informal" or "open" education, this approach is viewed by many as the embodiment of the "child-centered" philosophy. Attempts to implement "informal" education in Canada and the US have been directed, in particular, to kindergarten and primary-grade programs. In Ontario alone, almost 400 open-area schools were constructed between 1967 and 1972. Even where the open areas were not provided, water tables, "junk" boxes and other materials used in British classrooms appeared in Canadian classrooms. Multi-age grouping practised in Britain was also tried in Canada.

Other developments within the field of education and society have also influenced the scope and direction of early-childhood education. For many years the study of child development and early-education practice were dominated by the child developmentalists, who resisted direct intervention by teachers in children's learning. However, since the 1960s scholars and researchers in other disciplines and professions have turned their attention to the study of children and the early-education setting. In Canada today a number of university departments of education and psychology are engaged in research exploring the dimensions of child development and learning, and the dimensions and outcomes of early-childhood practice. The research of linguists, eg, has provided new understanding of the development of and relationship between language and thought. These findings have generated new discussions about the teacher's role in language development.

Changing ways of life and other social change have also affected early education because of changing needs and demands for child care and education. The increasing number of working women, many of whom are mothers of young children, has resulted in a demand for increased day-care facilities. In Canada this demand and the related issue of day-care funding have attracted the attention of many interest groups and policymakers, and the role of the school in providing day-care needs has become a subject of debate.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to early-childhood practitioners and researchers today is finding a way to determine whether early-childhood education achieves its objectives. Developing valid and reliable measures to assess program effectiveness, or even to define the criteria of effectiveness, has been difficult because some early-childhood educators are reluctant to support formal evaluation of program effects on children. This reluctance seems to stem from concern that any formal assessment of children promotes a kind of child evaluation that is antithetical to the notion of respecting individual differences. However, advances in research design and methodology and an awareness of the need to back up claims with evidence have combined to support a growing body of research in the field. This research increasingly demonstrates concern with long-term as well as immediate effects of early-childhood programs, and with determining relationships between different types of programs and different learning development outcomes.

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Early-childhood education embraces a variety of group care and education programs for young children and parents. Early-childhood education embraces a variety of group care and education programs for young children The traditional focus on day care, nursery school and kindergarten has expanded recently to include attention to the needs of infants and school-aged children in primary grades, but programs designed for children in the 2-to-8 age range still outnumber those for older and younger children.